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Messages - VanishedOne

Pages: [1] 2
1
[Hopefully worthwhile enough to bump the thread...]
Is that a building on top of the TRAP.MIM hill? (It's too small for me to be sure...) Fort Condor, maybe...? There is an unused CONVIL_3 (8KB BSX in original FF7j but no functional DAT or, I think, MIM).

I believe you, maybe I'm just not looking at it properly, but it looks to me like an aerial view of some cliffs, which throws me off.

That reminds me of FALLP: it has a MIM in all (PSX) versions and a functional DAT in the original FF7j, but I don't think it's used anywhere, although it seems to be a still from the parachute FMV. Enter the room in FF7j-original and you get this:



(You can just make out Cloud next to the yellow thing, for scale.) Maybe Square was once toying with extra overhead and zoomed-out views for some reason.

For some weeks, I dig Final Fantasy VII jp in search of novelty.

It might be worth looking at XMVTES; it has a working DAT in the original FF7j only, but if you enter it as a room you get what looks like a scene (vaguely Jenova-Synthesis-location-esque) with a messed-up palette:



I can't remember whether anything was ever found in DUMMY, either. (It looks as though it should load in FF7j... assuming it has an ID.)

2
General Discussion / Re: Honey Bee Inn beta version video
« on: 2010-01-31 13:22:06 »
7mimic can, but I suspect (correct me if I'm wrong) that its map list is hard-coded.

I can confirm that there are two more unused HBI rooms, but I'm still trying to get Cloud unstuck from the scenery in them. I don't suppose anyone has a walk-through-walls code for FF7j-original...?

EDIT: Oh, I forgot: of the maps that had 2KB DAT files in International, the following are regular DATS and have dumpable text in this version:

BLACKBGA
FALLP (but it's probably just duplicated Shinra Building dialogue)
ONNA_1
ONNA_3
ONNA_6
WHITEBG1
WHITEBG2

I've sent GlitterBerri some rough text dumps from these; I don't know how much of the contents will turn out to be new, given how much duplication there is in this game's dialogue data.

EDIT: Okay, now with evidence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aG_6b2B8QY

3
General Discussion / Re: Honey Bee Inn beta version video
« on: 2010-01-29 23:32:34 »
There were loads of changes to the HBI, certainly. Edit: Maybe this would account for onna_1/_3/_6.

Edit2: yes, looks likely. I managed to get access to a non-International FF7j today: this map is genuine, and some of the 2KB files aren't 2KB in this version of the game...

4
Uh-huh. I just thought I'd mention it anyway to save anyone else looking at the demo files the trouble of rediscovering it.

5
That said, if you look at the 2KB FALLP in 7mimic, it does show a still from the parachute scene...

Which is interesting because that seems to be one of the few file groups that the DAT file is 2KByte in size, but the MIM is bigger, and is LZS-compressed. In fact, these kind of file groups in the DAT files each have a small value as the first dword, then follows with alternating values of non-zero and zero valued dwords, or with a bit more structure with what looks like actual 8-byte tile data at the end, uncompressed.
If they are not used in the game there is a chance they were used during development and written out in an earlier version of the file format.

If you want to investigate possible changing versions of the DAT format, it might be worth looking at the PSX demos made during development. The early demo bundled with Tobal No.1 doesn't even have DAT and BSX files; it has ATE, BSC, CA, ID and MAP files instead. (It still has MIM; I haven't made sure that's the same MIM format as the final game's. I know some aspects of the character encoding are different: kana are mostly the same, but kanji have different codes from the final game's; I can't remember whether the English version's encoding differs much. I've heard it's a similar story with text in the Chrono Trigger Prerelease, so maybe it's a Square habit.)

6
On his blog, VanishedOne regarded those tiny files as unused.

Well, it's not as though I've made certain the game never reads them; but based on the filenames, the fact that at least one map ID seems to have no corresponding map in the final version (the unused 'From pinball' scene crashes because the game tries to jump to a map that won't load), and the uniform file sizes (compare SaGa Frontier, which has loads of dummy map files that are just wavy lines and ASCII copyright notices), it looks like the likely explanation, with the possible exception of the WM#s.

That said, if you look at the 2KB FALLP in 7mimic, it does show a still from the parachute scene...

7
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Saga Frontier
« on: 2009-08-07 20:59:41 »
Continuing from t'other thread--

Okay... I haven't listed my notes on field script opcodes (PM me if you need them) because they're just so full of things that need further checking, and with all the notes on which bits those are, they're rather resistant to editing into ready legibility.

Note: these notes are incomplete and in many cases not thoroughly checked; they may omit details on things like headers, other IMG subsections, etc.  where I haven't got around to making notes on those.

* TEX files: 4-byte header, followed by 16x16 tile data, 8bpp. (Palettes are in the corresponding IMG files.) Header generally begins 0x08, 0x40; then the other 2 bytes are (length of file after header in bytes/0x10).


* IMG files: header consists of 10 four-byte offsets to sections.

Section 0 - seems to give frame attributes for background animations: I was able to manipulate one of the neon signs in Koorong here (where the animation is basically a palette variation). (Generally 0x808080 seems to be a telltale sign of colour tinting to be applied to a base palette; in sect. 9 it definitely is.) I never got around to exploring these very well, but the second byte after the 808080 seems to be duration, since it affects anim. speed.

Section 1 - NPC attributes? This and the next section I've looked at only briefly. 0x808080 turns up again in the attribute data; where those are bytes 1-3 of an NPC's attribs., the 10th is clipping (00 = solid, FF = walk-through), and the 12th and 13th are the number of the field script routine to execute when the NPC is interacted with.

Section 2 - unknown. Also seems to affect NPC reactions.

Section 3 - attributes for map transitions. Presumably SGF has an involved way of doing these because of the extra complexity the inter-region interstitials cause. There's a possible section header that generally seems to be 0x00000000A0007800 (no idea), then transition details as follows:

VV WW MMMM XXXX YYYY [Each letter = 1 hex digit, i.e. a letter pair = 1 byte.]

V - unknown; it can affect visual rendering, but I don't know just what it does.
W - music to play on target map; FF is 'keep playing what was already playing'.
M - target map ID.
X,Y - entry co-ords. (Incidentally, the origin is the bottom-left.)

Section 4 - field script: basically SHIFT_JIS with the ASCII subset replaced by opcodes, so there's no separate text table. There's a section-header with 16-bit pointers to the script routines. (Its first 2 bytes are the length of the rest of the header.)

Section 5 - sound, judging by the AKAO strings.

Section 6 - appears to be NPC sprite data, but I never got around to extracting any; I haven't examined this section much.

Section 7 - collision data. FF = wall, 00 I think = open space; I don't know about the other numbers.

Section 8 - unknown

Section 9 - starts with a 12(?)-byte section header, 0x0C (header length?) followed by 16-bit relative offsets to subsections (?), ending with a 32-bit relative offset for the end of the sections and hence of the file.

In the first subsection (after what seems to be a set of general map attributes) are attributes for tilemap objects, in lists as follows (the numbers are numbers of bytes used):

1 Red tint
1 Green tint
1 Blue tint
1 Palette ID
2 X-position, offset from default position.
2 -Y-position, offset from default position.
2 +Y-position, offset from default position.
2 Unknown
1 Unknown.
1 Distortion in X axis (stretching)
1 Unknown
1 Flying height: changing this lets the object move vertically above its normal position (not below).
1 Ripple (01 gives a weird floating animation (SFX, not a sprite anim routine). Higher numbers just made the object I tested with vanish.)
1 Unknown. (Visibility? Anything other than 00 made the test object vanish.)

Since objects are normally at 'normal' brightness, the RGB bytes tend to appear as that telltale 0x808080.

EDIT: I had another look at the tile arrangements in the 2nd subsection.
????????XXXXYYYYAAAABBBB, followed by tile IDs as UINT16s, in columns, left to right (length (A/0x10) * (B/0x10) * 2)
X - X-position, absolute. [Origin seems to be top-left for these.]
Y - Y-pos.
A - Width in pixels
B - height in pixels

The palette subsection seems to have a 6-byte header: it usually starts 0x00, 0x01, and then the third byte is the number of palettes. Palettes are like the ones for sprites, but 512 bytes (256 colours) long.


* MESG*.BIN files: field script to be accessible anywhere, 1 file per protagonist. Mostly taken up by the debug menu; also generic lines for obtaining items, etc.

* MCHAR8.BIN - more menu PC sprites, I think for the memory card menu.

* TITLE.OUT and EMU_TITL.OUT feature the SQUARESOFT logo image from boot-up--view at 8bpp linear, 2-dimensional in TM.

* I spent ages puzzling over the title screen background in TITLE.RL, trying to work out why there were extra bytes strewn through it, only to discover... that there's a version without them in TITLE.ARC. (Real colour lines 320px long, 16bpp ARGB.) Title screen sprites are in HERO.ARC.

8
General Discussion / Re: Saga Frontier
« on: 2009-08-07 20:53:28 »
{Removed because I realised it would be better suited to Tech-Related.}

9
General Discussion / Re: Saga Frontier
« on: 2009-08-01 13:40:00 »
Tifa and Cait's reels i believe were in there as well

In SaGa Frontier?

10
General Discussion / Re: Saga Frontier
« on: 2009-08-01 13:26:08 »
I HAVE discerned the locations of sprites

Including the NPC ones in the IMG files? (I look over your Agora and GameFAQs threads occasionally, but I don't keep very much up to date with what you're doing.) You don't mention PEP files on your other thread, but they're similar to CHR**.BINs, only with extra sections (I don't know what those do: animation data, maybe?); I think the CHR**.BINs are menu graphics, the .PEPs are regular field PC sprites.

Quote
a way to extract backgrounds (field and in-battle)

I haven't looked at the battle system, but regarding field backgrounds: I know the tile format and where the palettes are in IMGs, and I partly understand the way objects are displayed, the collision map and the field script. But only partly, and I don't yet know how tiles and palettes get assigned to objects. I can try to get around to editing my notes into something other-human-readable, given some time; I'm probably too often too busy to be a 'collaborator' per se.

If you're interested in the sound system, ask people here about Mr. Akao's approach to sound coding: SGF IMG files have AKAO strings, which indicates that the sound system probably works similarly to FFVII's. Not that I've actually checked.

11
With respect to automation I had in mind identifying the start and end points of the dialogue section of the DAT, separating out blocks by line break and 0xFF terminator, etc.--i.e. having in mind the state of a raw text dump, which is currently the only way of getting the text for the Japanese version. With the English version, yes, you have nicer tools already.

12
Sorry, I meant a more organized version specifically.

and from Tsetra's response it sounds as though referencing the Japanese version isn't considered necessary anyway.

Not necessarily. There are still some things of interest. Mostly ideas that didn't translate over well into English (Tseng's "death" having been cited already), along with missing content that isn't present in the English versions. As I'm adding in notes where there is dummied content, this would be invaluable. We'll be using all of these things to consider the final script.

If Tsetra wants something that includes unused text markers (painful, even if I dig out all my notes on those), then you'll need a complete new dump (a full set of raw decompressed DATs from International), and someone is going to have to organise it... and that person would be well advised to look for methods of automating the process.

Missing content is dummied or blank in all versions; it's just that not all of it was translated, so the English version has more blanks (as well as, in the PC version, what look like relics of the original PSX translation, just to confuse everyone further). Using it to make contextual judgments, given that it was written and then discarded, might be considered 'hermeneutically interesting', but I'm not anxious to get sucked into that kind of debate.

13
Quote
How easy/difficult would this be? The Japanese and English versions would be necessary

I had most of a full answer typed out before I noticed who posted this query.

You already know how to get hold of text dumps--but as other people said, it's not nicely ordered at all; some dialogue is dupicated all over the place. Plus there are a lot of maps, and unless someone feels like adding Japanese support to FF7TV-3, working out where the dialogue section begins and ends in each FFVIIj file dump will stay manual; so while one could technically make a complete text dump of FFVIIj (thanks, indeed, to all the work you did on ff7datj.tbl), there would be some manual labour involved, and from Tsetra's response it sounds as though referencing the Japanese version isn't considered necessary anyway.

14
General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy in Philosophy
« on: 2008-05-27 16:37:44 »
I decided against it, based party on Irwin's reputation (see this review on Metapsychology Online); I'm pretty confident I could write e.g. an examination of inheritance, stewardship and authority in FFVII that would both have philosophical depth and say something about the game, but without any guarantee that I'd be given space to, I'd need at least to be told how large the honorarium would be. As it is, I don't want to divert time from other research work. (Plus my C.V. isn't all that impressive; I'm only in the first year of Ph.D. studies.)

15
I assumed the scream belonged to the nervous Shinra salaryman (in a red suit). I don't think either of the passengers in that carriage is female—in the final version, at any rate.

16
FF7 Tools / Loveless - a FF7 text editor [v.1 - 2.5]
« on: 2008-02-09 20:41:04 »
Looking at his site, it's not very encouraging.

17
We're now able to read the unused dialogue in the FFVII International field files which the English translators left blank; I'm indebted to GlitterBerri for doing most of the kanji identification as well as the translation. The piece below is from tin_3 (the carriage where the party jumps off the Midgar train); for anyone interested, results will be published under http://faceofthemoon.blogspot.com/search/label/Hot%20Blooded%20Detective%20Joe as and when they're done.

Quote
{Barret}{EOL}
「よ~しっ!!{EOL}
おめえら、よくやった!」{NewScreen}
「こっからも作戦通り{EOL}
行動しろ!」{END}

Barret:
Alright!!
You guys did well!
We'll keep up the revolution!

{Barret}{EOL}
「んっ~~!!」{NewScreen}
「おう!{EOL}
おめえら、休みがほしいか?」{END}

Barret:
Hmm...!!
Alright!
You guys want a vacation?

ウェッジ{EOL}
「ほ、ほしいっす!」{NewScreen}
「あっ・・・・・・。{EOL}
なんでもないっす・・・」{END}

Wedge:
Y-yes!
Aa.......
Nevermind...

{Barret}{EOL}
「おう!!{EOL}
おまえら、ちょっと聞いとけ!!」{NewScreen}
「このミッションが無事成功したらな。{EOL}
オレたちは身をひそませなきゃなんねえ」{END}

Barret:
Alright!!
Listen up, all of you!!
If we complete this mission safely and successfully,
we'll need to rest our bodies.

「おまえらを連れってってやるぜ!{END}

I'll bring you guys

「アバランチの生まれ故郷。{EOL}
星の命を守るものの聖地{EOL}
コスモキャニオンへな」{END}

to the birthplace of Avalanche!
The sacred land of those who protect the planet:
Cosmo Canyon.

アバランチの面々{EOL}
「ひゅ~!!」{END}

Avalanche Members:
Wow!!
Still not sure of this sound, this is just a guess.

ジェシー{EOL}
「温泉は?」{END}

Jessie:
Will there be hot springs?

{Barret}{EOL}
「あるかもしんねえな」{END}

Barret:
Probably!

ビッグス{EOL}
「おれ 、この服着てってもいいか?」{NewScreen}
「おれ、一度でいいから{EOL}
こんな格好してみたかったんだ」{END}

Biggs:
Is it OK if I wear these clothes?
I wanted to try this appearance out
just once.

{Barret}{EOL}
「おう!{EOL}
いいかもしんねえな」{END}

Barret:
Yeah!
It's probably OK.

ウェッジ{EOL}
「おいしいもの{EOL}
あるっすか?」{END}

Wedge:
Will there be
delicious food?

{Barret}{EOL}
「あるぞ~。{EOL}
うまい酒もだっ」{END}

Barret:
You betcha.
And excellent sake.

{Barret}{EOL}
「ふぅっ~」{NewScreen}
「見渡すかぎりのでっけえ空に{EOL}
満天の星だ。 {END}

Barret:
Sigh...
[In Cosmo Canyon] you can survey the planet's
limitless sky.

「遠くからチロチロと{EOL}
かがり火の音が聞こえてる。{END}

You can hear the crackling sound
of the bonfire from far away.

「そいつをさかなに{EOL}
チビチビやんのよ」{NewScreen}
「なあ、いいだろぅ?」{END}

And snack on fish
with your drink.
How does that sound?

ジェシー{EOL}
「ね、{Cloud}は? 」{END}

Jessie:
What about Cloud?

{Barret}{EOL}
「ああ・・・・・・{EOL}
あいつもいっしょだ」{END}

Barret:
Ah......
He can come too.

ビッグス{EOL}
「でも、報酬・・・・・・{EOL}
もう払えないんだろ?」{END

Biggs:
But the pay......
We can't pay him anymore, right?

{Barret}{EOL}
「よけいな心配すんじゃねえ!!」 {NewScreen}
「金が払えなきゃ{EOL}
首ねっこ、ふんづかまえて{EOL}
 ã¤ã‚Œã¦ãã‚ƒã„いんだ!」{END}

Barret:
Don't worry about such silly things!
We have to pay him.
He'll come with us even if we have to
drag him back by the scruff of his neck!

アバランチの面々{EOL}
「ふぅ~っ!! 」{END}

Avalanche Members:
Siiiigh!!

{Barret}{EOL}
「じゃな!{EOL}
あとしまつはたのんだっ!」{END}

Barret:
OK then!
It's settled!

18
Someone knows if exists a Japanese text table
of FFVII for using as a reference?


Meaning a .tbl? In progress; thankfully I got help from someone with proper kanji knowledge. I don't know when it'll be finished, though.

19
This is the 'look through a list of 1000+ kanji and find their Unicode forms' stage, so see what you think about that.

In an image from yesterday the {K}s are unknown kanji, and the map was picked to see whether 魔晄炉 and 神羅 came out right, since Mako Reactors and Shinra get mentioned a lot; most maps will have a lower proportion of readable kanji.

So e.g. here's a place (CARGOIN map) where there's some unused text and some of it was blank when I checked the PC version using Loveless:

Quote
32 - [What Cloud says during the Cargo outtake]
33 - [blank]
34 - Shut-off the switch in this position.
35 - We can escape from the train event...
Did it!!
4th failure
3rd failure
2nd failure
1st failure
Escaped

Here's what I'm currently able to view:

Quote
クラウド{EOL}
「まだできてないんだ・・・{EOL}
 ã‚¦ã‚ªã‚ªãƒ»ãƒ»ãƒ»!!」{END}

「とりあえず、チェックしとく?」{EOL}
 åˆ—車{K}{K}へ!!{EOL}
 {K}魔晄炉{K}{K}{K}{K}へ{EOL}
 ã¬ã‘ちゃう!{END}


「このまま、スイッチをお{K}りください」{END}

「列車イベントをぬけるのだが・・・・・・」 {EOL}
 å¤§{K}{K}!!{EOL}
 {K}{K}4{K}ç›®{EOL}
 {K}{K}3{K}ç›®{EOL}
 {K}{K}2{K}ç›®{EOL}
 {K}{K}1{K}ç›®{EOL}
 ã¬ã‘ちゃう!{END}

(Indentation not quite right.) It looks like a three-choice dialogue, maybe debug text, but as you can see there are still kanji missing.

20
Thanks for that; I have FFVII International, which has the pyramid version, so I assumed that version was common to all forms of the final game.

21
General Discussion / Misc. FFVII pre-release-related stuff
« on: 2007-12-11 18:25:03 »
A few things vaguely related to the game's development and pre-release demo phase. As far as I know this is new information, but please tell me gently if I'm wrong.

It turns out that the Deenglows' battle arena in http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HYkUiOMfWWE is from the PlayStation Underground demo, which has two (mostly disabled) debug rooms. I've no idea why the Deenglows were replaced along with the arena for the final game's version of Battle999. (EDIT: actually not demo-only; see Vehek's reply below.)

On some scans that were posted a while ago: GlitterBerri gave me a translation of the dialogue in the bottom-left:



Quote
クラウド「目標は北魔晄炉だ!ザコにはかまわず進め!」

Cloud: The North Mako Reactor is the target! These small fry won't make it tough to proceed!

She also translated the text in the image of a bar from the FFVII International bonus disc:



Quote
クラウド「勘違いするな。お前達アバランチにも興味はない。俺は今回の報酬をきっちりもらって次の職を探すさ。」

Cloud: Don't misunderstand. I have no interest in you Avalanche. As soon as I get my pay for this time, I'll look for my next mission.

Sounds familiar, huh? =)

I know Akari has looked at the field text encoding in both Japanese and English, but as far as I know the Japanese character mapping hasn't been worked out. I'm part-way through making a table file (with the aim of finding out what the unused field dialogue in the Japanese DAT files looks like, in the hope of uncovering clues about discarded ideas; the translators just blanked out some of it), and it's working so far; most of the kanji have yet to be added, though. Luckily, in the Japanese debug rooms Zangan provides a list of all the text characters, which is a veritable Rosetta Stone.

22
Alternatively use a cheat program like CEP with the emulator to enter the debug room with the usual Gameshark codes. (EDIT: No, it doesn't fully address the original question, but there was a reference to debug saves so I assumed there was interest in using the debug room.)

23
General Discussion / Re: FFVII (PSX)
« on: 2007-09-26 18:32:17 »
If what you want to do specifically is look at the field maps, I recommend 7mimic, downloadable from http://superacro.free.fr/FF7/Archives/RAR/ as 7mimic.rar.

24
General Discussion / Re: Anything to be Translated?
« on: 2007-09-09 18:29:37 »
GlitterBerri has provided translations of the FFVII International debug room screenshots: http://faceofthemoon.blogspot.com/2007/09/final-fantasy-vii-international-debug.html

25
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: FFVII Text.
« on: 2007-08-06 20:24:41 »
As noted on the linked page, you need to be at the right point in the game, or have used the 'reset flag' button; otherwise you'll get an empty room.

Besides the three known outtakes which can be accessed via the debug rooms, there's quite a lot of unused dialogue in the files; http://faceofthemoon.blogspot.com/2007/05/lost-text-of-final-fantasy-vii.html has a limited selection.

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