FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes

[Reikken]

Successfully hacked the exp formula. or the main part, anyway. and it only took an entire day. Granted, most of that was me discovering that Dolphin has a debug mode, and then finding out that some of the features in it aren't available unless you build the thing yourself and build the debug version, and then me installing Visual C++ and etc. in order to do that, and then actually doing it, and THEN going about finding where exp is done and how to change it.

It turns out that enemy and player phase exp calculations are done separately, so you could have an enemy phase exp bonus or something if you really wanted to.

[VincentASM]

Just for Ha-ha's. I used some sucky Photoshop 3D skills to take a stab at visualizing what the spirits might look like. Reminds me of a second hand pepper shaker you might find at "Good Will".

My best guess, since the waste line transitions into vertical scanlines, that the body becomes transparent. Thus the spirit might be more like what we'd consider a ghostly form rather then the star bursts in game. Undead Seriphan grade bird laguz?

Whoa, that looks pretty scary. Thanks for the rendition anyway ^^

uccessfully hacked the exp formula. or the main part, anyway. and it only took an entire day. Granted, most of that was me discovering that Dolphin has a debug mode, and then finding out that some of the features in it aren't available unless you build the thing yourself and build the debug version, and then me installing Visual C++ and etc. in order to do that, and then actually doing it, and THEN going about finding where exp is done and how to change it.

Nice, do you have any details that you can share now? When I retrieve FE9/10's ISOs, I'll have to look into Dolphin's debug mode.

[Reikken]

Assuming you mean details on exp hacking...

There are two parts. First, in Start.dol, starting at 33240, or 800362e0 according to the program counter, it goes through most of the actual arithmetic.

For kill exp on player phase, it starts at 800362e0 with all to-be-mentioned values in registers and takes the difference between enemy level and player level, then adds X (I'll get to this in a bit), then adds 1, and finally divides by 2. (ELv - PLv + X + 1)/2. It's not done yet, but so far this looks a lot like the exp for hitting but not killing. However, when it calculates hit exp, it does the exact same thing but in another location. This is amusingly inefficient, but on the plus side, it means you can make the hit and kill exp formulae completely unrelated if you like. Anyway, next it goes off and does some other stuff and then comes back to 80036330, just a few lines away, and adds enemy level to Y. Then it goes to 80036340 and subtracts player level from that. Y + ELv - PLv. and at some point I forget it adds this to the value calculated earlier. So in total, (ELv - PLv + X + 1)/2 + Y + ELv - PLv.

For hit exp on player phase, it starts at 800363e0 and does the exact same thing as the first part above, resulting in the (ELv - PLv + X + 1)/2, and then it's done.

For enemy phase, it does the same thing as for player phase, except it starts at 80036528. Everything is just offset by 248 bytes.

Now for the second part. There is a small kind of table at F53C in FE8data.bin:

140F1E1E

14141E1E

The first row is the Y mentioned above, the kill exp bonus if you will, while the second row is X, which is basically double the hit exp with the unmodified formula. It uses the first byte for normal mode, second byte for hard, the third byte I'm guessing would be used for maniac if I had the Japanese version, and the fourth byte is for easy mode.

EDIT: ew, Rolf. Tormod is much cooler looking.

Edited June 17, 2011 by Reikken

[VincentASM]

Thanks, yeah I was asking about the exp calculation ^^

I checked the Japanese version and the table in FE8data.bin is slightly different. The first row is 140F0A14 and I think the second row is 1414140A. If I'm not reading things wrong, this fits in with the 3rd byte being for Maniac mode (Y=10 and X=20).

Would you be interested into looking into some of the skill activations as well?

[Reikken]

possibly, yes

Also, what is that sig a pic of?

[Reikken]

I don't like Nightmare, so I started making something somewhat similar but more to my own liking. Anyone is free to check it out if they care.

EDIT: updated link

Edited July 27, 2011 by Reikken

[Reikken]

I don't see it explicitly mentioned anywhere, so

FE9. (FE10+ too?) The pointers in the FE8data.bin, as you can see at a glance, point to locations within the file, using the start of the file as 0 (actually it uses 0x20 as 0). Thus when the game loads it up, it has to first change every pointer in the file, realigning them to match up with the new offset for the data. To do this, it references a list located towards the end of the FE8data.bin file. This list is long and made up of ascending numbers, so you can't miss it. It's a list of the location of every pointer in the file. So any time you add a new pointer, you have to add its location (file offset -0x20) to that list.

Edited June 26, 2011 by Reikken

[VincentASM]

Yeah, that holds true for a lot of table-like files in FE9 and all the way to FE12. I haven't mentioned it because few people hack these games enough to start expanding files. The one time I mention expanding is in Chapter 16, where I suggest expanding an event, but I don't go as far as making new events (and new pointers to go with them).

Also, what is that sig a pic of?

It's Ceci(lia) from Atelier Totori : o

Edited June 26, 2011 by VincentASM

[Reikken]

ok, thanks

I didn't use it for expanding, even. I just added an entry to a class's skill list. There are 5 slots in the class data section, filled with 0s if the class doesn't have all 5 skills, so I just overwrote one of those 00000000s with a pointer. It took me a bit to realize why it wasn't working.

[VincentASM]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that application as well. I seem to recall you need to do the same thing to add an extra item to a character's inventory in the chapter/army data. Had me puzzled as well >___<

[Reikken]

Apparently FE9's army data doesn't like Nintenlord's LZ77 compression. Even decompressing, and then recompressing with no changes, and then reinserting the file resulted in errors. That or Dolphin is terrible. Or something else altogether? What's going on?

Edited June 28, 2011 by Reikken

[VincentASM]

Can you send me an original army data file? I seem to recall they're cmp files, but I forget what the structure is like.

I was able to add Greil and the BK to the Mercenary Fort chapter, so I think it should be possible to get edited army data working OK.

[Reikken]

by what means?

http://www.sendspace.com/file/tpdewm

Edited June 29, 2011 by Reikken

[James Bond]

It seems that it has to be in zip format...

Edited July 1, 2011 by L.Lawliet

[VincentASM]

Thanks.

Hmm, I used version 4.2 of NL Compressor and I noticed a recompressed decompressed file differs slightly from the original file. I'm pretty sure I used NL Compressor when I successfully hacked the army data, so I'm not sure if the slight difference matters.

I'll probably have to dig up my FE9 ISO to check...

EDIT

Okay, I've got FE9 now, but I don't have time to hack it today.

In the meantime, can I ask what program are you using to recompile your ISO?

Edited June 29, 2011 by VincentASM

[Reikken]

GameCube Rebuilder 1.0

[VincentASM]

Not sure if you've figured out anything, but I finally got all the resources to begin FE9 hacking anew. Right now, I've only tried what you did, decompressing and recompressing an army data file and I also get Dolphin crashing on me. I'll see if I can figure anything out.

Anyway, now that I've got a better PC and Dolphin is better than ever, I think I'll try some more model hacking.

So far, I've looked into Elincia's Bishop map model, as well as Caineghis and Older Sanaki's unused map models. The newer versions of Dolphin have a real cool feature, Free View, which lets you control the in-game camera more freely, so I was able to zoom into the models. You can find some images here

[Celice]

The Freeview is really interesting, especially for looking around combat scenes and way outside the maps. As one would think, there's a lot of dead space further out than you can see, but it's not wasted space--it looks like original "brush" strokes of the land are still out there, so in a way, there is unused terrain out there. Remind me of Shadow of Colossus exploration.

In both FE9 and FE10. Something that may be of note is whether some battle scenes show different geography or other bits of detail that the map doesn't. Some of this is just detail, like when fighting inside a castle, but also outside battles may have left over designs, like houses which did not make it into the final map (but were drawn for the battle scene before it was dropped, and was just never removed).

Speaking of battle scenes, maybe you should try switching out the battle backdrops and see if you can find the one used way back when they showed Kainghis fighing Mikaya? It's not unheard of for many games to have assets that old left in them... for one reason or another XD

[VincentASM]

Speaking of battle scenes, maybe you should try switching out the battle backdrops and see if you can find the one used way back when they showed Kainghis fighing Mikaya? It's not unheard of for many games to have assets that old left in them... for one reason or another XD

You mean the one with the burning house? I haven't finished FE10 yet so I don't know if that made it into the final game.

Additionally, it may take a long time before I do any FE10 hacking, since I don't have the ISO on me just yet. Although I am interested in trying to recreate the Caineghis vs Micaiah battle. Which reminds me, I think there's some data related to that in one of the battle maps (I seem to recall seeing data for Caineghis and maybe Micaiah as a Light Sage). Perhaps in map 0 or something.

EDIT

Added two more models, of Princess Crimea Elincia and unused Dheginsea. BTW, not sure how many people noticed, but Sigrun's map model is the same as Elincia's.

Also, inspired by Celice, I added some screenshots of me messing around with using Free View in the Prologue. Hmm, I'm kind of wondering if I should try zooming out for every single map...

[spoiler=Prologue]

@ Reikken

I tried decompressing and compressing an army data file using BatchLZ77 and the chapter runs fine. Not sure if that will solve your problem.

Edited July 27, 2011 by VincentASM

[fuzz94]

Is it possible at all to import different 3D models and put it new battle animations?

[shadowofchaos]

Hmmm.... I remember it from a PM a long time ago... I don't know if I still have the conversation... but...

Vincent, I remember you mentioning that the pointer system for text worked like the DS Fire Emblem games?

Since I have access to Dolphin, I can mess with the ISO much faster than doing it with my USBLoader on the Wii... I want to mess around and have some funny crap go on with battle quotes and stuff.

I know that the text is by chapter (like when you asked me to replace the first level with the Debug stage, I remember you mentioning three files, which had the map, the events, and the text), but how do they work on repointing?

[Barim]

Seems the centre of Fire Emblem hacking keeps shifting, but I also see some progress in the hacking of 9 and 10.

From what I've read, I'm wondering, would it also be possible, instead of loading a hacked back-up image, could a patch be used with the retail disc? I know fan translation projects have used that means, but I myself would not know how to actually make one...

[Celice]

It used to be that early one, for Smash Bros. Brawl, one would stream the changes from their Gecko or whatever as the game was being read normally. It's just become so simple to load back-up games that I don't think it's very important any more. Especially with all the USB technology--all you have to do is rebuild the ISO and copy/paste.

Seems the centre of Fire Emblem hacking keeps shifting, but I also see some progress in the hacking of 9 and 10.

As younger fans come in with the interest and motivation, the games in question will shift. It always happens. Sadly, it makes the hobby really niche and old-man syndrome like pretty fast :P

[shadowofchaos]

From what I've read, I'm wondering, would it also be possible, instead of loading a hacked back-up image, could a patch be used with the retail disc? I know fan translation projects have used that means, but I myself would not know how to actually make one...

Yes, using Riivolution just have patched files on your SD card.

For example, I've been messing with text.

Even messing around with replacing the English text files with the Japanese ones, which are actually still on the US Radiant Dawn disc.

Hi Widescreen Japanese version with Battle Saves.

The XML template I use is:

<wiidisc version="1">
       <id game="RFEE" />
<options>
<section name="File">
<option name="File Replacement">
<choice name="Enabled">
 <patch id="FE10_files" />
 </choice>
 </option>
 </section>
 </options>
<patch id="FE10_files">
 <folder external="/private/wii/app/RFEE" recursive="false" />	
 <folder external="/private/wii/app/RFEE" disc="/" />	               
 </patch>
 </wiidisc>

Just put your files in your SD card under "private/wii/app/RFEE" just like you would for texture hacks on Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

@Celice: Wiiscrubber building an ISO every time you want to replace ONE file takes so long... it gets painful after a while when you're trying to see which commands do what for text.

Edited December 27, 2011 by shadowofchaos

[shadowofchaos]

Thanks for the notes, Goldie. This is still memory hacking, right? I don't usually do it, but I did do some tinkering around with it in the past.

I'm taking a stab in the dark here, but you could try this:

1. LZ77-decompress the sound_data.cms (or was it .cmp?) file in the Sound directory and open it in a hex editor.

2. Go to 0x16D8 and you should land on two bytes with a value of 01 53.

3. Change the 01 53 to 01 37 and save your file.

4. Recompress the sound_data file and see if it works or not.

This should shorten down the loop time for "March", so that if it's replaced with "The Strong", it will loop correctly. I can't hack FE10 right now so I can't check if it will work. Personally, I doubt it, but you never know.

Hmm... Anything on this again? I've tried replacing the voice files for the memory scenes, but it keeps cutting off. I thought it was the text calling on the files, but apparently not.

I replaced the events and text for Part 4 Chapter 5 (1) as well, but it still keeps cutting off even with the Japanese text timing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxRMsC-R3p0

Vincent, heeeeeelp!