[FFX] Skill editor - Ronso (v0.3.1.0)

[Fayrra]

I have some new ideas for a more in-depth kind of editor actually (as well as have managed to figure out a working way to alter enemy data of the Steam version at load time), just not the time needed to realize it. Hopefully one day...

Oh god please yes. This is all I've ever wanted. Though more in depth skill editing is amazing too. As sad as it is, every 6 months to a year or so (without logging in) I've hopelessly checked this thread and the steam FFX-HD board just in case someone released such an editor. I shall continue to wait, forever if need be.

That being said, I'm always up for learning how to "manually" edit the enemies, if you happen to be willing to share. There are already people who know how to do that, but they tend to not be willing to share or baby the other person enough if they don't have  good enough knowledge, which is understandable. They worked hard on accruing that knowledge. They don't want someone just waltzing in after they made their mod saying "hey, cool mod, I'll play it but, can I have ALL the knowledge on how to do that? Thnkz." Plus also the sheer time it probably takes to explain and teach it all.

I'm not being spiteful, simply telling the truth! =^p Perhaps I just don't know who to ask.

Either way, thank you for making the skill editor period. I was actually just thinking the other day how lucky it is that this editor even exists (along with FFXed/Farplane) and that it works for the pc version. It works pretty well considering the "no guarantees" policy you initially posted for the pc version.

I'll admit I got ready for disappointment when I saw this thread bumped, but you actually responded! If there's anything I can do to help at all (I realize you're not actually developing it right now, but if you ever do start fully to realize it), I'll do it. My knowledge is really limited though. Like, baby-tier limited. So I'd probably only be able to do something with very specific instructions that anyone could do, but maybe no one wants to because it takes time (like testing values, maybe?). I dunno, I'd do anything (even make the program, if anyone is willing to fully teach me). I just really, really want something like this to happen, man. For seriously. Badly.

But you have a life, so like you said, hopefully someday.

Also thanks to Ansem for necro-ing! =^d <3

[Husbjörn]

Oh god please yes. This is all I've ever wanted. Though more in depth skill editing is amazing too. As sad as it is, every 6 months to a year or so (without logging in) I've hopelessly checked this thread and the steam FFX-HD board just in case someone released such an editor. I shall continue to wait, forever if need be.

Ouf, why thank you for your keen interest! ^^`

It's mainly just about thinking outside the box with what I have in mind. That said, I'd like to put it on my resume / list of good deeds someday so I'd prefer to not give up my idea to someone else at this point in time.

If there's anything I can do to help at all (I realize you're not actually developing it right now, but if you ever do start fully to realize it), I'll do it.

There is some pretty repetitious manual data collection that would need to be done at some point if you're truly that passionate about it.
I'd have to sit down and make sure that things check out before setting you up with that if so though, so that it doesn't turn out that it all has to be done over again further down the road because some pieces were missing.

Either way, thank you for making the skill editor period.

You're very welcome; I'm glad to hear there are people out there who enjoy it.

[Fayrra]

Ouf, why thank you for your keen interest! ^^`

It's mainly just about thinking outside the box with what I have in mind. That said, I'd like to put it on my resume / list of good deeds someday so I'd prefer to not give up my idea to someone else at this point in time.
There is some pretty repetitious manual data collection that would need to be done at some point if you're truly that passionate about it.

Completely understandable. And of course!  My only concern is simply my lack of knowledge regarding programming and all that stuff, so I wouldn't want to try to help and then mess things up, etc. But if you think it's something I could help with then I'd love to!

I'd have to sit down and make sure that things check out before setting you up with that if so though, so that it doesn't turn out that it all has to be done over again further down the road because some pieces were missing.
You're very welcome; I'm glad to hear there are people out there who enjoy it.

Sounds good, whenever you get to it/are ready.

I think it's mainly people who have played them game to near death/done a bunch of challenge runs who want it the most, though I could be wrong. Being able to edit and mod the game to change the enemies and skills by that point just increases the replay value. The core gameplay is really well crafted and done, so there's a lot of good stuff to work with. It's just by a certain point you end up wanting to change things, balance things this way or that to your own liking, etc.

The best case scenario of course would be to be able to edit enemy AI indepth, as well as change the properties of abilities/auto-abilities to really make some amazing, strategic gameplay scenarios/fights/balances. But that's a dream world/fantasy thing. Editing skill data and basic enemy data is still great and allows a lot of personal customization for replays.

[brucy]

I have some new ideas for a more in-depth kind of editor actually (as well as have managed to figure out a working way to alter enemy data of the Steam version at load time), just not the time needed to realize it. Hopefully one day...

please make a permanent patchee\modding program like hades workshop that trilititi created for final fantasy 9

[Dark_Ansem]

please make a permanent patchee\modding program like hades workshop that trilititi created for final fantasy 9

What's this again?

[brucy]

trilititi created hades workshop , a program that can permanently mod the steam version of final fantasy 9 , and i asked for a program that do the same with final fantasy 10 and why not even 10-2

[Dark_Ansem]

trilititi created hades workshop , a program that can permanently mod the steam version of final fantasy 9 , and i asked for a program that do the same with final fantasy 10 and why not even 10-2

Oh I missed that!
But is such a modification even possible?

[brucy]

don't make me mad , just because you don't like the mere idea it doesn't mean that it can't be done , it is possible , i already said that trilititi did the exact same thing for final fantasy 9 , so yeah of course it is possible even for final fantasy 10

[Dark_Ansem]

don't make me mad , just because you don't like the mere idea it doesn't mean that it can't be done , it is possible , i already said that trilititi did the exact same thing for final fantasy 9 , so yeah of course it is possible even for final fantasy 10

First of all, I love the idea. I won't give you the reply you deserve because of useful info.
Secondly, the fact that it was done for FF9 doesn't mean it's possible for FFX - different file structure, yes?

[brucy]

yes different structure but clearly is possible , it was done with games that are even more complex so yeah is possible

[Tirlititi]

The fact that it can be done doesn't mean that it would be easy. It can be way harder to do it for FFX because, indeed, of different data structures.

However, Husbjörn said that he plans to do something similar if he has time:

I have some new ideas for a more in-depth kind of editor actually (as well as have managed to figure out a working way to alter enemy data of the Steam version at load time), just not the time needed to realize it. Hopefully one day...

To me, that looks the closest you can get to a game patcher that actually uses RAM modifications (and it would be goddamn useful). It's not the same kind of tools normally.

Please, let your respect for the modder take the shape of patience

[brucy]

The fact that it can be done doesn't mean that it would be easy. It can be way harder to do it for FFX because, indeed, of different data structures.

However, Husbjörn said that he plans to do something similar if he has time:To me, that looks the closest you can get to a game patcher that actually uses RAM modifications (and it would be goddamn useful). It's not the same kind of tools normally.

Please, let your respect for the modder take the shape of patience

i am not in hurry at all infact i really just forgot about this game , and i can imagine that it isn't easy , but my point infact was about how it is possible

[Husbjörn]

I put together a small (or perhaps rather quite lengthy...) proof of concept video of modified enemies here.
All fiends in that battle have had some of their stats altered, the Yellow Element has an entirely new, home-made AI of sorts (as well as have been made immune to Silence, because that would be way too simple) 

[Dark_Ansem]

I put together a small (or perhaps rather quite lengthy...) proof of concept video of modified enemies here.
All fiends in that battle have had some of their stats altered, the Yellow Element has an entirely new, home-made AI of sorts (as well as have been made immune to Silence, because that would be way too simple) 

I'm watching the video now, seeing that thing cast Thundaja threw me off balance!

[Fayrra]

I put together a small (or perhaps rather quite lengthy...) proof of concept video of modified enemies here.
All fiends in that battle have had some of their stats altered, the Yellow Element has an entirely new, home-made AI of sorts (as well as have been made immune to Silence, because that would be way too simple) 

This is awesome. <3

My favorite thing was definitely the max health doubling, for sure. I'm not wrong in thinking that there's no other enemy that does something like that, right? Or can one of the Monster Arena creations do that? Either way, pretty cool stuff. Actually I loved the dynamics of how every ability/action you gave the Yellow Element played off the concept of doubling its max HP regarding its Thunder spells. I figured there were some counter dynamics to Thundaja when I was watching the video, haha. I like how you changed/created Thundaja, too, in general.

I always wanted to change Thundaja to being a thunder-element, at least. Though yeah, it would be easy to just have Thunder Proof armor and no-sell the attack. Anything that is thunder based should be a thunder attack in my mind, though. I suppose it is a bit like Flare being non-elemental despite clearly being somewhat fire-based (though I suppose its strength is supposed to be more from of the force of an explosion. You know what, it'd be cool if having Fire-proof only nullified some of the damage from Flare, but not all of it- like being immune to the fire/heat from a nuke, but not the force of the explosion).

Also, I'm definitely subscribing just in case you post more but forget to post here, =^p

[Dark_Ansem]

Any news on this?

[fuzzymillipede]

Hello! I'm fuzzymillipede, another FFX modder of sorts. This is awesome, excellent work Husbjörn! I remember I used to modify skills waaaay back in the day using Codebreaker on PS2, and it seems that at some point in the past 10 years, the website that hosted all of those codes lost its data. I thought that kind of modification was a thing of the past, until I saw this editor!

I'm wondering if you have considered (or already implemented) an import/export system, where all the edits in your editor can be imported from or exported to a text file. This way, people could create and distribute "mods" where the difficulty of the game is changed via buffing or nerfing skills (or enemy stats / AI if you implement it). pbirdman created one such mod but it IIRC it was for PS2 / PCSX2 and it required you to run some sort of patch on the FFX disc ISO image. If this could be done in your editor, it would not require any modification or distribution of game files which would be convenient. The only drawback I can think of is if your editor would have scaling issues when applying a large amount of edits at once--then maybe this type of in-memory patch would not work well. If you think this is a good idea, I might be able to help you with some of the programming (yes, I'm a professional software engineer).

I remember pbirdman figured out how to modify enemy stats and AI a really long time ago. Glad to see someone else is digging into it.

[Fayrra]

Hello! I'm fuzzymillipede, another FFX modder of sorts. This is awesome, excellent work Husbjörn! I remember I used to modify skills waaaay back in the day using Codebreaker on PS2, and it seems that at some point in the past 10 years, the website that hosted all of those codes lost its data. I thought that kind of modification was a thing of the past, until I saw this editor!

Yoooo. This is awesome. FFXED has been my the love of my life for a little while now, even with needing to edit out the junk code, so it's awesome to meet the legend himself! I got into modding FFX only 3 years ago, so I was relatively late to the party and you had already sort of peaced-out from what I could tell. Awesome to see you return! I was going to thank you in the steam thread, but this will do as well. Thank you for updating the editor for compatibility with FFX HD. <3 <3 <3

Really cool to see you still taking an interest.

Also I remember watching those old videos of yours on Youtube and wondering how it was you were using FFXED to do some of those things. That explains a bit, but also some of it was just me being silly and not paying enough attention like you being able to use skills through items, like Eraser, etc. Which I found out about eventually.

[Husbjörn]

Thanks for the appreciation, and sorry for my tardiness in replying.

My favorite thing was definitely the max health doubling, for sure. I'm not wrong in thinking that there's no other enemy that does something like that, right?

Not as far as I'm aware no 

It would probably be possible to either make the <Element>-proof effects only account for say 75% of the total damage dealt, though a nicer thing would be to make it so that certain spells can override elemental resistances in part. I can think of at least one way to accomplish this, though it would be a bit prohibitively involved. A better way may be to have a per-skill modifier that is applied to the elemental resistance value during damage calculations.

Any news on this?

Not really no, as said it's still just a proof of concept and my free time is sadly limited
I think I know the general direction I would like to take things in though.

Hello! I'm fuzzymillipede, another FFX modder of sorts. This is awesome, excellent work Husbjörn!

Oh hello, that's really cool to hear from you! I remember playing around with your memory card item buffer overflow glitch back on my PS2 back in the good old days (as well as the other things tweakable by FFXED), thanks a lot for making the tools and information that you did available

I'm wondering if you have considered (or already implemented) an import/export system, where all the edits in your editor can be imported from or exported to a text file.

This is already sort of supported. You can right-click on a skill in the list to copy its data, whereafter you can either paste it over another skill to use as a base or compare different data values between a copied and a selected skill.
You can also export/import individual skills, as well as save/load the entire skill + string table. The saved files can of course be shared and imported by others.
There's no issue with hot-patching the game (talking about the Steam version now only of course); the skill table is in fact pretty small in memory. The same thing would go for fiend data (which uses a different approach alltogether but I'm imagining asynchronous transfers should be perfectly achievable if you want to update / change things at runtime). And indeed, no physical game file modification will be necessary.

I really appreciate your offer to help out with this project. Again I'm rather swamped these days but once my schedule clears up perhaps I could shoot you a message? If you're not commonly around here perhaps you could PM me an e-mail address?
It was nice to hear from you regardless!

[Dark_Ansem]

Alas, after 2 years, guess this is going nowhere.

[Lyrithus]

Surely there is someone, (Pbirdman, Fuzzy), that could make use of the tools memory mining ability, as well as perhaps cheat engine, to figure out corresponding Game Data files that store said information? if we can data mine the actual game files, and compile/edit/translate THOSE, that would be the god key to modding the game, period.

*EDIT* Using the VBFbrowser tool, the files directories that contain all battle mechanics files can be unpacked and extracted, as well as injected. Here are some screenshots:


^^ Seems to contain a lot of animation and texture data, but also text data regarding various battle data strings

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________



^^ Contains meta data for battle mechanics regarding enemy abilities, stats, AI, and action animations/VFX. It also contains data for npcs outside of battle it looks like.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________



^^ What appears to be the battle data regarding an enemy monster (fiend), whatever "m001" correlates too, I do not know yet. But surely, with this, and tools like Ronso and Cheat Engine, we can determine which hex values of active memory belong to which parent data files? Then all we need is to convert tools like Ronso and FFXED that, instead of reading RAM values, can read/write to those data files, correct?

[Husbjörn]

Alas, after 2 years, guess this is going nowhere.

Sorry for the late reply. To summarize, Ronso is probably not going anywhere further no, however I have (slowly, whenever I have some spare time to spend on it) made some further reverse engineering of the Steam version of the game and I have a pretty concrete idea of a kind of modding suite I'd like to make from it. I don't want to draw any undue attention to it until I'm 100% sure I can deliver on it (both in terms of stable functionality and actually being able to get it fully put together and released) though.
But yeah, I still have my interest in FFX and am at least intending to make something of it.

@Lyrithus: Interesting finds!
If it can be repacked without the need for any (unknown) encryption that should definitely be a possibility. Keep in mind that the data on disk and in memory may not necessarily be laid out in the same order however. Personally I think that direct memory access is better for trying out / experimenting with things. It can also offer greater capabilities as you don't necessarily have to keep within the limits of the game's expected data (ie. maybe enemy AI only has 16Kb of instruction memory alloted to it, modifying stat growth for character A may also affect character B and so on). But once you have a concrete idea of what you want to do (and assuming it is possible within the game's confines), then making a persistent file-based mod would of course have its clear advantages.

[Dark_Ansem]

Sorry for the late reply. To summarize, Ronso is probably not going anywhere further no, however I have (slowly, whenever I have some spare time to spend on it) made some further reverse engineering of the Steam version of the game and I have a pretty concrete idea of a kind of modding suite I'd like to make from it. I don't want to draw any undue attention to it until I'm 100% sure I can deliver on it (both in terms of stable functionality and actually being able to get it fully put together and released) though.
But yeah, I still have my interest in FFX and am at least intending to make something of it.

@Lyrithus: Interesting finds!
If it can be repacked without the need for any (unknown) encryption that should definitely be a possibility. Keep in mind that the data on disk and in memory may not necessarily be laid out in the same order however. Personally I think that direct memory access is better for trying out / experimenting with things. It can also offer greater capabilities as you don't necessarily have to keep within the limits of the game's expected data (ie. maybe enemy AI only has 16Kb of instruction memory alloted to it, modifying stat growth for character A may also affect character B and so on). But once you have a concrete idea of what you want to do (and assuming it is possible within the game's confines), then making a persistent file-based mod would of course have its clear advantages.

Great news!

[Rospark]

Hey there, does anybody still have ronso? The links are dead and I cant seem to download anywhere else.

[orichalcon]

Hey there, does anybody still have ronso? The links are dead and I cant seem to download anywhere else.

the link from the first post actually isn't dead - i just downloaded it, but you may have to right click on the link, copy it, then paste in a new tab/window

these forums have been doing that for awhile, ever since the switch to https i think - and unfortunately there's not much of a maintenance crew here to fix things either