Psx code hacking

[Mezmorize]

I made a tutorial a while back for making GameShark codes with Cheat Engine.
http://gamehacking.org/vb/threads/41...g-Cheat-Engine

I recommend going to cheatengine.org and checking it out.
Even if you couldn't convert the cheat engine address to GameShark, you could still learn a lot from the program.

[Pyriel]

1. Choosing the kind of hacker to be: There are three kinds of hackers, those who type in anything and hope for a good code (FreeStyle Hackers), those who modify pre-made codes (Planed Hackers) and those who do both (ComboHackers). If you are patient, you might want to be a FreeStyle Hacker. If you are good at logic thinking, you might want to consider Planed Hacking. If you are a patient logic thinker, try Combo Hacking.

There are three kinds of mechanics in the world: Those who randomly put parts together until they have a car; those who put spoilers and stereos into existing cars; and those who do a little of both.

Binary code is a very primitive yet still widely used computer code. Old computers such as the Apple 2E, were only able to process code strands of ones and zeros. Binary code was created so digits such as two thru nine could be understood by the computer. The only draw back, was that this took a large amount of space and time to process information. Later, once more sophisticated processors came out, binary code was transferred to hexadecimal code, which took less time to process than binary. Hexadecimal is the most commonly used computer code today.

Holy shit.

Going back to the music modifier. If you can't find one address containing a value for the currently running music, the game probably passes values through its scripting or something. You can figure out what's going on by using an emulator with a tracer to monitor CDRead-related subroutines. Of course, this requires you to disassemble the game, and to have some sort of signature file that can help you identify the PSX CD library code. You also need to look into the CD subsystem a bit to narrow this down. There are certain parameters and hardware register values related to playing CDXA tracks through the SPU, and I don't remember exactly what they are any more. Once you work out how the game tells the PSX how to find the tracks, you can probably modify the data to replace one track with another, or to force the game to always play certain tracks.

[Helder]

I found the code for you but the thing is that there are only 8 tracks selectable at any given time, there must be another address that control what range to load the tracks from but I'll leave that to you to figure out:

Music Mod
8019ED9C 01??

use digits 00-07 ,anything over will just mute the music.

[jin299]

Apologies for double posting

[jin299]

Helder how on earth did you find this code, I have been trying to find the code, for such a long period of time now, in an desperate attempt to find the codes address Ive have been searching endlessly like a maniac trying to find the correct code address for the code, did you use the pec to hack the code or cheat engine?

Also what version of Street fighter Alpha 3 Psx is the code originally made for, the US version or the European version ? because either version will do, since I Play the game on the computer using the Espxe emulator anyway.

[Helder]

I used artmoney like I originally told you to use, I did a unknown search on a character stage and whenever the music changed even after a stage where they talk I did a different to search. I did this for sometime till I got a few thousand results and just put a bunch of addresses on freeze until I noticed the music was different for a stage. It's for the USA version by the way, the odd thing was the address was way below the normal ram area of 80xxxxxx so I then did another search but this time using the code I already found I changed the value to whatever I wanted and did an exact search for that and found the same code in a standard area of RAM. More than likely its mirrored from that area to the standard Ram but either one worked.

[jin299]

Don't understand I tried the exact same steps using the pec, but never found the address, why could this be?

Also since I don't have a pc at the moment, so I can't try out the codes, you didn't by any chance find shin bison's theme music when searching values 00-07 did you? heres a music sample of his theme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5JFGrysqm8

Also and how did you know the digits for the value of the code started with 256 in hex?

[Helder]

That 01 never changed so thats why I added that in there, I did try to modify it but like I said anything other than those numbers had no music. I was thinking about this the other day and the reason that there are only 7-8 tracks at a time is that the game probably loads the characters that you will fight against which I believe is 7 or 8? and then that is why anything over those values is just no music. If I have time or anymore interest I might look further into it for you.

[jin299]

So does that mean if you entered 0000 for the values instead, the code would still work or does the values in the code actually start with 0100 in hex?

Now that that music modifier has been found, all thanks to you man which I can't thank you enough the question is how could we locate the rest of the music tracks in the memory?

[Pyriel]

Like he said, that 01 never changes, so it probably doesn't have anything to do with determining what track plays. It could be a switch that indicates whether or not the sound is muted, or anything really. If you don't like dealing with it, you can probably just use 3019ED9C 00?? for the code instead. Maybe not, but you can always try it.

The music tracks themselves probably won't be stored in memory. You're talking about dozens of megabytes of data on a system that only has a few MB total between main RAM and VRAM. Just a guess, but there might be a complete table of track locations loaded somewhere, plus the array of 7-8 tracks available at any given moment. That or maybe the game data is carved up into multiple segments/files that each come with a set of track data when they're loaded. Finding that information probably wouldn't be very easy with Art Money alone, though you could use it to scan, if you can analyze the CD and work out where a particular track begins.

[jin299]

Okay, but Pyriel just out if curiosity if I scaned for the music code using Art Money, would the values for the music modifier codes address automaticaly show up as 0100?

Also how would I scan Art Money to analyze the CD to work out where a particular music track begins?

[Helder]

Your best bet would be to find what set of characters are loaded as your opponents then you can use that code to manipulate the tracks. I also did not try this in versus mode as there might be something different there, hell my code might not even work there as this was made and tested on the Arcade mode.

[jin299]

Wouldn't know how to that, could you look more into it for me if you can because I wouldn't know where to start?

Thanks.

[Pyriel]

Okay, but Pyriel just out if curiosity if I scaned for the music code using Art Money, would the values for the music modifier codes address automaticaly show up as 0100?

Also how would I scan Art Money to analyze the CD to work out where a particular music track begins?

You don't use Art Money for that. How the music is stored on the disc determines what you need to do. Assuming it's CD-XA, there are tools that can decode and play that music for you, but I don't know if any of them will help you out by telling you the time index or sector information for the start of a particular track. If one of them will, then you could use that information to calculate the different values that the game might use, and scan for those in Art Money. It's just a possible method of attack, honestly.

[Helder]

You asked me about a code for no charging but there is one already made look here : http://gamehacking.org/?s=bsfree2&sy...0282&sid=21890