"Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria" Game Protection disabled

[dharthoorn]

Ok. Holy Crap. You actually killed the GG instructions one by one...that's just amazing. People have literally been trying for years with this game.
Surely I could have never pulled that off with my level of skill in assembly.

If now the encryption is no longer there I'm going right back in and have some fun with it! I love this game so much, I have put in 100's of hours on PS2 back in the day.

Thanks for your explanations and again, well done.


Well, balls. I have the NTSC version of the game and not the PAL. Can you think of an easy way to change the offsets?

[Maori-Jigglypuff]

Urrgh, not easy to do that.Maybe impossible.Regarding that i can't help you.Sorry :-(

[dharthoorn]

Ooh nooooooooos hot damn That's what I was afraid of. Just recalculate new offset would be too easy...

Don't sweat it dude! You already did great work.

Maybe one day when have an NTSC copy and you feel especially generous...

[Maori-Jigglypuff]

The work PAL-UK Patch is not finished.I will later do some graphical Improvements and once the work is completed on this
i will tackle the NTSC and German Version.When that will be i don't know.Recently i did some good Progress on
Silent Hill 4 - The Room which has bad Fog-, Shadow and Blur-Effects.The World/Levels are also too dark in some Areas i think.

[dharthoorn]

"One day" is good enough for me. Still great news!

For sure I will still love and play this game also by then. Next I think I will play it with my son, he's starting to like JRPG's and he's learning Cheat Engine too.

[Maori-Jigglypuff]

OK lol :-)

[dharthoorn]

Oh I just "borrowed" a PAL copy from a "friend" to try some things out because I couldn't resist.

Seems the main stats (like XP, Ability Pts etc.) are still encrypted or otherwise obfuscated -tried everything in Cheat Engine. Item amounts can be found and poked just fine.

The bad news is I can't trace & debug the instruction(s) with CE because as soon as I attach the CE debugger the emu crashes. In fact, attaching the debugger has never worked for me on this particular emu. So I can find where the encrypted value for say, XP, is stored (one 4b integer split into two 4b integers that change simultaneously) but not what writes them or what calculations precede the write. Frak the protections on this game. 

Well, just for your info. If you ever find a way to make those values editable it would be great!

[Maori-Jigglypuff]

Oh I just "borrowed" a PAL copy from a "friend" to try some things out because I couldn't resist.

Seems the main stats (like XP, Ability Pts etc.) are still encrypted or otherwise obfuscated -tried everything in Cheat Engine. Item amounts can be found and poked just fine.

The bad news is I can't trace & debug the instruction(s) with CE because as soon as I attach the CE debugger the emu crashes. In fact, attaching the debugger has never worked for me on this particular emu. So I can find where the encrypted value for say, XP, is stored (one 4b integer split into two 4b integers that change simultaneously) but not what writes them or what calculations precede the write. Frak the protections on this game. 

Well, just for your info. If you ever find a way to make those values editable it would be great!

Have you tried these three Things:

- Press "Select" in Shop and sell 1 Item to get 99999999 OTH
- Have all Items x99 when beginning a "NEW GAME", or picking up an Item anywhere or buying an Item in the Shop
- Instantly declare your Party as Winner in Battles by pressing the Start- and L3 Button simultaneously

And do the Enemies attack your Party ?

Experience, Ability Points and such Things i will (try to) analyze later.

But the important point with this Patch right now is that you should be able to import the save File with 99 Items and 99999999 OTH
to the real Playstation 2 and the Game shouldn't ever freeze anywhere.

[dharthoorn]

The Item and Oth patches work exactly as expected. Some others I didn't try yet because it was already very late yesterday. The fact that you can now save without corrupting data also works for as far as I can tell, which is great! (I didn't make it to the infamous point in Chpt5 for the ultimate check). If I find any code that does not work as expected I will let you know.

Why do I make petty "complaints" (really not even complaining) about some data still obfuscated? As for me I am a hobbyist when it comes to making tables in CE so things I would typically be interested in doing myself;
- Map as many game flags as possible (like respawn chests/bosses or gathering multiple heroes from one artifact). Many flags are just simple bit-flips.
- Modify hardcoded caps on various things (damage/HP etc). What if I set global HP Max to 77777 instead of 90000 ?
- Customize stats for every hero. Add/remove heroes manually. Modify stat growths.
- Mapping save point ID values (so you can teleport around upon reload save)
That kind of stuff.

So I am really looking forward to doing the nitty-gritty dissection of the game. But GG obfuscates all of that code .

So I have been testing a bit and noticed that "no black borders" seems to prevent the shopping screen to display (in Dipan at least).
The other graphical improvements (I detest Blur/DoF/Lensflare/Godrays with fiery passion) are AMAZING thanks so much.

[Maori-Jigglypuff]

The Item and Oth patches work exactly as expected. Some others I didn't try yet because it was already very late yesterday. The fact that you can now save without corrupting data also works for as far as I can tell, which is great! (I didn't make it to the infamous point in Chpt5 for the ultimate check). If I find any code that does not work as expected I will let you know.

Why do I make petty "complaints" (really not even complaining) about some data still obfuscated? As for me I am a hobbyist when it comes to making tables in CE so things I would typically be interested in doing myself;
- Map as many game flags as possible (like respawn chests/bosses or gathering multiple heroes from one artifact). Many flags are just simple bit-flips.
- Modify hardcoded caps on various things (damage/HP etc). What if I set global HP Max to 77777 instead of 90000 ?
- Customize stats for every hero. Add/remove heroes manually. Modify stat growths.
- Mapping save point ID values (so you can teleport around upon reload save)
That kind of stuff.

So I am really looking forward to doing the nitty-gritty dissection of the game. But GG obfuscates all of that code .

So I have been testing a bit and noticed that "no black borders" seems to prevent the shopping screen to display (in Dipan at least).
The other graphical improvements (I detest Blur/DoF/Lensflare/Godrays with fiery passion) are AMAZING thanks so much.

Hmm, OK.I just checked the No black Borders Code in Dipan but no missing shop screen.Seems to work fine.
And without the Patch the Game does also not freeze at last Boss Battle against Lezard Valeth.Hope you can confirm that