Shining Force III: Shining Force 3 Savefile Editor - Current Ver 0.85

[BoneIdol]

I've started work on a program to edit Shining Force 3 savefiles without spending ages faffing about with a Hex Editor.

It'll definitely be able to edit:

Character Names
Character Stats
Character Level/Experience
Character Spells
Which Characters are in which Force in Scenario 3.
Characters' Friendship Levels
What Items Characters are holding/have equiped

I know most of these give people the ability to just break any semblence of challenge in the game, but I'm adding them for completeness sake; I'm sure most people are going to toy with it then just use it to fix annoying problems like Garosh's HP bug, Friendship values not traveling through Scenarios or even just making Jane not-useless in the Premium Disc.

Anyway! I'm really just making this topic to ask you all what else you'd like this program to do? For example, I could look into whether it's possible to edit characters' portraits via the savefile - so you can get rid of some of those ugly scenario 3 portraits.

I'm aiming for it to at least support SSF (both with and without Hook Backup Library enabled), Giri Giri, Cassini, Yabuse and Satourne save files as well as having the ability to convert one save file to another type.

I would also really like to have it support files uploaded from a Saturn Replay 4 in 1 cart, but my cart died a long, long time ago (and I dunno if I ever even had a cable for it). If people could send me some save files for the different scenarios made with the 4-in-1 cart that would be fantastic start on making that happen.

Cheers Everyone!

[lightsol]

WOW great! Have you found where friendships are stored? I'd love to know!

Don't forget "class" "current conditions" "battle control type" "spells" "weapon types and experience" and "kills and losses." :-)

[BoneIdol]

WOW great!  Have you found where friendships are stored? I'd love to know!

Don't forget "class" "current conditions" "battle control type" "spells" "weapon types and experience" and "kills and losses." :-)

Got every single one, including Rogan in SSF. It's just that I had to keep editing the topic because this forum won't let me double post.

I've also gotten all the locations for all stats including magic resistance etc. and I've already worked out a way to convert Casini/Giri Giri/old SSF files into newer SSF files and vice-versa. I just need to come up with a nice user interface and actually write some code to read and write to the file.

Yeah battle control type is one of my big ones to find; as everyone hates Donhort's AI. It could add a fun challenge to the game if you can set other characters to it; having all your characters except your leader use it would be both soul-destroying and hillarious.

Oh, and I'm gonna try using the C# programming language to write this (mainly just to see what the fuss is about) - if anyone has any good reasons why I shouldn't then now is the time to say them.

[Cullsoft]

Seeing as this sort of thing';s now out in the open...

Funily enough, I've been working on a similar program - not so much giving people the ability to EDIT data, but instead VIEW it. It's something where people can take a look at their numerous save files and work out which file's which - and with a "spoiler mode" take a look at some of the values you can't see in-game (such as friendship levels and weapon experience).

Things you haven't listed but could easily be made visible and editable are:
- Magic resistance (base and current)
- Character stats (base and current)
- Weapon experience
- Equipable weapons (not sure if this can be successfully changed)

I very much doubt you can edit character portraits via the save file. This is almost certainly data that is kept on the CD, and the save file just has a reference to the character's class; for example, setting Grace's class to the value for Priest gets her Priest portrait, the value for Cleric gets her Cleric portrait, but a class she doesn't have (such as Magician) gives no portrait (or at least a dark, garbled mess). This also means that chaning class (at least outside of the ones a character should have) may also cause glitches or not work at all.

[BoneIdol]

Yeah, I thought that would be the case. Figured it couldn't hurt to see though.

Oh, and for a viewer program, I'm sure I read somewhere that new versions of SSF are working on adding Lua scripting support for those crazy TAS people. I was thinking of doing similar using that so that you can see things like the exact friendships values and Earth resistance etc. while you're playing the game.

I'll make sure to release my source code with anything I put up; I haven't programmed a desktop application in about a year and I've never used C# before so it'll probably be good for a quick chuckle. Or possibly as a good excuse for every programmer on these boards to encourage me to commit seppuku.

EDIT

If you want to make your program edit files, I'm pretty sure this is the algorithm that the game uses for it's checksums. There's a C++, C# and Perl implementation on that page.

EDIT

Some proof I'm not talking out of my arse on this one.

SF3 Editor Version 0.01



I've been working at this since yesterday. It only supports SSF hook backup library savefiles and doesn't support writing files yet, but you can use it to check on your friendship values (45 = Soulmate). It will load SSF savefiles from all 3 scenarios and the Premium Disc.

I've also still got to add stuff for all the other stats and stuff like character's level/class etc. You'll notice a lot of stats are missing.

It may require you to install Microsoft's .net framework on your computer.

EDIT 28/01/10:

Ok, here's my next alpha build for your perusal:

Version 0.1



It can now save files to Hook Backup Library SSF Files and allows you to edit:
Characters' Names
Characters' Stats (including Magic Resistance)
Characters' Friendships
Characters' Spells and their Levels
Whether Characters are Male or Female (for equiping Apollo/Artemis Pin etc.)
Whether the Character is AI Controlled or Player Controlled

The AI/Controllable tab is buggy; all settings aside from Player Controlled result in an Enemy Controlled Character (so they attack you). You should be able to edit Donhort to Player Controllable with it though, so I left it in even though it's not working right.

[Aerris]

pretty good job mate!
also if u success in replacing the portraits this is going to be reaaalyyy awesome

just one questions though

is the "Which Characters are in which Force in Scenario 3." in already?cause if it is i dont know how it works -_-

[BoneIdol]

is the "Which Characters are in which Force in Scenario 3." in already?cause if it is i dont know how it works -_-

Nope, not yet sorry. It'll be at least a few days before I get around to adding that.

My current plan is:

Today + Tomorrow: Get the program to load Casini/Giri Giri/Old SSF Save files (I'm leaving saving as these types till last because it looks to be a MASSIVE pain)

Sunday: Fix Status Ailments + add ability to change characters' classes

Monday: Add ability to change characters' Items and Equipment

After that I've got these done I'll work on changing which characters are in which force.
I've been putting off doing it because I'm not entirely sure what to do with the interface, but I think I've worked something out now.

--EDIT--

Oh and Culley, I was wrong about what algorithm the checksum uses. It's actually a hell of a lot simpler its:

- Grab every byte in the file after 0x17
- Add them together
- Modulo 2^32 (4294967296) the total

My C# implementation
CODE
long total = 0;
for (int i = 0x18; i > 16);
data[0x16] = (byte)((checksum >> 8) % 256);
data[0x17] = (byte)(checksum % 256);

[ChaotikZ]

... amazing, I was just starting SF3 from the beginning ( again ), and I find this, truly amazing.

I agree with Aerris, something like a " Character Modifier " option would be extremely useful ( Rogan, both Jade and Garosh in scen.2, Jane is scen.3 ... ).

Thank you, and Godspeed for your project ;3

[Aerris]

Well thx 4 all the info mate,all i can say gl i would offer my help but i`m afraid that i`m nooby in programing stuff :/

[Hotspur]

This looks like an awesome piece of work! However, I am afraid of it, because I will be sorely tempted by it when it is made generally available.

I'm not the type to tweak and experiment. I would march a battalion of übermensches from Saraband all the way to Remotest.

Weapon experience would be another useful function, as Culley mentioned. Particularly so people wouldn't have to sit there and wonder how many more times they need to plink a lizardman with a knife until they can do something else.

[BoneIdol]

Version 0.11

Changes

- Added ability to edit characters' weapon levels
- Fixed the magic resistance boxes so you can no longer enter values that crash the program
- Program now let's you open an old emulator save file, find all shining force 3 files within and let you pick one. It still doesn't load them yet (there appears to be some kind of checksum in the memory card at the end of every block, which is giving me problems)

I'm not 100% sure all of the weapon names are in the correct order; if you find that Synbios with level 3 swords has level 3 rapiers in this program, let met know. I also couldn't find where weapon experience is stored, but changing the level does affect the game. I'll look into this later.

My next release is going to allow you to change which characters are in which force, as well as if characters are promoted or not. It'll be done either tonight or tomorrow.

I'm giving the emulator compatibility thing a rest for a while because I've got the most horrible hang over ever (brother's leaving party last night) and its turning out to be an utter pain to work out how the files work.

--EDIT--

Reuploaded with a quick bug fix where the program will not let you add the spell Hell Dragon in scenario 2 and will crash if you select a character who has the spell.

--EXTRA EDIT--

Oh and if anyone really wants to help me out, I could really do with images of all the characters' portraits. I'm working on making the force editing bit so that you can just click and drag a character's face from one force into another.

At the moment I'm using jumesyn's images, and they're kinda crappy. They're really small and saved as gifs so a few of them have really awful looking colour distortion.

[Lord Oddeye sama]

Only noticed this now. Thank you very much for making this real. My and a friend's project only went as far as this.

[ChaotikZ]

At the moment I'm using jumesyn's images, and they're kinda crappy. They're really small and saved as gifs so a few of them have really awful looking colour distortion.

I suggest you use the portraits from Wolfgang's page:

http://rpg-home.lunar-net.com/sf3_new/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Animated portraits, all promotions, as well as portraits for NPC's and others ( Rogan and Jane comes to mind, Bulzome, etc ):


Also he does have sprites for all weapons, items, magics:




... too bad there's no Perfect Disc promotion portraits for everyone :x

[Hotspur]

- Added ability to edit characters' weapon levels

Weapon levels (0-3) or weapon experience (0-999)?

(Sorry for not checking myself, I can't run my Windows boot at the moment.)

[BoneIdol]

Weapon Levels 0-3. I couldn't actually find where the experience was stored, although I have an idea on how to do it (it involves starting a brand new save file and may take a while so I'm leaving it for later).

As for the faces thing, I'm gonna swap them for the jumesyn ones I'm using later on. I'm gonna have to go through them all remove the animations. I'm going to this because:

- They'll rack up the filesize a LOT
- Having every single SF3 face on screen talking at you at once is going to have a 1990s website feel to it. Especially when you're going to be dragging them around.
- Making gifs animate in a program is usually quite annoying. I'm sure there's probably something to make it much easier in .net, but meh, can't be bothered.

Cheers for the link though. They're much better quality images. I'll send the bloke who runs the site an email to ask if he minds me using them.

Anyway, working on the scenario thing today. Would be done now but I ended up going out to play pool with some friends last night instead of the few hours coding I'd planned.

Oh and Lord Oddeye, I had a quick look at your program but couldn't get it to import into my Visual Studio 2008. Don't suppose you know anything much about how SSF/Giri Giri/Casini save files work? The code I'm using to try and convert them to something like SSF files with hook backup library on is yielding some annoying discrepencies.

What I'm currently doing is:
- Removing every odd byte (since it's just an FF)
- Finding the start of an SF3 file by scanning every 32 bytes and see if they look like the start of an SF3 save (something like SFORCE_31_01)
- Reading {length of file for that scenario} bytes onwards when loading that particular file

The problem is that the locations of stats etc. change depending on where abouts in the file the sf3 save is located. I assume this means that the file adds stuff after each block or something like that. Anything you could tell me about this would save me many hours or pain and misery staring at a hex editor window.

[ChaotikZ]

Glad it was useful :3

I've a question, let's say I start a new game with Save Hook ON ( thus, creating a SFORCE31_01.bin in Backup/External Backup ), will I be able to transfer that save to Scenario 2, or EVEN convert it to ExternalBackupRAM.bin in the emulator's root?

[BoneIdol]

You'll be able to transfer it to scenario 2 if you play scenario 2 with hook backup library on. You can't convert it to External/Internal Backup ram yet.

At the moment if you open a ExternalBackupRam.bin or InternalBackupRam.bin file, it will find all the Shining Force 3 files inside it, but it still can't read the files in them or insert/update files in them yet because I still don't fully understand how they work.

I am definitely going to make it so you can open files from one format and save them in another. The plan is for it to support files made with:
- SSF with hook backup on
- SSF without hook backup off/Casini/Giri Giri (they use the same file format)
- Satourne
- files transfered from an actual saturn with an Action Replay 4-in-1 and this piece of kit (it uses same format as Casini/Giri Giri etc.).

It's still very early days though; I've not even been working on this a week yet. I think I'm going pretty damn well, all things considered.

--EDIT--

I know I said I'd have the force editing bit done today but it's still a little too buggy for release. Turns out C# REALLY sucks for doing stuff like drag and drop so I've had to hack something together for it. Here's a few screenshots though:

The current arrangement is that you drag a character's face from one squad into another.


Rogan lacks a map sprite, so the game makes a cancel/error noise every time it tries to load it.


However he does have a battle sprite.


Anyway, I'm off to bed now. I'll have a few hours tomorrow making this not horrendously buggy then upload it for you all. G'night!

[Jode]

I've noticed for the weapon level part of it increasing it using the editor doesnt unlock the weapon specials. I'm not sure if weapon level is directly related to the specials but i think they are.

[BoneIdol]

Yeah I noticed that yesterday when I was playing about with Rogan. My guess is the weapon specials are stored elsewhere in the file. I'll add the ability to edit which ones are being used if that is the case.

Anyway new release. Version 0.20.

Changes
- Added ability to alter which party members are in which force in Scenario 1, 2, 3 and the Premium Disc. The user interface is still a little buggy, and the idea was to click, hold down the left mouse button and drag faces from one squad to another, but C# doesn't want to let me do that. Click once to start moving a character and click again to drop them in another squad. The GUI here also has a bug where the picture can stop dragging if you move your mouse too fast if you click on the very edge of a characters' portrait.
- Removed Jane from Scenario 3, she just crashes the game if you try to use her.
- Fixed Weapon types in the weapon level editing bit. One or two of the weapon names didn't match the weapons they edited.
- Also fixed a bug where the editor couldn't distinguish between Scenario 3 and Premium Disc files. However this wasn't a problem until editing which characters are in which force was added.

--EDIT--

The owner of http://rpg-home.lunar-net.com/sf3_new/index.html sent me a lovely email saying I can use his character portraits in this. So yay! I will be replacing the jumesyn portraits in the next update.

Also, it seems I just got a new job as a web developer starting tomorrow so this project might be slowing down a bit. Sorry guys but I needs my beer money.

[ChaotikZ]

Aw! This is beautiful. Finally I can have Rogan without resorting to save-swaping between GiriGiri and SSF and hex editing xD

Too bad about Jane, tho ;__;

I have a question. Is a "Pappets monster modifier" possible in the future?