SkacikPL
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Just a quick heads up.
I did some scouting ahead using the "camera unlocker", as it apparently makes the camera ignore collision.
And it doesn't look too bright, i am not sure how XIII handles occlusion or loading of tiles/parts of level but for the 7th Ark it's all screwed up. Some parts are actually drawn, whilst others aren't.
Here are some shots(warning, heavy!):
http://skacik.pl/images/FinalFantasy/XIII-7thark/10.png
http://skacik.pl/images/FinalFantasy/XIII-7thark/9.png
And i don't think it's just an occlussion issue as driving the camera too far in certain direction causes the initial area to stop being rendered, so in a certain way it's distance based. However as shown below, there are cases when i am in range and it's still not rendered, only thing visible are the spotlights lightshafts.
There are MANY rooms which are not rendered at all, with only indication of them being there being the minimap, areal color correction (pink background instead of black) and said spotlights.
Perhaps It could be tweaked/fixed later on using tools made by the guy behind XIV 1.0 server emulator.
http://seventhumbral.org/
IIRC XIV 1.0 is the exact same engine as XIII so tools should be uniform (more or less). At the very least he's got tools to preview the zones, which would be handy here.
If anyone is interested in said camera unlocker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC1L7WdQW1w
It's not really a full unlocker as the camera still centers on character, which makes it hard to move it around precisely as you want. |
SkacikPL
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Yeah, the theory about game automatically drawing all instances of loaded tile/block seems to be correct.
If i stand close enough to the wall, so that the map starts outlining next room i can get the "train station" and tunnel tiles to load in.
http://skacik.pl/images/FinalFantasy/XIII-7thark/11.png
http://skacik.pl/images/FinalFantasy/XIII-7thark/12.png
Perhaps the teleportation does not work if the destination point isn't solid ground?
But yeah, entire area seems to be rather thrown around both in XY and Z, certain parts are not even shown on the minimap, even though they are rendered (perhaps due to height difference, i don't know).
It's hard to tell without being able to see all the tiles, however i guess that it'd be a miracle if actually all of those parts were connected, we know for a fact that already the initial area is entirely disconnected. |
SkacikPL
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Originally posted by VIRGIN KLM
Also I just wanted to say thank you to everybody but mostly hedgehog89 for what is done here.
Google "Seventh Ark" and you'll get what I mean.
We can easily say that we have shook up the video game internet world with all those things in this post.
The last like week or so people that know me contact me to tell me that they found articles on the internet linking to what we do over here.
I just hope Square Enix won't get pissed off though.
Great job everybody, keep doing what you're doing, I'm on your side!
I just hope everybody that is doing a video or an article about it will link this thread so we could attract more people that could potentially help.
I guess it's all about videos nowadays.
I wasn't sure whether to make a video about someones elses findings, but in the end i did, and now it's embedded on 90% of articles mentioning 7th ark.
Mostly cause another 80% of the articles are copy'n pastes or just translations.
Either way, the bottom line is - you want attraction, then compile it to a video. |
SkacikPL
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Uh, if you've managed to find the floats, can you give us the default one for height?
Assuming initial area is entirely flat, it will be easy to find that float, browse it and look for surrounding values to change when moving.
Either way i think i've managed to find the correct values, however i can't change them, no matter what.
Character won't budge even within current zone bounds.
Preceding sequence of bytes seems to always start with 2c and is 8 bytes long.
 |
SkacikPL
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Yup worked now.
However, changing battle team does exactly nothing. Current leader gets teleported in place of old leader and old leader gets teleported in the place of current leader.
I guess if you wanted to test that theory you'd need to find XYZ for each of 2 AI members, which is well...
Perhaps if it was to work at all, then one man party would be the way to go.
Additionally i can confirm that getting to "area B" will start tanking your FPS. Though it has something to do with poor optimization of the game as it just locks my framerate to 30 and not a single dip below. |
SkacikPL
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Just a small addendum. To reach "area B" i had to move myself entirely to the side of berserker statue and actually set X of 620 or so.
595 from center of warp gate spawned me near the room but still outside of it.
Also a small video: http://youtu.be/WeM8OHts1ak .
I think that most of the zones are actually connected one way or another. On one minute mark there's an elevator which goes upwards(well, at least it should, i didn't bother trying as i guess it doesn't work).
There's another elevator around 4:35 and you can see its destination above, while the tile hasn't loaded in yet.
Weird room at 7:42 and onwards also connects two different height levels. And there's more than one of those rooms.
//
On a side note, Square has announced first patch for the PC version of XIII:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/292120/announcements/detail/251400071459323982
I wonder whether it would not be a bad choice to do a backup in case Square wants to ninja clean up some content. |
SkacikPL
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I've no idea how door lock works in XIII, however unlocking them has little to no point as of now, since most locked out areas are not even rendered, sadly.
I wonder whether the elevator things work, i didn't bother to check last time. |
SkacikPL
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Originally posted by VIRGIN KLM
From what I see on the RAM, in this video SkacikPL posted all those things that were hovering in the air with no model are the rest nonfunctional savepoints.
I wonder whether there's a way to bring them back? I mean the core script seems to be there, but model and anything beyond basic interactivity does not work.
Originally posted by VIRGIN KLM
Those red non interactable objects are treasures that you can't pick because of being in-range with an enemy
Yeah, that much i've figured out on the fly, however i found one in a corner of a room which i could interact with and it freezed me just like anything else in this level. |
SkacikPL
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I might give it a go if you explain to me how to get the map value address.
As for the save which allows for teleporting, this one works just fine:
https://mega.co.nz/#!8sJWkSiT!A-yCzQNUIUAClGNIPVAyeRSHlj8o3UPzAsT1w6XosQs
look for .c201 string and pick 3rd result, then look for a segment of bytes starting with C2. After 8 bytes, next 3 floats are the XYZ. |
SkacikPL
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| Well, i couldn't get any mobs to spawn at all. I tried switching around the party but it did nothing. |
SkacikPL
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I've checked and exact spawn "X" is "2.64697796E-23", however finding it in memory seems very hit and miss.
I only managed to find it once, perhaps due to rounding issues. Usually either .646 or 6469 finds any results.
However, that one time i managed to find it - it did work. Which may make it handier than looking for a string and then going from there. |
SkacikPL
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Haha, apparently i went way overboard with random teleporting. Got the game to crash twice, then it crashed my PC.
Now it doesn't boot anymore and i have to verify all of the 50Gigs with steam.
I wanted to hijack into the elevated part of "Area A" since on my save the elevator does not render and seems to be on the upper floor, with no way (or i can't see it) of calling it back down.
Also, i think it's possible to entirely restore all of those invisible interactive objects. After randomly teleporting around and coming back to the start area i noticed that all of the interactive objects inside (4 switches, warp gate and save point) disappeared. |
SkacikPL
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Originally posted by hedgehog89
Maybe your game wasn't corrupted
Yeah it was not corrupted at all. When my PC crashed from abusing cheat engine my PCI 16x driver got corrupted.
Very intriguing case but in short story it made the whole system unable to see my GPU, thus games couldn't mount the device and as a result they would just crash.
//
Too tired to bother messing around with this today, however i'll try getting the elevator to work tomorrow and hopefully get a video of that cutscene you've mentioned. |
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Yep, the cutscene does not load for me - just black screen (can't be skipped too).
At least with Lightning as party leader, i'll try changing the leader.
Does not work for me with either Snow or Lightning and audio language does not make any difference too. |
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I've found the beta behemoth and ghoul group. Go to Area C, pick left route (downwards) then after the tunnel reaches the "station" turn right into the tunel which bends to the left, but does not go up or down.
They "should" be in there.
But yeah, it seems that mobs are hooked up to the supposed-to-be quest system, after you defeat them, camera slowly goes upwards and closer to the character and textless menu pops up. If you do anything with it, it teleports you back to the initial area and triggers Nemesis battle.
Oh also when you backtrack from that place some more mobs will spawn. I don't remember exact enemy names but back at the first station there'll be a pack of 2 ghouls and green tiger mob. In the right tunnel there'll be a red tiger with bunch of frog things.
//
http://i.imgur.com/iaYRZNX.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KRrKQUd.jpg |
SkacikPL
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Originally posted by VIRGIN KLM
I am unable to encounter any enemies on Area C. Messing up with the flags FFing everything causes the game to not even bother engaging an effect that there is an enemy watching at me and everything else simply shows that an enemy is watching me but I can't see any enemy.
I did some testing, it leads me to a guess that this level has a set of triggers which force the game to load in certain assets.
If you go here:
http://i.imgur.com/uXN7iHL.jpg
It'll load some tiles and all surrounding enemies - I must say that Area C has LOADS of enemies. So far i've noticed
Alpha/Beta Behemoths
PSICOM units
Gremlins
Ghouls
Frogs
Pantherons
Thexterons
Uhlan
All in various combinations.
Defeating first group you encounter will return you to initial area and trigger Nemesis fight. If you teleport back to explore further, the group that you had defeated will respawn, thus if you wish to explore deceptisol is handy.
Defeating same or any other group after Nemesis fight will just teleport you back to the start area each time.
Entire Area C is a bit like a maze, however ultimately it leads to this:
http://i.imgur.com/CZe3wgz.jpg
Area and from there it just loops back.
Also as Kazuki mentioned, If you walk up to the northern set of closed gates in Area A, it'll also load missing tiles, including the elevator.
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SkacikPL
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Originally posted by EternalSoft
Elaborate what? how i found the values?
EDIT: oh,btw,i found a fourth option on the main menu wich shows something about themes,i searched about it and found that it was something about the PS3 version,but i cant access any options there,they are all "[?]",unselectable
Which would make sense since PC version is a port from X360. |
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Originally posted by EternalSoft
well,i entered a battle,searched for unknown values,entered on another battle,searched for different values,entered on the same battle again,searched for unchanged values,and was cleaning the way of values like this till i got like 15 distinct values,freezed them,and entered on a different battle and the enemy was the same,but mind you,i think the game pre loads the enemy formations for each area so there are no loading beetween battle and field,as with this value freeze,it only triggered the other battle,i mean,when i kill a Behemoth with the Cactuar's battle values,the cactuar model dissapears from the field,but he's still there "invisible" while the behemoth also dies,and while trying to find the correct values some weird things happened like when i freezed a value and entered a battle,there was Hope Snow and Lighning against Snow A.... lol Snow was attacking himself but couldnt be damaged by party members lol
and another time when i entered the battle it was instant win,and when i came back to the field,my character model was turned into an enemy's model
This really needs some screenshots. |
SkacikPL
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To me it looks like Lebreau got squished a bit horizontally, look at her face, thighs and waist. They're all a bit thinner in final version as compared to prerelease one.
Though the prerelease version had better breast texture, doesn't look like buttcheeks crammed into a shirt.
Or perhaps i'm imagining things, but still, those breasts man. |
SkacikPL
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Originally posted by EternalSoft
oh well,what can we do about it then? i dont know this kind of hacking stuff on the exe
Open the exe with a hex editor.
But to find the proper value is the other thing.
Perhaps IDA pro or ollydbg would prove useful |
