[MODDING DISCUSSION]

[Vaan]

https://discord.gg/kHkEgZE Discord for discussion

Nexus https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy12

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VBF Browser:
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy12/mods/3
With this you can browse the VBF and inject/extract single files/folders.

Here is an easy to use tool to FULLY unpack/repack the game file: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/252064925193601024/410483949794754581/VBFUnpackGUI.zip
Mostly only for people who want to mess around with the files.

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The license board files correspond as follow:

• board_1.bin White Mage
  
• board_2.bin Uhlan
  
• board_3.bin Machinist
  
• board_4.bin Red Battlemage
  
• board_5.bin Knight
  
• board_6.bin Monk
  
• board_7.bin Time Battlemage
  
• board_8.bin Foebreaker
  
• board_8.bin Archer
  
• board_10.bin Black Mage
  
• board_11.bin Bushi
  
• board_12.bin Shikari

ejh1990 License Board Pack

http://steamcommunity.com/app/595520/discussions/0/1700541698690214622/?ctp=12#c1700541698705821949

[FuzedBox]

Originally posted by ejh1990:

Boom! Think I found it (though I need to repack to confirm). I think the hacked save uses yet another board that is found within battle_pack.bin (it's right at the end, just before the four 00 bytes and starts at (and including) the following byte sequence 6c 69 63 64 18 00 18 00.

That is definitely it; amazing! I'm just going to touch that up in Hex Workshop and it should do the trick. Hold tight.

Edit: Interesting. Replaced the board inside battle_pack.bin and it's still not updating. Where else can this be pointing to?

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by FuzedBox:

Originally posted by ejh1990:

Boom! Think I found it (though I need to repack to confirm). I think the hacked save uses yet another board that is found within battle_pack.bin (it's right at the end, just before the four 00 bytes and starts at (and including) the following byte sequence 6c 69 63 64 18 00 18 00.

That is definitely it; amazing! I'm just going to touch that up in Hex Workshop and it should do the trick. Hold tight.

Edit: Interesting. Replaced the board inside battle_pack.bin and it's still not updating. Where else can this be pointing to?

You know how to Hex edit very Good?

[FuzedBox]

Originally posted by Tohru Adachi:

Originally posted by FuzedBox:

That is definitely it; amazing! I'm just going to touch that up in Hex Workshop and it should do the trick. Hold tight.

Edit: Interesting. Replaced the board inside battle_pack.bin and it's still not updating. Where else can this be pointing to?

You know how to Hex edit very Good?

Not particularly, no. Basically just cut/paste jobs when someone knowlegable points out where to look.

[ejh1990]

Originally posted by FuzedBox:

Originally posted by ejh1990:

Boom! Think I found it (though I need to repack to confirm). I think the hacked save uses yet another board that is found within battle_pack.bin (it's right at the end, just before the four 00 bytes and starts at (and including) the following byte sequence 6c 69 63 64 18 00 18 00.

That is definitely it; amazing! I'm just going to touch that up in Hex Workshop and it should do the trick. Hold tight.

Edit: Interesting. Replaced the board inside battle_pack.bin and it's still not updating. Where else can this be pointing to?

Yeah, tried it and it didn't work for me either.

Perhaps this is one of the occassions where the localised versions of the bin files DO come into play? After all:

Originally posted by tommalmm:

Originally posted by Rhyagelle:

Hey ejh1990, do you happen to know if it is possible to alter the spell names or item names? Or at least, which file might hold them so that I might try? I just can't stand Princess Kiss, Aqua etc xD

It's all in battle_pack.bin in ps2data/image/ff12/test_battle/us/binaryfile/

The file has 72 sections. You need to look at section 61 (0 being the first). Out contains 15 sections. Each holds text regarding magic, gambits, technicks, etc. The very first section contains magic names.

And there are localised versions of battle_pack.bin.

(By the way, as I have said: if we can crack this mystery we have probably cracked custom licence nodes)

[FuzedBox]

Confirmed. Localizations are taken into account. I replaced them all. It worked, but now the board is picasso of languages.

[ejh1990]

Originally posted by FuzedBox:

Confirmed. Localizations are taken into account. I replaced them all. It worked, but now the board is picasso of languages.

I'm wondering if the localisation isn't just a simple case of strings, but rather a custom letter "grid lookup" sort of system (it would explain why grep didn't return any results for spell/item names, and there is an A-Z and a-z pattern further in the file).

Now that localised files are confirmed to be important for battle_pack.bin (but not for the board_{x}.bin files), what happens if you replace just the relevant bytes in your localised language directory?

[FuzedBox]

About to find out; trashing that vbf and starting with a fresh copy.

Well, the localized version of battle_pack.bin has more lines than what I assume is the "international" file. Replaced the bytes and packed it by itself; no change. Maybe the /in/ version needs to have the same bytes modified in conjunction?

[ejh1990]

Originally posted by FuzedBox:

About to find out; trashing that vbf and starting with a fresh copy.

Well, the localized version of battle_pack.bin has more lines than what I assume is the "international" file. Replaced the bytes and packed it by itself; no change. Maybe the /in/ version needs to have the same bytes modified in conjunction?

Perhaps.

In which case the next puzzle is "How is priority handled?". Clearly there is some handling of that as not all localisation directories have every file. My guess is each section has its own header of sorts, and the priority handling is dependent on each "section" -- some prioritise /in/ over localised, others localised over /in/. A cookie to anyone who can solve this.

By the way... If you're playing around with this sort of thing and fancy picking up from where I left off with licence definitions, here is the link to the spreadsheet again for analysing licence data:

https://pastebin.com/Ym2DBSpE

Not sure I posted that version earlier -- I know I did in the Discord chat, but not sure if I did here -- but the version I have just linked is the most recent one fixing an earlier derp I made.

edit: another theory I have is that there is some parity check done; if it fails, it falls back to license_board.bin. Similarly, for licence definitions, it falls back to license_data.bin. Though the fallback only occurs if there is a mismatch between /in/ and localised files in the relevant sections (or the section is missing), otherwise it utilises what is inside battle_pack.bin, license_data.bin, etc.

[eutow_]

Has anyone found a way to hide the upper right corner minimap? Nothing in uisize.json seems to do the trick.

[FuzedBox]

You may be on to something with the parity checks. Just finished modifying the bytes for each and every localization of battle_pack.bin, as well as pairing them with the updated license_board.bin... Nothing at all. I injected each file individually for testing and nothing changed between loads. Wonder what caused it to work before, albeit with language mush. Not a clue what's going on here.

The only difference is the first time every localization was written over with the bin from /in/.

[Switchblade 🔰]

Anyone know if it's possible to change weapon appearances yet?

[FuzedBox]

Originally posted by watafuzz:

Has anyone found a way to hide the upper right corner minimap? Nothing in uisize.json seems to do the trick.

No, but I did manage to remove the L3 map when mucking about that json as well as parametersmanageruisizestruct.csv. That corner minimap might be somewhere else entirely, but I'll keep looking later.

[eutow_]

Originally posted by FuzedBox:

Originally posted by watafuzz:

Has anyone found a way to hide the upper right corner minimap? Nothing in uisize.json seems to do the trick.

No, but I did manage to remove the L3 map when mucking about that json as well as parametersmanageruisizestruct.csv. That corner minimap might be somewhere else entirely, but I'll keep looking later.

That's basically where I'm at, I've tried to look around but all I've managed is breaking weird stuff:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/412583057095393280/unknown.png

[David Sarif]

Originally posted by watafuzz:

That's basically where I'm at, I've tried to look around but all I've managed is breaking weird stuff:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/412583057095393280/unknown.png

Lol, I can't wait to see a "EVERY NPC IS NOW VAAN" mod.

[SinForged]

Originally posted by David Sarif:

Originally posted by watafuzz:

That's basically where I'm at, I've tried to look around but all I've managed is breaking weird stuff:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/412583057095393280/unknown.png

Lol, I can't wait to see a "EVERY NPC IS NOW VAAN" mod.

More like the "I’m Captain Basch fon Rosenburg of Dalmasca!" mod. Replace all their lines and animations with that.

Edit: Though that is one way to make Vaan relevent to the story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSyfGm6wXgs