Wanted to edit something in the remaster but...

[DarkLynx]

Hello everyone,

I was playing the remaster with a cheat engine table I got from fearless cheat engine the other day and, I noted some interesting things, of among wich is that Dark Serge is functionally doppelgangable in this version! But the thing is....he's got no grid.... so, can someone tell me if is there a way to add elements to his doppelgang grid?

Thanks in advance, and excuse my poor english.

[Grobycftw]

Hi DarkLynx

Yes you should be able to add any element to his table
it should be located at offset   8D90   in the file    cdrom.dat\battle\data\monster.bin

I see a bunch of zeroes where it should be his allocated element for dooplegang, so it should be the good place located under his stats -> B8 0B 5A 4F  :

B8 0B = HP 3000
5A = Attack   90
4F = Defense 79

[DarkLynx]

Thank you Grobyc! I wil try it out and let you know if it worked!

[DarkLynx]

Hey Grobyc there's something strange... although the region you pointed me to is INDEED Dark Serge, what is proof by the fact that there's a code pattern beaneath it that resembles the dead beat that comes right after him in the ccenemyedit's grid, no matter how much I input values in the same region in dark serge's code, I mean, the line of zeros jumping two lines from his stats mentioned by you before, he won't show any elements....I think we'll  have to give him a grid first....do you have any idea of how can we do that?

[Vehek]

This is outside my current research capability, not owning the remaster, but some suggestions.

• Make sure you're editing the right data, according to the stats format. There are two parts to the Element Grid
• According to an ancient post by utunnels, there is a second compressed copy of enemy data for Doppelgangs. Did this change in the Remaster?

(As the file containing said copy wasn't indicated, I had to do some calculations from the offsets used for ppfmaker to determine that it was part of the file called 2518.misc_battle_data.out in PurpleCatTools' naming scheme.)

[DarkLynx]

I think there's something related to the bit flags, something like that, the files follow the same structure as the psx port. the enemies are B0 lenght. But It seems you need to edit these bit flags to open spaces for the elements in his grid. By the way, you need to actually own the games to receive support and contribute? I'm still gathering money to buy this game on the pc, I own it only on PS4, I'm still sutck in ilegallity on the pc, it's kind of a weight to be in this situation...

[Grobycftw]

Hum have you tried editing an existing basic enemy for testing purposes?
Like look at how a regular enemy's element grid is set, I believe the numbers for element have +4000 for some reason, you have to add the proper values or else it will not show up.

If I was you I would try doing test on a regular enemy, learn how it works/see what you can changes, once everything works properly try out editing Dark Serge. I'm fairly sure the info are accurate, there is a byte that checks which enemy ID is used for the Dooplegang but Dark Serge normally doesn't have one.

in an enemy data :
byte 0x2B   =   Doppelgang monster ID

and there are two table for Doppelgang elements?

0x30-0x3F
Element Grid definition for Doppelgangs. Takes the form
of a series of bitflags; each level of the grid uses 16 bits,
starting with the first bit in the top left corner and working
down to the bottom right (L to R first). If the flag is set,
the grid position is open and can have an Element installed.

0x40-0x99
Elements with which to fill the Grid during Doppelgangs.
 A series of 2-byte little-endian values indicating Element indices
(with each mysteriously inflated by 0x4000). Open slots in the Grid
defined by the previous section are filled in the order in which
they were defined.

been a long time so I would inspect an existing one to see first how it's made then I would do testes if I were you!

[DarkLynx]

Hi Grobyc!

I tested a Little with the ps1 and radical dreamers version, I can't put elements on Dark Serge's grid yet but now I know how the grids work:

First, there's the bit flags, they add with the elements slots, for example: beach bum has for elements on level one so, it's E0 and the four first slots are represented by two bytes: the first, the element number, for example, miguel's holy dragon sword is 1DE so, ir would be, in little endian, DE  the frist byte, and 41 the second. Enemy techs tend to use 41 but some use c0, just like ally techs, I'm not sure but I think you can change holy drag sword to level 3 in the menu and set it as " c1" so it will definitely be unremovable.

Next, you can now manipulate character grids! For example, Guile: On the ps1 version, go to harles battle data section on file 2524, just do 16 * B0 in the calculator, and then, look at her grid growth byte, it's 7. now, head to guile (2*B0) and change the growth bite to 7, now from byte 30 starting from byte one, select 70 bytes and it will cover his grid and bit flags, you must pass harle's to his, that will make his grid as large as hers. That's all i've' discovered so far, ah and I'm playing with the stronger versions of doppelgangable monsters now to, for example, if you turn into the stronger version of wingapede, he'll keep he's elements but be stronger.

[F-man]

You should join Moogles and Mods discord. I have modding tools there that very much simplify what you are doing.

[DarkLynx]

Fine! I will look in to it! Thanks!