Question about Xenogears CD File System

[Akari]

I have a little question about Xenogears CD file system. In the root of the disk there are only two files: SLUS_006.64 and SYSTEM.CNF, but nothing more. Although when I've searched the disk with the special tools i found much more info.

Do all the other files exist or are there only raw data on CD? Does a way to recover all the other files exist? How did they hide all of the game files?

 

[Micky]

I haven't found anything, yet. There is either a non-standard file table in the executable or a on a fixed position on the disk.
Of course, they could've hardcoded the file positions into the program code...
I played around with a tool that makes the data visible and found a few textures, but nothing that looks like it points to this data.

 

[Cyberman]

Ahhh Xeno Gars

Ok off the top of my head there are two ways to do this.  One is put the ISO directory information in big endian format.  This makes it incompatible with DOS and windows machines.  The files you CAN see have BOTH entries in the table. (They have little and big endian tables) so if they have nothing in the little endian DOS/Windows doesn't see anything there.  ISO buster will likely tell you if they did that.

Second how big is the disk? IE  How much space does the disk volume take. If it's greater than those 2 files.. well it's stil lthere then.  SYSTEN.CNF on the playstation is the boot file sort of like the AUTOEXEC.BAT file on a PC.  That will likely contain the load information for SLUS_006.64.  It sets the stack size and I'm not sure what else.

At this point the Playstation starts the game
Conclusion? I believe the data is in raw sectors.  The file information is likely in the EXE file.

However if you find the file names with something like ISOBUSTER, that doesn't mean they didn't do it that way.  NOTE if it's loaded as sectors etc. If you find an image file or something on the disk ALWAYS note the location, and compute the sector information.  I'm not going to discuse ISO format information to you here. Needless to say it's important in order to find the begining of the file.

Cyb

 

[halkun]

dollars to dougnuts the filename information's been stripped and you have nothing but a bunch of sector offsets somewhere.

In the Japanese "Tokimeki memorial", to keep people from ripping the graphics, the "data" directory was screwed up on puropse

If you tried to enter the folder it would gag and gag and gag. Did the same thing with Linux too. It seems that the "folder" was over 400 Meg large. (Just the folder, which is only about supposed to be a 4k file pointer.)

My guess was that you manully read the "folder" took off it's directory bit, and then extrated the data from the resulting file. Pretty spiffy

 

[Cyberman]

dollars to dougnuts the filename information's been stripped and you have nothing but a bunch of sector offsets somewhere.

In the Japanese "Tokimeki memorial", to keep people from ripping the graphics, the "data" directory was screwed up on puropse

1 As long as those are Dixie Cream doughnuts it's ok
2 They do this a lot
3) But not in Medievil I noticed (made by Sony Europe).

If you tried to enter the folder it would gag and gag and gag. Did the same thing with Linux too. It seems that the "folder" was over 400 Meg large. (Just the folder, which is only about supposed to be a 4k file pointer.)

My guess was that you manully read the "folder" took off it's directory bit, and then extrated the data from the resulting file. Pretty spiffy

I guess ripping game graphics is a popular hobby in Japan?
Seems to be very common hobby at least.

I don't want to RIP the game graphics myself I just want to read the information and run the game with a seperate engine

Cyb - PS IRC channel was quiet but then again it was Sunday and really early or late for most people.

 

[halkun]

tokimemo is a popular dating sim, so it's a given that the graphics are ripped and traded online.

 

[Micky]

I seem to remember that SEGA officially recommended to work with file offsets instead of filenames once game development is complete for Saturn games. I could be wrong though.

 

[Cyberman]

tokimemo is a popular dating sim, so it's a given that the graphics are ripped and traded online.

Sort of like 1000 Arms? That game always crashed when I tried to date the girl in the first town you enter.  It's a weird game but it's actually pretty funny. At least I thought it was funny.  It does get boring after a while since you can predict pretty acurately what will happen next in the dating thing.  Anyhow.. I digress

I'll have to look at my Xenogear CD's sometime to see what's going on with there FS.  Xenogears was finished after FF7 if I remember correctly. Both games were too long in developement and were axed to get them to market. The Xenogears team was also fired I believe because they took too long.  Now Xenosaga (which is by the way a really good game) is out and the second episode I hear is close to release.  Xenogears they cut 90% of the second half of the game out and replaced it with those REALLY REALLY long movies that didn't have much in them.

Ahhh I am too trivial .. bleah!

Cyb

 

[halkun]

tokimemo is a popular dating sim, so it's a given that the graphics are ripped and traded online.

Sort of like 1000 Arms?

Kinda...

In Tokimemo you are a freshman in high school and you make friends and date the girls. You have attibutes like apperance, book smarts, science smarts, culture, stress, etc, that you build up.

The AI is pretty wicked because the girls talk while you are not there. If you screw over a girl and she's friends with this other girl, you can quickly lose the game. You take the girls to movies, parks, zoos, it's really kind of fun.

Go a google search for "Tokimeki Memorial"

There is also a dating sim I always wanted to play where you dated a head in a flower pot.  It was from 2001 and had an english version that never saw the light of day.

I'm not kidding about the head in a flowerpot thing... Here's the link

 

[DragonZap]

I'll have to look at my Xenogear CD's sometime to see what's going on with there FS.  Xenogears was finished after FF7 if I remember correctly. Both games were too long in developement and were axed to get them to market. The Xenogears team was also fired I believe because they took too long.  Now Xenosaga (which is by the way a really good game) is out and the second episode I hear is close to release.  Xenogears they cut 90% of the second half of the game out and replaced it with those REALLY REALLY long movies that didn't have much in them.

Ahhh I am too trivial .. bleah!

I'm new here (been lurking a while), but I suppose now's a good time to bring this up. I started on a CDR plug-in for the various Playstation emulators out there that sits between the emulator and another CDR plug-in and can log and modify the disc accesses that the emulator makes. It's not done yet, but it is at least somewhat usable. I wrote it to try and figure out what Vagrant Story was doing with its 3D models and other files, but that game doesn't do any special things with the ISO filesystem. However, in the process of writing the plug-in, I also knew that many Playstation games bypassed the ISO file system and made their own, so it can also handle raw disc accesses. Maybe you'd want to try it out?

 

[Cyberman]

I'm new here (been lurking a while), but I suppose now's a good time to bring this up. I started on a CDR plug-in for the various Playstation emulators out there that sits between the emulator and another CDR plug-in and can log and modify the disc accesses that the emulator makes. It's not done yet, but it is at least somewhat usable. I wrote it to try and figure out what Vagrant Story was doing with its 3D models and other files, but that game doesn't do any special things with the ISO filesystem. However, in the process of writing the plug-in, I also knew that many Playstation games bypassed the ISO file system and made their own, so it can also handle raw disc accesses. Maybe you'd want to try it out?

Ahhh a tweener plugin like PEC? Hmmm not at the moment but perhaps in a little bit. I am 'knee deep' in another project


Halkun - looks like it never made translation hmmmm I've heard the name of the game but never saw an english version. Ahhh well

Cyb

 

[DragonZap]

Right, like PEC except that it works for disc accesses rather than memory, and it's focused more on figuring out file formats than cheating.