Possible to dump game data from pcsx2 when playing a game?

[DogmanGT1227]

Name of the thread says it simply.

Longer explanation: Working on a personal project, involving Final Fantasy X, and I'm looking to dump certain game data, primarily the algorithms for attack damage, hit percentage...pretty much the gist of the battle engine, minus it's CTB system. Was hoping maybe that PCSX2 has a RAM dumping feature in it so I can view what files were loaded into the ram, when a battle happens, if the system loads the full algorithms or keeps parts of it, depending on what move is being used at the time.

However, before anyone says that I should look at GameFAQs, I already have, and since it's incomplete, I'm not trusting it to be fully accurate. Now if anyone knows anyone who might have the algorithms in full, or the data, or whatever/may know how the system works, or how Square managed to make it this hard to extract the data straight from the disk, and how to get around it, I'll go that route if RAM dumping is not possible.

[StriFe]

Small question did you tried it with the new remastered version? Since that's on PC it should be "easier" to get the files or what you are looking for?

[DogmanGT1227]

Small question did you tried it with the new remastered version? Since that's on PC it should be "easier" to get the files or what you are looking for?

I had considered it...right this minute I'm trying to avoid paying the 30 dollars for it when I already bought the ps4 version. I admit, being stubborn a bit on that, but I figured also it would be a fun learning experience, understanding the inner workings of a ps2 game.

[pandubz]

As far as dumping game memory via PCSX2 itself, your options are limited to savestates and blockdumps. For a more interactive view, consider Cheat Engine. Not much else for me to say beyond that.

If you want to get into true reverse engineering, then I would consider using PCSX2's debugger, as this will show you EE and VU instructions, which may be more helpful for analyzing actual algorithms. You could go as far as using a disassembler directly on the ELF, but since the EE had several custom instructions and the VUs were entirely custom, I can't guarantee that a disassembler will be able to decode these instructions, unless of course the author or a plugin developer specifically went out of their way to support these.