Bug Fixes

If you are stuck in the Dunan Unification Wars; or wish for more details on the gameplay systems, this is the place.
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by Pyriel »

Well, I think the "bug" to it is that you're not supposed to be able to put your character in that position. I've never tried it, so I don't know how likely that is to be true, and I don't have any opinion about how important a fix it would be.

I haven't been really looking into the bugs lately, aside from a couple of breaks to test out the Kindness Rune issues. I think I've figured out a way to rebuild the game disc with larger files. I had to learn Lua scripting and a bunch of other crap to do it, but I finally managed to rebuild a working CD from the existing data. Well, it works aside from the movies not playing, but I think that's just because I failed to set the file attributes right for them. I know where the LBA table is in the ELF, so I'm hopeful that in the next few days I can start replacing the untranslated text, without being limited by the current file sizes.

To say I'm thrilled about this is an understatement. The only damper to it is that the patch file might become larger than ISO itself, and contain most of its data. I may have to develop another method for distributing the changes.
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BadPotato
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by BadPotato »

Pyriel wrote:Well, I think the "bug" to it is that you're not supposed to be able to put your character in that position. I've never tried it, so I don't know how likely that is to be true, and I don't have any opinion about how important a fix it would be.
Hm, it's more about the way Luca decide to drop his turn, but I guess this is also the kind of ridiculous glitch where you can hardly beleve without seeing it, anyway so here you go.
I doubt those glitch remove any entertainement value, but yep... just low priority on the list, as KFCrispy point out.

One last glitch, that I can think for now is to get 2 spaces animals such as Sigfried, Feather or Abizboah fit into 1 party slot. More info in the last part of this post.
I think I managed to get it work once.
Pyriel wrote:I know where the LBA table is in the ELF, so I'm hopeful that in the next few days I can start replacing the untranslated text, without being limited by the current file sizes.
Sound awesome keep up the good work! Also just wondering, once your project progress are well advanced, are you planning on making a little documentation about which tool you used with descriptions about the important data, etc..? I guess, that the fact there aren't many hack project on this game is probably due to the lack of good info about how to getting started with this game.
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by Pyriel »

I solved the problem with the movies/STR files. It seems like the tool I'm using doesn't do raw reads from an ISO correctly or something. The STR files were coming out disorganized, with the only bits matching 100% being the file system header and sync data. Using another tool to extract them to my hard disc as raw sector data, and then writing them as raw data to the target ISO image worked fine. A little more work than I was hoping it would be, but I think I now have a perfectly functional rebuild of the disc.

I believe the Luca thing, trust me. As far as I know, it's impossible to move your hero from the first position when he's the only one in the party. Maybe I'm wrong. If you can put him anywhere in the formation at any time, then Konami just messed up by not letting Luca attack that position.

I'm planning to release as much of the source code and information as I can. I might hold a couple of quick & dirty programs in reserve out of embarrassment/pride. Other than that, the whole reason I started the wiki was to make as much information available as possible. The Japanese character set was what set me off, to be honest. I don't believe nobody ever tried to work it out before, but if anybody did, it doesn't seem like they put it on the web. It might be in some dark corner of co.jp, I guess. I tried a few variants of searches in Japanese on Google, and came up dry.

Edit: Plus, they made me a Guide Writer here to cover some of it.

Edit 2: Argh. The LBA listing is in seventeen bloody files on the disc. It's fairly trivial to edit them all, but cripes.
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by Pyriel »

Ha ha.

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Celes
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by Celes »

Great work! I love to see the full patch for all those bugs and glitches and we'd love to host it on this domain as well :)
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by Pyriel »

All right, here's a release candidate patch for your enjoyment: http://www.herrvillain.com/codebreaker/ ... _patch.exe

This is version 1.1.10 of the patch. I've done some testing, but as it's a rebuilt ISO, it sort of requires a full play-through for verification. I ran through most of the game's functions, and the fact that they work at all tells me that everything should be OK. One never knows though, it's always possible they did something evil, like putting a compressed file listing in one of the overlay files.

You can see what the patch fixes on the Wiki Page. This patch is too large to upload there, unfortunately. I can't really make it much smaller, since even using my rebuild script requires having raw rips of the STR files from the disc. I don't want to get into requiring people to do prerequisite steps, aside from having an ISO of the original game to patch. I can't do it with PPFs anymore, since the rebuilt ISO is a different size than the original. Luckily, Nullsoft's installer script provides a patch function that doesn't care about size differences, and I was pleasantly surprised that the patch file is only about 15 MB.

Edit: I haven't updated the patch yet, and probably won't for a while, but I fixed the Chaco Bug. It surprised me how fiddly it was to trigger, so I provided a fairly good description of what you have to do to make it happen. I always thought just refusing him was all that's required, but you actually have to refuse at least twice, and then let him join at a specific point in the script.
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by KFCrispy »

wow there are so many minor programming issues in this game.. it's amazing how you can figure this all out and furthermore fix it!
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

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Thank you (KFC and Celes).

Yeah, for the most part all the problems, no matter how major their effect, trace back to relatively minor programming hiccups. The code for checking Recipe, Plan, etc. bit-flags, just looks like it was written by someone who took a C class as an elective, and somehow wound up on the development team instead of the marketing team. Excluding the untranslated text, the biggest hassle has been the McDohl name issue, followed by the Plans bug, and both of them were just piddly mistakes that should have been caught in a proper QA.

I think I just fixed the Matilda Glitch. It's a one byte change to the area initialization. This one goes into the "needs thorough testing" category, though. As far as I can tell, it's only necessary to modify one file. Miklotov, and one NPC are hidden on the map at the beginning, so I think this script should suffice right up until the events where the gate is permanently opened for you. I scanned the other files for instances of it, and came up empty. Long story short, though, I'm not sure I fixed it in every file that needs fixing, and I don't know if changing it will make it impossible to move later. I doubt the latter will be a problem. I just saw speculation that the glitch existed because the gate needed to be mobile for when it was removed later. That seems unlikely. Konami should be perfectly able to move or destroy map objects without needing them to be something the player can push. It's done with immovable NPCs all the time.
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Raww Le Klueze
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

The going theory is that because Matilda was originally supposed to occur much earlier in the story the checkpoint was supposed to be open for you to travel there, but when the story changed they closed it off but forgot to make it an unmovable object. There's no reason to believe they needed it to be movable to be able to open it later, the PSP version has closed the gate without problems and that was done by a bunch of chinese guys who weren't very good at what they're doing.

Why the hell they even put a gate there in the first place is the real mystery, when every other checkpoint just has the guards turn you around... it even happens in Matilda if you approach it from the wrong side.
Doctorum Non Urina Singulus.
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

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Yeah. That theory doesn't really make much sense. The only reason I don't dismiss it totally is that odd choices and compound mistakes seem to be the story of this game. My main concern is that I might have missed a file that still needs the fix applied.

Edit: Well, I've mostly fixed the Armory Bug. I wound up making the purchase fail when you don't have enough money. It plays the "quack" sound, and the potch display actually updates whenever you make a purchase. The only thing a little off is that it flashes "Thank you" or whatever, instead of, "You don't have enough money". The message is there so briefly that I'm not terribly fussed about it. I should be able to eventually fix it, but that's a very minor, cosmetic issue.

The game sort of loses track of where it is when you do that, or so it seems. I could have tried just making it go straight back to the item selection screen, which is probably what the designers should have done in the first place. I do like being able to make multiple purchases of the same item like that, though. So I decided to leave it in, and just fix the code to check the party's potch supply before letting you take the item.

Edit 2: Oh yeah, I fixed the Inn as well. That was an easy one. For some reason, they call a "Restore Party" function three times as you go through the menu. First when you choose stay, then we choose to save or not, and I think once more as the scene reloads. I just essentially commented out the first call.
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by Pyriel »

Lots done over the long weekend. New fixes:
Farm Bug
Eilie Knife-throwing Bug

I've got around five or six things left until I've fixed or evaluated all the bugs I know about. After that, another test run-through, and then the (more or less) final NTSC patch can be put up. Then I just have to port everything to the other versions. That's going to be a pain, just because of the sheer amount of bugs that exist.

Edit: I just took a crack at the Sierra Knockdown bug and couldn't trigger it. Is there anything special you have to do?

Edit 2: I'm taking the Amada early recruit thing off the list. He's long gone before I can even dismiss all the dialogue.
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BadPotato
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by BadPotato »

I tried your "Suikoden II (NA) Bug Fix Version 1.1.10", but it didn't heard any music either at the mercanary camp war and at the muse city(with Gilbert) war.

My ISO file is 501 823ko, so lower than the original, should this be normal?
Pyriel wrote:Edit: I just took a crack at the Sierra Knockdown bug and couldn't trigger it. Is there anything special you have to do?
I'll try to test this again later, but if this isn't about winning while she's knocked this might trigger if she was about to do a special attack or something.
Pyriel wrote:Edit 2: I'm taking the Amada early recruit thing off the list. He's long gone before I can even dismiss all the dialogue.
I have been wrong when telling you to alternate L1+R1 with turbo. R1 doesn't skip the text... maybe if you alternate L1+X, you might have better result. Thought afer that you have to run in the upper direction for few frame. The timing over there have to be a bit too perfect for the casual player, so yeah now need to fix this.

Just for the trip, I once made a little bot that played "almost" perfectly at the mole mashing mini-game with Tony, so it could play without end. Then after a while the score go crazy(common glitch fpr this kind of game), I could post something about it later, if there interest for this glitch, that require somekind of "super skill".

edith: oops, sorry I mean my new ISO was 501 523ko
Last edited by BadPotato on Mon Nov 28, 2011 9:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
algol
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Re: Bug Fixes

Post by algol »

I tried to use the 1.1.10 patch but I am having problems with it. I created an iso using Iso Producer and applied the patch. The iso filesize did not change after running the program so I reripped an iso and compared the patched iso with the clean one. I did a crc32 and byte by byte comparison and the two isos were identical.
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

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It should be 501,523 KB. There are some allocated, but unused sectors after the last file. That's strange on the music. I tried it myself and those songs are silent again. I'm guessing that by repacking the data I didn't recreate Konami's build error or something. It's very odd. Those songs are in BGM.XA, so I'd expect them to work if the others do. I'll try a few things later.

Algol, it sounds like you tried to use the ISO you were patching as the destination as well. It looks like that won't work. I'll have to add to the script in the next release, so that it won't allow you to choose the same file for the source and destination. Sorry. I threw that installer together pretty hastily, and I don't know all the ins and outs of it.

Edit: Looks like I have to move the BGM file the same way as the STR files to preserve Konami's mistakes and oddities. I know I've got one of the songs working again. After I get done with work for the day, I'll dig up the saves for testing the others, and upload a new patch with all the fixes from this weekend and the music repatched. I was originally planning to do my own test run-through before posting it, but if you guys are wanting to try it out, I'd appreciate the feedback. And I'll try to fix the installer while I'm at it.

Actually, I edited the disc-build script to write dummy sectors and fill up the space. I think I'll make some adjustments so it at least tries to create an ISO the same size. If it works, I can go back to PPF patches. There is about 300 KB/150 sectors worth of dummy data, so as long as the fixes don't have to grow beyond that, it should be fine. The only thing I'm a little concerned about is the interleaving of some of the data in the image. (Note that by copying raw sectors, the files will report as different sizes if you view them in something like ISO buster. They take up the same number of sectors on disc, and the amount of game data in them is the same. They're just marked differently in the table of contents, which the game doesn't care about.)

Thanks for the catches, guys.
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Pyriel
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Re: Bug Fixes

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Well, I was afraid of this. With the addition of the re-sized UWASA files forcing everything out two sectors, a PPF patch is rather larger than I'd like. It's not insane or anything, but whenever the final patch comes out, I think it'll have to be something other than a simple PPF. I really don't like the Nullsoft scripting language, so I may just wrap my own GUI around their patch utility. Anyway, we'll stick with PPF for now.

Suikoden2_BugFix(U)_1.5.38.7z

I compressed it with 7zip to keep the file size as small as possible. The 7Zip decompressor is free software.

I confirmed three of the four songs are back. I couldn't find my save for the Annallee recruit sequence. It ought to play, though.
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