Topic: How did Tropicon rip this cutscene map? (Star Ocean) [SNES]

[Spaghettimaster]

You can see this cutscene map (bottom left) only at the beginning and the end of the game (and only a small part of it):
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/StarOcean(J)-Miscellaneous.png
Time Gate in Star Ocean (SNES), I also have quicksaves for bsnes+ (rawpalettes) if needed.

Somehow he was able to walk over the entire thing and make his screenshots, I can only guess that he used codes to freely walk around during one of the cutscenes.
According to his profile he isn't active anymore, but is it somehow possible to get in touch for these codes? Or maybe he shared them with any other member here?
I would like to do a layered version of it (upper layer / lower layer), but it's currently out of reach for me.

[dark_lord_zagato]

Hello. In the event you are unable to get in contact with Tropicon I have my own solution for this problem.

I was just now able to achieve freedom of movement at the Time Gate by using a room modifier code. This code will work upon exiting a room, so go into an item shop or something and take a savestate next to the door. Turn the code on and leave and you should be at the Time Gate. You won't be in a cutscene so you can walk around freely.

This was done in BizHawk but you should be able to adapt it to other emulators too.

Go to hex editor, make sure the memory domain says WRAM, freeze 000461 and poke the value to 0E.

If you find yourself stuck in a wall just use some position modifier codes to get out of there.

002013 = Horizontal Position
002016 = Vertical Position


They would look like this as PAR codes.

7E04610E Room modifier code (Set to Time Gate)
7E2013?? Horizontal Axis
7E2016?? Vertical Axis

[Spaghettimaster]

Oh, a room modifier, that's neat.
Thank you very much, I just used 7E04610E in bsnes-rawpalettes, walked into the next map and got teleported to the time gate =)
Also got myself unstuck with a walk through walls code (1D4D-E7B8).

One last request: Can you tell me the room ID for the docked Calnus?
https://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/starocean/asset/504735/
This one is cut off and I would like to capture it completely.

[dark_lord_zagato]

After taking a closer look I think the room modifier should be a two part code. Anyway, here's the codes that take you to the docked Calnus.

7E0461B7 Room modifier set to docked Calnus
7E046201 (Part 2 of code. 00 is the first set of 256 rooms and 01 is the next set of 256 rooms.)


I'll fix the Time Gate code to have both values...

7E04610E Room modifier set to Time Gate
7E046200


Here's a few others I noticed.


7E0461B9 Room modifier set to restaurant cutscene
7E046201

7E0461E1 Room modifier set to meeting room cutscene
7E046200

[VGCartography]

You have inspired me zagato. I've been trying to figure out something similar for a few Wild Arms maps and I never considered trying to catch/inject the map ID on screen transition. Maybe this will work for that one also!

[dark_lord_zagato]

On this subject, I have a Secret of Mana video where I show off three different methods of getting into places i'm not supposed to. There's the map ID code, some x/y coordinate codes, and also a code that determines whether or not the player is holding the controller. If you turn this on during a cutscene, the cutscene is paused and you can walk around and do whatever you want. I always put my PAR codes in the video description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SD_siXnI0M

[Spaghettimaster]

Again, thank you very much. These were the two Star Ocean maps which gave me headache.
They're both complete now.

And since you're talking about Secret of Mana:
https://tcrf.net/Secret_of_Mana_(SNES)

Has Star Ocean a code that will let you turn into npc characters too? So far, I've only seen something like that for Secret of Mana.
If you've seen my npc sheets on tsr, there are multiple npcs which don't move. There might be walk frames for them, but I'm not quite sure and would like to check it out.

[dark_lord_zagato]

Has Star Ocean a code that will let you turn into npc characters too? So far, I've only seen something like that for Secret of Mana.
If you've seen my npc sheets on tsr, there are multiple npcs which don't move. There might be walk frames for them, but I'm not quite sure and would like to check it out.

Not that I know of. Probably the most you could do is change the character ID for the person in front, but you would always be limited to playable characters.

[Spaghettimaster]

Too bad, but I kinda expected that answer, since it's really specific and as mentioned, I've only seen it for SoM so far.

But changing the ID for the character in front (overworld) could also be helpful, since I've already started ripping the protagonists and some of them have a running animation that can't be really captured, since characters like Tinek use their wolf form in battle and others like Joshua are flying over the battlefield. Joshua and Tinek use their overworld running animation in the Sylvalant Ruins (Eris cutscene), but I haven't seen them using the other directions.

You don't happen to have codes for these characters, do you? I would like to capture their frames und upload them to tsr.

[dark_lord_zagato]

I just checked, and even if you delete Ratix from your party and only have one other character, the map character will still be Ratix. It might not even be possible to change map characters in this game, unfortunately.

It would be nice if there were better programs for displaying everything in a ROM visually. Zophar's Domain has tile viewers, but this stuff hasn't been worked on in decades and most SNES roms look like a total mess.

You're Barack Obama on TSR? It looks like you've done quite a lot of work over there.

[Spaghettimaster]

Ah, a code like that would've been too good to be true I guess. Hopefully one day I can stitch the frames together from the chunks in YY-CHR (if they're actually completely unused, I haven't checked any PA event so far).

You're Barack Obama on TSR? It looks like you've done quite a lot of work over there.

Yes, that's me. I'm currently going for every SNES rpg possible, with a few breaks here and there.
I get most of my codes from the gamehacking.org discord (walk thru walls, no random battle), since they're the base of my work.
Also using an emulator called bsnes+ with a mod for true colours (bsnes-rawpalettes) made by Random Talking Bush.

It would be nice if there were better programs for displaying everything in a ROM visually.

The best thing I've found for viewing Star Ocean was the no S-DD1/96Mbit hack from Romhacking, which allows me to view the rom file in YY-CHR with much better clarity.
Although I couldn't find every frame for every npc (and a few other things), it was great improvement over the original rom.