Chrono Cross DEBUG MODE FOUND!!

[ZeaLitY]

I was going through room / event modifier digits when I came to 000E, the Hydra Marshes. I accessed it once, nothing happened, and I recorded the location.

Well, I went back to get a savestate, and amazingly, a Harle icon dialogue box popped up with something about setting RGB values. It let me color the screen / mess with the lighting. So, I pressed return...and it took me back to a DEBUG MODE MAIN MENU!

WITH LEVEL / MAP SELECT

We struck gold here! The debug menu even lets you modify character model sizes. Now, I can't tell if the models are even on the screen, since the room modifier code started me out halfway off the map iwth no Serge in sight. But perhaps an open source emulator could track where those instructions are being sent when someone modifies the character model size.

Anyway, this also lets us go through all the maps with ease.

However, I have to go to bed, so try it out, people! Also, thank you Richard Honeywood for translating the menus.

Use this ePSXe savestate on Disc One:

http://chronofan.com/Black/Cross/SLUS_010.41.003
http://chronofan.com/Black/Cross/SLUS_010.41.003.pic

So, if anyone's up for it, map out all the options and stuff. It's a little difficult because the menu goes off the screen.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Zakyrus]

Totally awesome! That kicks ass! 

That isn't striking gold! More like finding an entire mountain made of gold! Great find!!!! 

I would totally map this out, but my CC disks are at home. 

..plus it's better that I spend time getting CT+ stuff done anyways. I'll save the honor for someone who hopefully has too much time on their hands. 

[dan_death]

  Whoaa!! Hell yes! Freaking great find. I'm going to try it right now.

EDIT: Hmm, the menu's sort of buggy, but I'm still getting around somehow. Could you somehow get the menu for the second disc? because I think some of the maps I'm going to require it.

[FaustWolf]

 

Excellent, excellent! This certainly makes the VRAM dumping tasks easier, no? Can you select which character models are onscreen? But we'll have to find out what all the options are, I guess.

Truly a Heroic Age for the Chrono Community!

[ZeaLitY]

What does it take to trigger the orphanage scene as part of the demo scenes if you let the title screen sit? Has anyone even SEEN the orphanage scene as part of the demo scenes before? It's in the map data (#18) but it's not playing in the demo scenes on disc one.

[dan_death]

Whoa, too many "scenes".
Anyways, what exactly are you talking about?

[ZeaLitY]

If you let the title screen sit, several scenes play. I'm wondering what triggers the orphanage scene, or whether it only plays on disc two.

[dan_death]

Oh, you mean after the CGA scenes? After the "Start..." title screen? I've never really sat there, and let it run before...

[ZeaLitY]

Check out the list at the bottom:

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Chrono_Cross_File_Structure.html

All the locations are pretty much in order. It's a miracle, but I guess the development or mastering of Chrono Cross's locations was very tidy.

[Chrono'99]

Oh, you mean after the CGA scenes? After the "Start..." title screen? I've never really sat there, and let it run before...

Well you should. The music is awesome there.

[Arcane]

I'm just gonna hop in and mention that PCSX is a pretty great debugging emulator.

[FaustWolf]

Arcane, I haven't been able to spend any time with PCSX's debugging functions; can you give us a brief description of what it shows, exactly? Does it just show what's going on in RAM in realtime?

[Arcane]

I really just know it does debugging. Which is more than I can say for ePSXe, without a memory editor.

[ZeaLitY]

I'm at the point where the stuff ahead is probably just black screens / crashing. But I'll still go through all the digits, sometime...

Would a PSX debugging emulator show what address the command to change a room is being sent to or something?

[Arcane]

Yeah.

There's a program known as Renegade you can get that does quite a lot of stuff for you, like this. It can link to SSSPSX, pSX 1.11, and PCSX.

http://doc.kodewerx.net/tools/misc/renegade64.rar That's Renegade.

To use it, start it up, browse the top menues until you find Attach, and click it. Find your emulator from the dropdown box and click Attach. Then you can use Code Search. A warning.. the numbers are all in hex in it.

http://doc.kodewerx.net/generic_code_hacking.html That's about everything I can help with. I haven't done much for PSX.