Patcher test: PSP sprites

[Cless]

Oh. yeah. Play-Asia apparently has pre-owned copies available. It's pricier than what's on eBay though.

If you really really need the original release, use the "personal agent" box on the right and and check the "Tales of Phantasia [pre-owned] is available." option, put in your email and submit.

For what it's worth that's how I got both of my Summon Night PSX games. It took a little while for them to become available, but when they arrived, they were in flawless condition.

Of course, you can still get ToP easily from Yahoo Japan auctions, if you use a deputy service. I'm not sure what the going price is for the game though. Probably not that much...

[Cless]

Oh. This auction ends in 7 hours and is going for a stupidly low price: http://cgi.ebay.com/Tales...ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Original release, too.

[Demon000]

Oh. This auction ends in 7 hours and is going for a stupidly low price: http://cgi.ebay.com/Tales...ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Original release, too.

Wow!! that's really cheap, it's a shame it only ships to the US

[Cless]

Okay. I've uploaded a new version of this sprite hack. It now includes the half-done enemies. Some were redone, some are still chibi, it seems. Also, it includes a version of the patcher compiled with GCC, so it should not require .NET Framework 3.5 or msvcr90.dll anymore. Still requires CD-Tool, though.

Download.



This is incredibly under-tested, but it worked fine for the few minutes I tried it. The enemy files seemed to be in the same order in the PSP version as the PSX version, and the file format's still the same. If they made any changes to enemy stats in the PSP version, they're reflective here.

Note that there are no changes to the Monster Zukan menu. Either they forgot to update the Monster Zukan still archive in the PSP version, or the archives containing them are actually dummies and it uses a new method to get them. Not to mention, the Queen Bee's image in the PSP version's files is screwed up and appears to be a sprite sheet or something, not a single frame.

[DemonFang]

The PSP sprites, for the most part, look good to me.

And Cless, how do you find those things on ebay? When I search for Tales of Phantasia (and a variation of searches similar to that), I don't find anything! You must be pretty lucky =P

[LJkAze]

Oh. This auction ends in 7 hours and is going for a stupidly low price: http://cgi.ebay.com/Tales...ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Original release, too.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Damnit miss my chance T_T, Cless you have a spare copy you can sell me. Not only TOP but I am missing TOD original aswell

Hmmm the Sprite Hack seem to coming along nicely, will we get a release for this with the chibi version?

[vivify93]

Cless, are you sure that leaving the exclusivity to people with the money to buy the game and dump the ISO is such a good idea? I mean, some people emulate not because they're greedy or because it's "ISO 1337 |\|||\|_|4 |-|4(|<20R2". but because they don't have the money. This essentially leaves them with ISO-begging, which is practically 10 times worse than ROM-begging.

[Cless]

Yes. I've been pushing for people to purchase an original since the very beginning of the project and I intend to hold up that end. But it won't stop some jackass from posting the patched ISO to torrent sites anyway. Such is inevitable.

Aside from that though, a clean pirated ISO will still work anyway, since it's essentially impossible to do any kind of authentication. All the CRC check does is ensure integrity. I do not want bug reports for bugs that may not exist on clean copies. This was inspired by Byuu's new UPS format.

[vivify93]

Guess I'm gonna have to wait for some jackass to torrent it then. As you probably could tell, I'm in the minority that emulates because they don't have the money. That, and I don't trust online stores as far as I can throw them.

[jajaswipo]

uhmmm i dont know what i can say at this point




p.s. dont throw them, just throw an exception 

[Cless]

Well. I just found out that after burning a clean image to CDR, and then redumping that CDR results in an image slightly different than one from an original disc. 

The integrity check is really a measure to keep corrupted images from being patched because I do not want to deal with the potential tech support nightmare, not as some kind of half-assed anti-piracy measure.

I will make the CRC of the above resulting image a valid one as well. But I still encourage people to seek out an original disc to ensure compatibility. The CRC of that is FBDC7CF0.

[Carnivol]

Well. I just found out that after burning a clean image to CDR, and then redumping that CDR results in an image slightly different than one from an original disc.

Interesting.
When I get back from work today I shall try to do the same and see if the result is the same.
Remind me to check this if I should forget.

[habilain]

Yeah, that's to be expected. PSX discs, near the beginning, have about 16 sectors which are entirely nulled, EDC/ECC codes as well, as a form of copy protection. Most CD/DVD burners sold for the home market will force the EDC/ECC codes to be correct, instead of nulled, as it was one of the first copy protection schemes conceived, and is still used.

[Gemini]

Most CD/DVD burners sold for the home market will force the EDC/ECC codes to be correct, instead of nulled, as it was one of the first copy protection schemes conceived, and is still used.

Actually most CD/DVD burners do NOT regenerate any of the special fields for each sector, and you can notice by inserting a raw sector into an ISO without regenerating ECC/EDC because the game will fail reading that sector. The Psx protection consists in having special data in those sectors you were talking about, but ALL commercial burners can't write there. Original discs use a process different from usual CD/DVD burning, which includes those special sectors, so if you have no Sony signature there the game fails the check on boot.

[habilain]

Urgh. Partially correct, Gemini. Really, it depends on the age of your hardware. The original specifications for CD burners called for regenerating EDC/ECC when burning. That was shot down when people started to verify discs, because it made verification unreliable (and somehow survived 1 or 2 years of R&D before anyone noticed...). I think currently something about marking the sector invalid either at driver level or hardware level (depending on type of hardware) is used if you instruct it to burn with an incorrect EDC/ECC.

Also, I was wrong about "all nulls" (though it's pretty close, really). But the special codes can't be burnt usually because they do include invalid EDC/ECC codes on the disc; there isn't any "Sony signature", as Sony can't really tamper with ISO specifications, and data is just data. Some commercial burners are capable of it, but they'll need a hacked firmware to do it. (A burner would have to be capable of RAW+96 mode, which some are, to do it.)

Basically, practical upshot, burning the disc will not burn the disc 1-1 normally; a special, copy prevention area will be modified.

[Gemini]

Urgh. Partially correct, Gemini. Really, it depends on the age of your hardware.

Never had any driver capable of doing so, despite a couple of my DVD/CD burners being pretty recent.

But the special codes can't be burnt usually because they do include invalid EDC/ECC codes on the disc; there isn't any "Sony signature", as Sony can't really tamper with ISO specifications, and data is just data. Some commercial burners are capable of it, but they'll need a hacked firmware to do it. (A burner would have to be capable of RAW+96 mode, which some are, to do it.)

From what pSX Author told me, there is a standard signature that Sony uses for authentication (the SCxx code stored in the leadin area, which varies depending on the disc license area), which is not related at all with the ISO specs. The area containing the signature is not physically present on standard CD-R (or RW), so there is no way you can make any disc compatible with not modded consoles. Its very simple for Sony/duplicators to do that because all CD-ROMs are pressed with a master "stamp", and they can do anything they want when producing the "stamp". As for the RAW+96 mode, it just means it can burn subcode and ALL modern CD writers can do that, so it's not much of a help, although it helps with LibCrypt.