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Skies of Arcadia Editor

ADnova

New member
I've started work on a complete editor for Skies of Arcadia.
It will allow editing of all text in the game, as well as attributes of all items.
So far I only have armor and weapon editing, but the rest will come soon enough. Just as a warning: the version I'm working on does not work with the Echelon rip, or at least the one I know of. It's made to work with the full GD-ROM rip of the game, where the only modification was to make it a self-bootable discjuggler (.cdi) image.

Here are some pics, although if anyone else actually has the version of the game mentioned above, I'll find some webspace for the program.

Pics of the editor:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/DarkMoon1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/BlueRogue1.jpg

In battle:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/DarkMoon2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/BlueRogue2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/DarkMoon3.jpg

Menu:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/DarkMoon4.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/BlueRogue3.jpg
 

Fina

New member
You've got my attention. I'll definitely be watching this project.

Good job.

I saw you also registered for the SoAWorld forums. You might want to drop by and post your progress there. Many of the people there have played SoA with Chankast and will probably be interested in this too.
 

dreamer

New member
i'm looking forward to the progress on this too, great work. i wish i could help make some codes, i really assumed they would work with the echelon version as well as the original game, but i guess not. i would find it interesting to play through the game making it harder using that modifier (perhaps i would add some will to the characters and take away some attack to make the offense more in balance). i would be interested in any kinds of codes you make? i saw you posted some on gamefaqs too.
 
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ADnova

New member
Thanks for the tip Federelli.

It's good to see that there's at least some interest in this project. I was working on getting item editing supported, but will instead move on to the dialogue editor. When that's finished, I'll release a test version for people to play around with. The biggest problem is that currently the program only works with the particular version of the game I have, which is the full rip of the North American game. The Echelon version floating around is a PAL version, which stores things differently and compresses the text. I haven't tried to decode the compression yet, but if getting a hold of the full version of the game is too much hassle, I'll look in to it.
 

Fina

New member
Well, I know it would definitely be awesome if you could come up with ways to mod and rebalance the game.
 
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ADnova

New member
I made a utility that lets you extract texture files from the game.
First, you have to open the image file with ISOBuster or some other image reading program. Files with textures in them have the extension .SML, .MLK, or .MLD. Copy the files you want to the same directory as the program. Read the readme, and follow the usage instructions.

It's on geocities, so right click, save as:
http://www.geocities.com/adnova2001/TexExtract.zip

It won't work the Echelon version, which has files that are encoded.
 
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ADnova

New member
I've got the dialogue editor working, so I'm going to post an early version of the editor. You're all free to ignore it and/or complain that it doesn't work.
Unless you have the same version of SOA that I do, to the byte, it probably won't work. And don't even try it on the Echelon version.
And please, for your sake and mine, back up your file before editing it!
Here:
http://www.geocities.com/adnova2001/soaeditor.zip
 

diablo2121

teh diAbLo
You think you can implement this for a real Dreamcast use? I'd rather be playing SoA with no speed issues and sound issues. ^_^
 
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ADnova

New member
Vyse said:
Somebody put here 1st_read.bin for soa (non-echelon or already pathed).
I want play in soa.

Even if that wasn't against the rules, it wouldn't do any good anyway. All of the data files in the Echelon version are encoded, so having the full-version 1ST_READ.BIN wouldn't make a difference.

diablo2121: This only works with the full 1GB image. I don't know of any methods that allow you to burn 1GB to a 800MB CD-R. What would be great would be to figure out how Echelon managed to pack the files down, and what code they injected to make the DC decode in real time. This might be a bit of work, but you could modify the full version with the editor, extract the files, encode them, create a new image, and then play that on the Dreamcast.
 
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ADnova

New member
It took me a while, but now the program can import and export textures.
The next release will have a help file that explains how to do everything, but that probably won't be for a few days.

Here's a lame example, I just extracted the texture for the Pirate's Grave discovery, opened it in Paint Shop Pro, and applied some brush stroke filter.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/example.png

And here's an example of the horror that results when you substitute one of Vyse's in-battle facial textures with one of Gilder's:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/adnova2001/vyse2.jpg
 
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Fina

New member
Do you know if it is possible to use higher res textures than those originally used in a model?
 

Meowzy

New member
hey, i'm kinda new and all. ^_^
so you have to use this editor on... what, a ROM or something? meaning that if i want to edit the game so everyone has cool lines, i have to download a dreamcast emulator, a Skies of Arcadia rom and this dialogue editor? or do i need more? or do i need a specific emulator? (chankast or something?)
 

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