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Hey there everyone, I am very new to hacking. That is to say I am not entirely new as I do know about hex editing in save files and memory. However past that point I am pretty much a baby in terms of knowledge.
Recently I have had the urge to learn about old favourite of mine, Legaia 2: Duel Saga. This game was not known by many people and as a result very little research has gone into it, so a few things are still unknown (like the function of one particular stat). I figured I might as well try to learn somethings about the game and I figured why not try to understand the game mechanics from the game code itself.
So I looked up how to make codes for PS2 and read about a lot of things and it took a while to get a fundamental grasp on things. From my rudimentary understanding I tried to find one thing that has been personally bugging me about this game and that was the drop rates. Initially I had to think hard about how to go about finding a starting point, and eventually after a couple of hours of experimentation I decided on using a memory search for the post battle rewards. After a while of playing I finally got a random enough value to search that significantly narrowed down the possible addresses and then eventually I found it. From there I decided to watch a huge chunk of memory for what changes after battles, and then I found some things and decided to change them after the battle and eventually I found the memory that determines the item given, and then by pure luck I scrolled a little further down the memory and found the corresponding number of the items given.
My question then became, so how does the game determine what item it gives me, and I was stuck here for a while again. I decided to make save states to work out if the RNG is advancing per frame or per input. After a number of times of collecting information I decided it was advancing per frame. However all that data collection was for naught because it did not tell me how the game decided which item I got for killing an enemy. So I kept researching and started reading up on breakpoints. I set a breakpoint for when the game would write the item identity and tried to follow the stack. But reading all these commands I have no idea which part of the register corresponds to the drop rate and I do not think I am getting any closer after a few days trying.
Any help anyone can offer is greatly appreciated. Although I feel this is only one of the many problems I will be facing trying to crack this game open.
Recently I have had the urge to learn about old favourite of mine, Legaia 2: Duel Saga. This game was not known by many people and as a result very little research has gone into it, so a few things are still unknown (like the function of one particular stat). I figured I might as well try to learn somethings about the game and I figured why not try to understand the game mechanics from the game code itself.
So I looked up how to make codes for PS2 and read about a lot of things and it took a while to get a fundamental grasp on things. From my rudimentary understanding I tried to find one thing that has been personally bugging me about this game and that was the drop rates. Initially I had to think hard about how to go about finding a starting point, and eventually after a couple of hours of experimentation I decided on using a memory search for the post battle rewards. After a while of playing I finally got a random enough value to search that significantly narrowed down the possible addresses and then eventually I found it. From there I decided to watch a huge chunk of memory for what changes after battles, and then I found some things and decided to change them after the battle and eventually I found the memory that determines the item given, and then by pure luck I scrolled a little further down the memory and found the corresponding number of the items given.
My question then became, so how does the game determine what item it gives me, and I was stuck here for a while again. I decided to make save states to work out if the RNG is advancing per frame or per input. After a number of times of collecting information I decided it was advancing per frame. However all that data collection was for naught because it did not tell me how the game decided which item I got for killing an enemy. So I kept researching and started reading up on breakpoints. I set a breakpoint for when the game would write the item identity and tried to follow the stack. But reading all these commands I have no idea which part of the register corresponds to the drop rate and I do not think I am getting any closer after a few days trying.
Any help anyone can offer is greatly appreciated. Although I feel this is only one of the many problems I will be facing trying to crack this game open.
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