Starting with Hacking (Dark Cloud 1)

[FelixSynth]

Hello everyone. I'm a programmer that has worked with c++ and C#. I've made a few little games but now I'm interested in hacking psx and ps2 roms. Stuff like changing the text/story, make new items, change out enemy models, and make brand new levels. I know as that list went on things get more and more difficult to do. I understand hexdecimal so I opened up the ps2 game (Dark Cloud 1) and I found out that the story text is not stored in ASCII as I hoped. So what programs or steps do I need to go through to figure out how the text is stored and change it? I'm interested in the process that it takes to find that information out because I genuinely want to be able to do this with other games in the future.

Also at some point I'm going to have to learn ASM code so if anyone has links for that would be a nice bonus.

Thanks for your time

[dlevere]

GBA and DS Rom Hacking Guide
The Ultimate Nintendo DS ROM Hacking Guide
Guide to NES Rom Hacking
GHTool v1.0.0.4 by rimsky82 & Abystus
First PSX ASM Doc for Hacking by Skeud
L. Spiro's Memory Hacking Software
Arbitrary Search - Game Hacking Program
Assembly Programming Tutorial
How to learn ASM code

[Pyriel]

Looking into compression and character-encodings wouldn't go amiss either, considering what you want to do. Arbitrary, 8-bit encodings aren't unusual, but then neither is Shift-JIS in PS2 games.

[FelixSynth]

Thank you. I wasn't sure where to start and was wondering if GBA/DS rom hacking applied to PS2 rom hacking. Based on the links it seems like the techniques you use might be applied across the rom generations. Regardless time to start learning.

[root670]

There are extraction tools for Dark Cloud are available here: http://xeeynamo.blogspot.com/2011/06...lled-dark.html. Maps, scripts, graphics, models, etc. are likely all in the game's resource files and can be accessed with those tools. Text modification shouldn't be too hard unless they're using a custom encoding method.

[FelixSynth]

Holy... Root670 thanks for the link to the unpacker. So basically someone hacked dark cloud and then made a program for it so someone like me can get right to the modifying part. That's just amazing that there is an unpacker to dark cloud. Alright this doesn't mean I'm not going to learn hacking but I'm just so excited XD Alright time to learn how to open these files. TO GOOGLE!