Messages

151

Archive / New FF7 Tool: Scene Reader

« on: 2004-08-16 06:45:41 »

You don't need gzip. My program does it all for you.
Still, text is encoded in 'FF7 way', you'll need Thingy table to easy edit the text. Name 'guard scorpion' can be found at 0x350 offset.

152

Archive / New FF7 Tool: Scene Reader

« on: 2004-08-16 06:07:21 »

Yes, now everything you can do is open file with hex editor. I'm working on a program to edit some things in file, but it will take some time .
You can use Scene.bin format description by Fremen.

Link: Scene.bin format description

153

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Enemy AI and HP data?

« on: 2004-08-15 19:29:24 »

Why didn't you tell this to anybody ?
Can you tell me, how you're expanding in-battle dialogs ? For example, I want to change text "Attack while it's tail's up" to "Don't attack while it's tail's up", but I don't know how to do this. Basically, I don't know where are pointers pointing to these dialogs.

154

FF8 Tools / New FF8 Tools: Archiver and TEX Converter

« on: 2004-08-15 19:25:55 »

There programs are useful only if you want to change something in game. Eg. translate it. For end-user they are useless .

155

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Need Help in FF7 files!!!

« on: 2004-08-15 16:20:13 »

You'll need a hex editor. Translhextion is nice. www.google.pl

This method will not work for EVERY dialog, but for MOST of them. Still, there are some dialogs that have diffrent functions calling them, and that's what I don't know at the moment.

156

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Need Help in FF7 files!!!

« on: 2004-08-15 13:06:32 »

This functions were taken from the Gears project, but it seems they seems to be incorrect...or smth. I managed to find something myself and here's what I found:

In md1stin there's only one regular dialog and two 'notifications' used. They use other message definition, beginning with 40h:

Code: [Select]

0x4BD offset - 40 03 1E 01 - "C'mon newcomer, follow me"
0x73F offset - 40 00 06 82 - Received "Potion"!
0x762 offset - 40 00 06 82 - Received "Potion"!

Here, you have syntax:

Code: [Select]

40 ?? dd id

Where:
dd - Dialog number
id - Window id

For the first dialog, you can see that it uses 31th (1Eh + 1) dialog from dialog table (Which is - "C'mon newcomer, follow me") and window with id 01.
Second messege uses 7th (06h + 1) dialog, which is: Received "Potion"! And so...

Now, go to the first offset, 0x4BDh and go backwards 10 bytes. You can see there:

Code: [Select]

50 03 28 00 14 00 85 00 29 00
50 ?? xx xx yy yy ww ww hh hh

These are at 0x4B3.
?? - unknown
xx - 2 byte horizontal position
yy - 2 byte vertical position
ww - 2 byte width
hh - 2 byte height

To check if everything is ok, let's check another one. Go to 0x73F where you can find message func for "Received 'Potion'!". Now go 10 bytes backwards, to 0x735:

Code: [Select]

50 00 53 00 0a 00 8A 00 19 00
50 ?? xx xx yy yy ww ww hh hh

It's the same as above. And that concludes out lesson for today .

157

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Need Help in FF7 files!!!

« on: 2004-08-15 07:28:37 »

1. You need to alter game script. This is an area before dialogues in field file. There, you have to find window functions and message functions, they look like this:

Window func.

Code: [Select]

30 id xx yy hh ww

id - window id used in message function
xx - x position on screen
yy - y position on screen
hh - height of a window
ww - width of a window

Message func.

Code: [Select]

50 ?? id dd ...

The second byte is unknown
id - window id
dd - dialog id (it's number from the start)

Good luck

158

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Enemy AI and HP data?

« on: 2004-08-15 06:45:16 »

Tools to extract / reinsert has been created...yesterday . You can find them on the other topic in Game Tweaking. Now only think to do is learn everything you can about AI scripts, and we can do such mod. We know already how to change statistics, win/steal items and such. So why don't give it a try ?

Edit: I made Guard Scorpion unstoppable . Screen:

159

Troubleshooting / Gears Errata

« on: 2004-08-14 20:29:56 »

At the very start of section with Menu Module, you've written Menu_us.lgp entry twice in the green box .

160

Troubleshooting / Need help starting out with ff7 programming

« on: 2004-08-14 17:41:38 »

You want to write your own program so you can change dialogs in game ? Bad idea, I don't recommend it . FF7 has very complex structure and to write program for this task you'll need days, maybe weeks if you know the structure. Ask yourself if it's worth this time. I wrote editor for this, it's named Sapphire. I recommend you using it instead of Cosmo, because Cosmo is messing up music in locations you change (not always, but it does). And it can't handle tin_1 file and some others .

Link: Sapphire

161

Archive / New FF7 Tool: Scene Reader

« on: 2004-08-14 17:33:25 »

Hello Again!
I wrote another program today, and called it Scene Reader. It can extract every single file from scene.bin archive for you to edit (eg. change some names or enemy stats), and finally it has a function to build new archive from extracted (and modified) files. Here's a proof that program works:



Note that the name I changed was "Guard Scorpion", you can find it in 82th file in archive. Again, I am not 100% sure that it's bugless so please test it and write feedback.
My next step is to write editor so you can change single enemy stats and batch processing (eg. up every stat by 30%). Beware :wicked:.

Link: Scene Reader

162

FF8 Tools / New FF8 Tools: Archiver and TEX Converter

« on: 2004-08-14 14:49:24 »

Check if you've choosen modified files, not the original ones, because it have to work . Also, check if you copied change archive do game data (if you edited it somewhere else).
Program's working for sure, because my friend from team translating FF8 to Polish used it to edit main splash screen and some graphics and it worked fine.

163

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Enemy AI and HP data?

« on: 2004-08-14 07:33:31 »

Last night I was programming a bit, and I wrote an extractor. It get's out all the files from scene.bin, and gunzip them, so you can hexview them. Next I'll work on Repacker. If I succeed, this forum will be first place to know .

I'm wondering if the game likes it when I make e.g. section one with 11 files and section two with 7 files (they normally have 12 and 6)...

164

FF8 Tools / New FF8 Tools: Archiver and TEX Converter

« on: 2004-08-14 07:26:39 »

Now you're talking . I'll go fix.

Edit: Bug fixed, file uploaded .
And what's with FF8:AC ? Still getting this nasty error ?

165

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Enemy AI and HP data?

« on: 2004-08-13 19:01:06 »

Lately, I've been working on scene.bin file, to understant it, so I can write some app to change values in it. The problem is that this file is divided to 32 sections that have *exact* size - 8 kB. And if you change anything in some file, then save and gzip it, the size is diffrent. I can extract those files, look at every single stat, but I can't repack the archive right now. But I'm not giving up .

166

FF8 Tools / New FF8 Tools: Archiver and TEX Converter

« on: 2004-08-13 16:50:35 »

I did exactly what you told, and I didn't have any error window. It's really weird.
As for Omega, I think I left some filestream open, maybe that's why. I'll check.

Edit: Uploaded version with of Omega with this bug fixed, I think .

167

FF8 Tools / New FF8 Tools: Archiver and TEX Converter

« on: 2004-08-13 15:57:44 »

I uploaded next version of Omega, it can preview tex files before opening them. Link is the same.

Could you please tell me what exactly was you doing, before that error appeared ?
It's weird because I tried to replace start00.tex in menu.fs and it worked well. Maybe you opened it with another app and didn't close ?

I was thinking about batch replacing for Omega, but I realized that it isn't so nessesary because there aren't many tex files in those archives. Maybe later.

168

FF8 Tools / [PSX/PC] TEX Converter - Omega (1.3) / Archive Commander (2004-08-12)

« on: 2004-08-13 06:58:29 »

Hello guys, it's been a while when I've been here.

I didn't have much time to program in past months, but lately it changed. And I wrote something.

First one is next release of my FF8: Archive Commander (a.k.a FF8AC). This release can extract single/many/all files from game archives, replace single and now replace many/all files in archive. You can choose either to (un)compress files you extract/replace or not. It's been heavily tested and it's doing it good. Please write some feedback, so I can make it even better.

Second one is brand new program I called Omega: a TEX file converter. It can convert any 8-bit (I didn't even try to handle 16-bit files because some programs can do it, e.g. Texture Beast) FF8 TEX file to BMP, while you can choose palette (if TEX file has more than one). This one requires only TEX file. Finally, it can convert BMP file to TEX, preserving transparencies and palettes, and it's using original TEX file and modified BMP file. Note that BMP file structure must be exactly as it was when program extracted it. Photoshop is bad, Paint is good . Again, please send me some feedback and tell what do you think about it.

Disclamer: Even so I tested theese programs heavily, I *DO NOT* guarantee that they will work *PERFECTLY*, so make backups of everything you change!

Links: in the wiki.

169

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Leviathan

« on: 2004-03-31 09:55:46 »

Wow, nice work Mirex!

170

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Leviathan

« on: 2004-03-26 11:59:31 »

Here's Dyne. He has no eyes .

171

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Grandia 2 dialog files

« on: 2004-03-25 18:16:13 »

Hello folks.
I bet you've heard about Grandia 2. I'm interested to hack dialog files of this game. Here's what I know:
- Dialogs are stored in .afs files, which look to me like some sort of archives. They're always beginning with 12 bytes:

Code: [Select]

41 46 53 00 09 00 00 00 00 08 00 00   AFS      
- Example of this afs file: download
- In this archive you can find files that contain texts. However, the text looks compressed by some alghoritm. Here is example of that file.
- I don't know how you see it, but to me, it looks like some LZ** alghoritm (like in FF7 / FF8 field files, except here text isn't encoded, only compressed).

Anybody have an idea how to hack it ? Or know some programs / people who do ?

172

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy 8 Translating

« on: 2004-02-13 16:04:30 »

Still, Sapphire has some bugs. Meaning... some locations isn't very translation-friendly. This goes to parts of Shinra HQ (there are some pointers that point some garbage) and some others. Still, many (near all) locations can be translated.

173

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy 8 Translating

« on: 2004-02-13 06:39:47 »

Hoo... hooo...
It was a long time I've been here . Altrough, I didn't make new releases of my programs - no time . BUT I have my FF7 programs in english if you still want them. You can find them here:
http://mav.pix.pl/personal/sapphire.zip
http://mav.pix.pl/personal/emerald.zip

174

General Discussion / Unused FF7 text...

« on: 2003-12-04 13:23:55 »

There IS some of unused text in the game. For example in ancnt3 or 4, in scene when Cloud is attacking Aeris, there's a dialog:

[Aeris]
Stay back!

And it ISN'T in game. I'm pretty sure that there are some other dialogs that aren't used (when I checked dialog files with my editor, there was some of them).

175

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy 8 Translating

« on: 2003-12-03 19:54:53 »

Oh men, don't tell me that FF8 is using DTE... It'll be some work to find all the characters... Does someone have a list with that characters ?