Help needed: FF8 PSX enemy editing using hex editor

[FrankKlepackiFan]

Hello Qhimm,

I'm trying to mod the enemies in FF8 stronger using Hex editor. I used Tim viewer and learned where the enemy section in the FF8 IMG starts. Or at least I think I do. But I have no idea where the different values for the enemy files are in the code. Anyone here good enough to lend me a hand in this?

 

[Halfer]

http://wiki.qhimm.com/view/FF8/FileFormat_DAT#Section_7:_Informations_.26_stats

Timviewer only shows you the location of .tim texture(s) of the object you are looking in, however enemy textures are in the same .DAT file in section 11 on the link above.

You can find where the section 7 starts from the enemy file's header, the offset in header tells you where the section start locally (counted from the file's starting position).

 

[FrankKlepackiFan]

Hey sorry for not replying back. I thought this sounded too difficult so i just started modding the pc version instead. I successfully modded the enemy files in the pc version and I'd have another question: is it possible to pack the battle.fs file in the pc version to ps1 version. And if it's possible do you happen to know if the enemy files values are the same as in ps1 version? I've heard that at least the omega weapon boss is different from ps1 in pc version.

 

[JWP]

It's possible to change the .dat files for the PS version as they are the same format as the PC version.
The PS files are in a different archive format (i.e. not .fs) and are uncompressed, so it's not currently possible to increase the size of files but it's possible to patch files with ones that are the same size or possibly smaller.
See: https://www.ff7catalog.com/posts/75227/
The offsets in that message are for the PAL version of FF8 but it's fairly easy to scan for the .dat files, I believe I just looked for the bytes 0B 00 00 00 adjacent to each other in FF8DISC1.IMG since most of the .dat files start with that.
Then you can find out where the section you want is by looking at:
http://wiki.qhimm.com/view/FF8/FileFormat_DAT
Then you just jump to the required offset from the start of the file - using the PC files as a reference would probably help make it easier.
It's fairly easy to recognize the right section because the monster info starts with an FF8 string which looks like ASCII (the monster name) followed by a bunch of 00s.
FF8 Strings look something like: Wos_jj - which is Squall and Elecjm - which is Angelo.