Soly's Stash

Bit of a specific question, but I was wondering if anyone has ever discovered how to edit so called "super specials?" Stuff that doesn't show up in ItemPMT, such as the Berdysh and TSJ's PB special.
 
Yes, you debug the game while it's running to find the relevant functions, then disassemble the binary to look at how the functions work so you can modify them.
 
Hm, that's outside the scope of my ability, unless there are very easy tools to debug and dissasemble.

Even so, I'm probably not skilled enough to know where to look.

Thank you!
 
Aleron Ives said:
Yes, you debug the game while it's running to find the relevant functions, then disassemble the binary to look at how the functions work so you can modify them.
Click to expand...
Something that may be easier - can I edit the ItemPMT files to un-reduce special activations on weapons with reduced specials?
 
I'm enjoying tinkering with the GC version of the ItmePMT Editor, but I've run into a bit of a problem.
Even if I make no changed (literally just open it up in the editor and immediately hit save,) the resulting file is always larger than the original. Because of this, I won't be able to actually test anything out without completely rebuilding the image, which might not be a problem if I wasn't using Devolution... Not sure I can trust Dolphin to run reliably on my current hardware.

The original is 15.3 KB (15673 bytes) and everything I've put through the editor comes out as 15.7 KB (16143 bytes)
 
Aurelli said:
The original is 15.3 KB (15673 bytes) and everything I've put through the editor comes out as 15.7 KB (16143 bytes)
Click to expand...
Nothing can be done about that, I imagine. The PRS compression software or algorithm isn't exactly like SEGA's. So, most likely you'll just have to deal with it.
 
That's what I was afraid of. Oh well, I'll attempt Dolphin or risk destroying my rip if I'm going to be stubborn enough about it.
Worst case scenario is I'd have to use a backup rip and just re-apply the previous patches. Thanks for the input!
 
Yeah, not much I can do about it...
Maybe you can decompress the file and compress with another PRS tool that can give you the result you need.
 
Soly said:
Yeah, not much I can do about it...
Maybe you can decompress the file and compress with another PRS tool that can give you the result you need.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I've considered that, and I'm going to look into that... After I fix what I've already broken! :D
 
It's impossible to modify any compressed file and still use the ISO with Devolution, because you'll violate the copy protection check. You can only modify your ISO if all files remain the exact same size as before. You must use Dolphin or a real GameCube with homebrew or a modchip in order to modify ItemPMT.prs and other compressed files, such as the text files.
 
Yeah, that's what I figured... Just gives me another reason to go deeper.
Going to try doing things with Dolphin and/or original Gamecube homebrew at some point anyway.
 
I updated my addons recently and I noticed the following:
  • Monster Reader's target reader used to have a timer for Jellen/Zalure.
  • When targeting Duuvik, it would show an HP value for target reader.
Could these be added back?
 
This probably should go into the addons topic and not here but I will look into the changes of the addon and see why were those removed or why they do not appear.
 
Hey Soly, I am currently tinkering with the xbox version of the game. The files are pretty close to that of GC, so most of your programs work. I was tinkering with the RT and PT editors, however I can't edit the DAR in the RT editor. I was curious if this would be some sort of version crossover issue?

I also noticed that an error is thrown when opening the files in the PMT editor. I caught the exception and in my debugger it looks like during some translation/decompilation it doesn't stop. It tries to pull bytes from outside the bounds of the file. But without knowing the code behind the program I could only speculate. If you are interested I could provide you files/etc? If you have any ideas on things I could change on my end please let me know! (I attached the main thrown error)

The Xbox version of the game poses some challenges of its own. The Xbox stores a cached version of certain files (.nj/.gsl/.rel) in a separate drive. It looks like those files are referenced before the ones in the actual game directory (CD/Xbe(Image)). It is an odd system that I haven't seen on any other system. Every time I make a change I have to delete all cached files.

Edit: I was also curios as to what the "area" section of the RT program was for?
 

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The problem is that the GC version is big endian, while the Xbox version is little endian. Using the GC tools will read pointers incorrectly in the Xbox files, thus the PMT editor not knowing how big the Xbox PMT file is. Since the file structures of the Xbox version are probably identical to the GC version aside from the endianness, it should be an "easy" fix, assuming Soly wants to release tools for PSOX, still has the source files for the GC tools, and can still build them in his current environment.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to work on PSOX? It's pretty much ignored, since it can't go online anymore or even be played at all without a modded Xbox to put the fake XBL credentials on the HDD.
 
I might look into it, but can't promise anything.
I barely did some of them for Ives, not sure if I want to go and do the same, again...
 
Aleron Ives said:
The problem is that the GC version is big endian, while the Xbox version is little endian. Using the GC tools will read pointers incorrectly in the Xbox files, thus the PMT editor not knowing how big the Xbox PMT file is. Since the file structures of the Xbox version are probably identical to the GC version aside from the endianness, it should be an "easy" fix, assuming Soly wants to release tools for PSOX, still has the source files for the GC tools, and can still build them in his current environment.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to work on PSOX? It's pretty much ignored, since it can't go online anymore or even be played at all without a modded Xbox to put the fake XBL credentials on the HDD.
Click to expand...

I don't have a second gamecube to mod haha. I know the modchips and mod process is simple, but I just had an extra xbox that was modded. I like the modded Xbox environment and I am familiar with the back end. I have written tools for the Xbox and done plenty of modding on it. Honestly it is just a known environment I enjoy working in. (I might move it over to my modded 360 if its backwards compatible). I just picked it up on Dreamcast too actually (I'm a phantasy star collector).

Soly said:
I might look into it, but can't promise anything.
I barely did some of them for Ives, not sure if I want to go and do the same, again...
Click to expand...

Are there any online resources for the file format and how phantasy star process them? I haven't done a huge amount of research, but I will continue to look. If you don't want to/have the time to update the tools, I could write one.

Thanks for the swift replies guys!
 
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