Messages

1

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / FF:Origins Doc

« on: 2003-08-10 12:23:11 »

Hey Guys,
well I figured I may as well post what findings I have so far
with ff:origins. If anyone sees anything that they think may
be glaring errors, or know why something would be stored in
a certain way, then please feel free to tell me.

Code: [Select]

FF: ORIGINS Monster Stats Document
By: TimeSlave

File: DATA.BIN
Monster Stats Chunks
Address Range: 0x3472800 - 0x36f2800
Number of Chunks: 128
size: 20480 (0x5000) bytes
sections:
header - 12 bytes
Monster IDs - 4*4= 16 bytes
Monster Image headers - 4*16= 64 bytes
Monster Stats - 4*26= 104 bytes
Mystery Section - 32 bytes
Image Palletes - 4*512= 2048 bytes
Image Data Section - 18204 bytes

Info: Each monster chunk can contain up to four monsters
Numerous entries can be found for the same monster
I believe this is due to the fact that you can play the
game through twice. However that would still not account
for the amount of entries. After I dump all of the monsters
contained in these chunks. I'll be able to see what the
hell is going on.

*************Header****************
12 bytes

byte 01 - M
byte 02 - S
bytes 03 - 12:
uh... no fucking clue


**********Monster IDs**************
4 bytes
4 monsters

byte 01 - Monster ID
byte 02 - Unknown
byte 03 - Unknown
byte 04 - Unknown

*******Monster Image Headers*******
16 bytes
4 monsters

byte 01 - Unknown
byte 02 - Unknown
byte 03 - Unknown
byte 04 - Unknown
byte 05 - scanline size in 16 bit words (low byte)
byte 06 - scanline size in 16 bit words (high byte)
byte 07 - number of scanlines (low byte)
byte 08 - number of scanlines (high byte)
byte 09 - blit x coor
byte 10 - blit y coor
byte 11 - blit width
byte 12 - blit height
byte 13 - Unknown
byte 14 - Unknown
byte 15 - Unknown
byte 16 - Unknown


*********Monster Stats*************
26 bytes:

byte 01 - Unknown
byte 02 - Unknown
byte 03 - Unknown
byte 04 - Unknown
byte 05 - HP Low
byte 06 - HP High
byte 07 - MP Low
byte 08 - MP High
byte 09 - Number of Hits
byte 10 - % Chance to Hit
byte 11 - HitPower
byte 12 - Level
byte 13 - Number of Blocks (Def Count)
byte 14 - Evade %
byte 15 - DefensePower
byte 16 - MDefPwr
byte 17 - MEvade %
byte 18 - Unknown (possibly Elemental Strength)
byte 19 - Unknown (99% sure it is weakness)
byte 20 - Unknown
byte 21 - Cowardice
byte 22 - Unknown
byte 23 - Unknown
byte 24 - Unknown
byte 25 - Unknown
byte 26 - Unknown


**********Mystery Section**********

32 bytes, no clue yet as to what they are


**********Image Palettes***********
4*512 bytes

colors stored in 16 bit format:
TRRR RRGG GGGB BBBB
T = Translucency
R = Red Saturation
G = Green Saturation
B = Blue Saturation

Room for a 256 color palette
However for the majority of entries
the image contained is a 4-bit paletted image
therefore only 16 colors are used in
each of the palette spaces.


********Image Data Section*********

18204 bytes

4 bit images - 256 x 140 image
      with 28 bytes left
      over

whether or not an 8-bit or 16-bit
image can be stored here is still
unknown

***********************************

2

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Reverse Engineering

« on: 2003-08-04 11:23:37 »

Thanks for the advice, I'm going to check out those tools.

By the way, I just made a pretty big breakthrough with the ff2 stuff I was working on so If anyone cares, I could post my findings.

It could be pseudo relevant to the ff7 work that goes on around here

3

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Reverse Engineering

« on: 2003-08-02 04:56:32 »

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on reverse engineering. I'm working on (as I'm sure a few of you have realized by now) reverse engineering data formats used in ff:origins and I seem to be running into problems left right and center.

Does anyone have any tools that they couldn't live without or just general tips for tackling a large file?

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated

thanks

4

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / psx file format docs

« on: 2003-07-30 22:54:56 »

I'm having a very hard time tracking down file format docs for the psx.

I've got TIMs down but there are a lot of psx formats that I can't find any information on.
if anyone knows where I can find technical documents on .SEQ .TMD and other PSX files, I'd really appreciate it.

also if anyone happens to have a few .SEQ files lying around. They'd work as well.

thanks

5

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy: Origins

« on: 2003-06-22 07:28:54 »

Ah, I found a few documents on it which cleared up most of my problems. As for an editor, I hadn't actually planned on making one, just ripping information from the file, but if I get good at this I might take a crack at it.

Incidentally, does anyone know where I can find some good documents on the playstation? i.e: compression, assembly, that sort of thing? I've noticed that a lot of the documents out there are rather crappy quality and finding well written ones is a difficult task.

6

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy: Origins

« on: 2003-06-22 06:18:56 »

One other thing, I've used different programs to extract .tim graphics from ff:origins, but none of them tell me where they found them, and I was wondering if anyone knew of a site that has documentation on the format. I've been examining a few of them but can't quite figure out all of the header.

I already understand the color format of playstation games, and I can figure out the palette and what not but there's still a lot about the file I don't understand.

thanks

7

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy: Origins

« on: 2003-05-25 02:29:05 »

I did some more looking and it looks like it's LZS compression that I'm dealing with. It doesn't look like it'll be hard to figure out. thanks though

8

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy: Origins

« on: 2003-05-22 22:40:09 »

I figured out the text codes for both of the games on my own but I mean, that's not really the problem.

So I guess ff1 just stores the text in it's own format.

Also I'm not worried about CRC checksums I'm not trying to change information, just rip information out of it.

Anyway, thanks for the reply

9

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy: Origins

« on: 2003-05-17 22:20:39 »

I was wondering if anyone had any information on the file formats used in final fantasy: origins.

The Files are divided into 4 folders:
FF1
FF2
M1
M2

the M1 & M2 folders contain the intro movies.
The FF1 directory contains a bunch of .PAK .GRP and .DAT files
The FF2 directory just has one .BIN file

What I'm confused about is that I figured out the text format from the game saves, i.e: what hex digits correspond to what text characters, and made a .tbl file. However when I view the text in some of the files it comes out a little garbled.

for example I found this in one of the FF1 '.PAK' files:
Agile r{FF}ogue witeh{FE}nimb{40}{02}feingers

the {} braketed text are hex values that dont correspond to text characters. I'm wondering why I'm finding these wierd garbled sections of text.

Are these garbled phrases evidence that the file is compressed? Or do psx games just store text in a wierd way?

Any advice would be appreciated, and if anyone knows where I could go to find more information on this subject, I'd be really grateful

10

Troubleshooting / Background viewer

« on: 2002-11-05 15:00:58 »

I realize that they're all based off of Qhimm's code. But unfortunately I haven't been able to find any other programs to extract the backgrounds, if anyone knows of one then I'd really appreciate a heads up.

As far as the problem with the pictures goes, other than the maps that totally don't work, the black pixels seem (to an uninformed non-professional programmer) like a palette problem. i.e: one color doesn't get read and is automatically assumed to be black.

I'm not really sure, I'm not a skilled programmer so I doubt I could really troubleshoot any code problems from Quimm's source.

11

Troubleshooting / Background viewer

« on: 2002-11-04 04:15:38 »

It's not that I don't know how to use those tools, it's just that they don't seem to properly decode the images. Most of them have a lot of random black pixels and the ancient forest backgrounds don't display properly at all.

12

Troubleshooting / Background viewer

« on: 2002-10-02 17:25:30 »

I was wondering if there was going to be an update anytime soon to the background viewers for ff7 pc (i.e: Gast, or lgptools). Just wondering because I have a need to extract the backgrounds.