Deciphering the growths

[VincentASM]

Does anybody have any idea how the growth rates might be stored? There seems to be a string of numbers that are where one would expect them to be, but the numbers don't seem very meaningful.

Eg.

Fortune alterations for My Unit (Skl +1, Spd +1 trait)

5D 36 AF 46 2F EA C3 BC

Marth

D1 E3 6C E1 F6 2E 15 49

98 A9 AE A7 BC BD B2 CB

Lord

32 C7 C4 B3 D8 46 21 06

CD EA D7 74 99 46 63 10

[whase]

...

5D 36 AF 46 2F EA C3 BC

...

D1 E3 6C E1 F6 2E 15 49

98 A9 AE A7 BC BD B2 CB

...

32 C7 C4 B3 D8 46 21 06

CD EA D7 74 99 46 63 10

hmm, reminds me of hexadecimal, or however that was called~

guess I'm not that much of a help?

[Wolt]

If the same times work as they do with Shadow Dragon, we can do guess and check with clock abuse. I only suggest that because I can't make sense of hex coding.

[Celice]

hmm, reminds me of hexadecimal, or however that was called~

guess I'm not that much of a help?

That's because it is :P

Vince is asking more how those numbers mean actual growth rates, as it doesn't look as familiar, clear-cut, or whatever... hum~

[Crimson Red]

Have you found other data BESIDES growths? If so, where? Maybe post all that data (unless the bytes you gave IS all the data, in which case I'm surprised).

I could take a crack at it once I'm done with the translation patch, buuuuuut I probably wouldn't be too much help either...

[eclipse]

I'm gonna need a different font for this!

First, I don't know how My Unit works, so I'll ignore that. I'm also assuming Marth doesn't promote.

Translating the data from hex to decimal didn't make much sense. Here's what I got:

Marth:

209 227 108 225 246  46  21  73
152 169 174 167 188 189 178 203

Lord:

50 199 196 179 216  70  33   6
205 234 215 116 153  70  99  16

Binary isn't much more help, but here's what it looks like:

Marth:
1101 0001  1110 0011  0110 1100  1110 0001  1111 0110  0010 1110  0001 0101  0100 1001
1001 1000  1010 1001  1010 1110  1010 0111  1011 1100  1011 1101  1101 0010  1100 1011

Lord:
0011 0010  1100 0111  1100 0100  1011 0011  1101 1000  0100 0101  0010 0001  0000 0110
1100 1101  1110 1010  1101 0111  0111 0100  1001 1001  0100 0101  0110 0011  0001 0000

There's one set of numbers in the top and bottom rows of Lord that match exactly, and if I were to write the stat headers out in order (HP, Str, Mag, etc.), that column corresponds to Luck.

I've got several theories about what these numbers mean:

1. Growths take up more than one number.

2. I need to perform some sort of operation(s) on the two sets of numbers.

3. Something else influences growths (like the shards did in the original game).

4. These have nothing to do with growths.

5. It's something I haven't thought of yet.

All of this is speculation, and I will NOT be happy if it's taken as fact before it's tested!

EDIT: Spacing and binary calculation

Edited July 15, 2010 by ellipse

[VincentASM]

Have you found other data BESIDES growths? If so, where? Maybe post all that data (unless the bytes you gave IS all the data, in which case I'm surprised).

I could take a crack at it once I'm done with the translation patch, buuuuuut I probably wouldn't be too much help either...

It's all in the FE12Data file like the past 3 games. The non-growth data is pretty straightforward (character bases, class bases, caps, item stats etc.); I'm betting you could figure it out in a few minutes.

Thanks for the help ellipse. I've also tried using signed decimal numbers, but I still get weird numbers.

[Meteor]

There's one set of numbers in the top and bottom rows of Lord that match exactly, and if I were to write the stat headers out in order (HP, Str, Mag, etc.), that column corresponds to Luck.

The base and growth for Luck are both 0 in the last game. Could this somehow be related?

Edit: I'm confused what these numbers are representing. Is it growths only, or growths and bases?

Edited July 15, 2010 by Meteor

[VincentASM]

They should be just the growths, but I'm not completely sure since I can't read them. The base stats and other details are stored separately.

[irtikliwT]

Are the numbers you have there from 0x34 in the uncompressed data file? Are you sure that they're for Marth? 0x20 and 0x24 both point to Marich labels... both are one off the start of the labels which is kind of disconcertening, but 0x18EC and 0x18F0 both point to Marth labels at one off as well. Well, you have more experience with the DS games than me anyway. [EDIT] On reflection, as long as I am allowing the label pointers to be offset, they may just as well be offset 0x20 off as 0x01 off, in which case the 0x20/24 pointers match up to Marth's labels. It does make sense for him to be first anyway. Going to assume this line of inquiry isn't worth looking into further.

Maybe they're trying something different this time and not having growths based on 100?

Edited July 15, 2010 by T.W.I.L.K.I.T.R.I.

[VincentASM]

I'm onto something- it looks like the growths are ciphered. Too tired to figure it out today though.

[Crimson Red]

...ciphered?

This all seems beyond me...

Have you tried editing the data to see if it affects it? I'd change each value to a random value spread apart (0, 255, 127, etc.) and see what happens when you level up once or twice. It might give some clues. :\

[VincentASM]

I tried setting Ryan's growths all to 0 and Archer's growths all to 0, and I got 5 lots of Str +2, Def +2 and Res +1 and three lots of Spd +1 in 5 Levels.

Well, I think a cipher is involved at least.

The possibility occurred to me when ellipse pointed out the values in the Lord class that corresponded to Luck, which were both 46. Classes very rarely have Luck growth, so that value should be 0. Since both Luck growths are meant to be 0, the game probably removes 46 to get the actual growth (using a cipher).

However, if you look at different Luck growths for different classes, they all have different values, so it's not that simple.

You can also see the cipher in Marth's growths. I'm assuming the second row of numbers, i.e

98 A9 AE A7 BC BD B2 CB

are all meant to be 0 for some reason that I've now forgotten.

I don't yet know how the subtraction occurs or what numbers mean what growths, but I have pinpointed a number of patterns.

Every playable character's second row of growths all fit into the same sequence.

07 +15
1C +1
1D -B
12 +19
2B +5 
30 -F
21 +5
26 +19
3F -B  
34 +1
35 +15
4A -7
43 +5
48 +11
59 +5
5E -7
(loops back round)
57 +15

Where the first digit is arbitrary, but put there to show which numbers are bigger/smaller. For instance, Marth's numbers from before.

98 A9 AE A7 BC BD B2 CB

Aligns with:

 8  9  E  7  C  D  2  B

I also have a pattern that links these sequences between characters. I haven't yet found the pattern for class and growths and My Unit's alteration though.

I tried doing some basic subtraction of the numbers, and I get some hit and miss results.

Eg.

KATARINA

       HP ST MA SK SP LC DE RE
1ST ROW 5B 0D 41 54 42 47 C9 6E
2ND ROW 0C 0D 02 1B 20 11 16 2F

1ST ROW - 2ND ROW
     = 4F 00 3F 39 22 36 83 3F

Which suggests Katarina's base Magic and Resistance growths are the same. Also she has no base Strength growth.

DRAUG

       HP ST MA SK SP LC DE RE
1ST ROW 9A C3 51 92 A8 C9 C8 F8
2ND ROW 5B 60 51 56 6F 64 65 7A

1ST ROW - 2ND ROW
     = 3F 63 00 3C 39 65 63 7E

Draug appears to have the same base HP growth as Katarina's base Magic/Resistance. I've noticed a few physical units tend to have 7E for their RES, which I'm presuming is something terrible.

That's about all I've gotten so far, no clue if I'm on the right track or not.

Edited July 16, 2010 by VincentASM

[Meteor]

The problem I see with your results is that they yield growths that aren't divisible by 5. Maybe they decided to break convention, but I would be rather surprised.

While I don't have a better algorithm, I doubt the correct one will be incredibly complex. It's strange that they use any clock cycles at all to decode something no one is meant to see in the first place.

[riariadne]

I bet they just wanted to make our lives harder and have us play the game like clueless people.

Which really sucks.

[Crimson Red]

Well, mostly clueless. At least we know knights are bound to get defense and myrmidons are bound to get speed. XD

In all seriousness, things are looking very, very complex. Maybe someone experienced enough can look at how the game actually makes use of the growths? That might be easier than constantly fiddling with it to figure out what to do. Xeld, Nintenlord, and Ryrumeli are options, to name a few.

[Renall]

If nothing else, if it's a consistent cipher, it can be broken through experimentation by running level-up trials over and over until growth rates are determined with certainty.

[Celice]

Or... just running a trace during a level up :/

That's one way. Easiest way, probably, as the game most likely references the growth rates in some manner. But most people around here aren't interested in that sort of stuff anyways so meh.

[MasterJP28]

I'm not a hacker but seeing how there are 2 sets for growth could be like how MU is created. You know present and future which I guess affect growths. Just throwing ideas don't quote me on this.

[Wolt]

Is there any way of hacking the game to force specific numbers? If possible we just start with the number 5 and go up by 5 for every resetted level up, and get it that way. Personally though, I'm just pulling this idea out of nowhere.

[General Horace]

Cecil has growths in everything, including magic and resistance as a cavalier. Just thought I would throw that out there.

EDIT: Wrys has defence as a curate.

Edited July 17, 2010 by General_Horace

[eclipse]

Can I request both rows of numbers for the following characters:

Norne

Shiida

Bantu

Midia

Xane

There's some digits I want to check.

[Wolt]

Marth has a growth in Res, I just got a +1 today.

[VincentASM]

Norne

68 90 22 77 F3 6A 75 CD

2C 2D 22 3B 40 31 36 4F

Shiida

CC 00 44 2E 0A 46 C7 61

D0 C1 C6 DF D4 D5 EA E3

Bantu

C1 D5 EA D0 D5 77 FE D4

D4 D5 EA E3 E8 E9 FE F7

Midia

22 51 E7 AF 36 31 47 4F

E9 EE E7 FC FD F2 0B 10

Xane

38 7C 75 F9 4C 67 F8 5F

F9 FE F7 0C 0D 02 1B 20

Might have copied some values wrong, I'm kind of in a rush right now.

I'll upload the Nightmare module for these if anyone wants. If anyone needs the actual data file as well , give me a shout (if you have the ROM, you can extract the files using NDSTool, and then LZZ7-11 decompress the FE12Data.bin file).

[riariadne]

I was actually just about to suggest what Wolt said. Just run every RN for a character until they don't get a level up, and then you now their growth.

'Course, that'll be a problem when orbs and stuff get taken into account as well as growths over 100, but still, it's an option. Maybe it could be hacked so the class growths are all the same as Marth's (0?) to make sure it's not due to the class and rather just the character.