Part 157: Vesperia Hacking - Unused Content
Today, we'll do something special: Let's look into the game's internals!The game stores the vast majority of its assets in FPS4 archives, in a somewhat logical and sorted fashion. Many of the assets are duplicated several times across archives, presumably to improve loading times. For example, story cutscenes all have their own file in chara.svo, which contains things like NPC and object models and textures, character animations, specific images, etc. that are used in that cutscene.
Let's start by looking at string.svo, which contains a single file: STRING_DIC.SO. This file contains all the system text, basically everything that is not specific to a map or scene, as well as for some reason the NPC dialogue. There's a couple interesting things in there:
For example, there's a full list of in-game story and sidequest events with a short description, presumably for a debug-menu to jump to them instantly.
There's also a list of skit trigger conditions in there.
Some strings from what I think is a developer sound test, which would be fun to use.
Looking at the list of location names, we can see that each map has its own string, so if you wanted you could name each map something unique. This is the text that shows up in the top right corner when opening the menu.
Here's something interesting regarding character names: You know how you can rename your characters? (unless you're playing the PAL 360 version, for some reason) The game does that by having placeholder variable names that just print the current character name in the text. Both Estelle and Judith have alternate names -- Estellise and Judy -- which have their own variables (Estellise -> EST, Estelle -> EST_P, Judith -> JUD, Judy -> JUD_P), which print their default when the name is the default but print the custom name when the character is renamed. Interestingly, all characters have data for such an additional _P name, which you can see above. They don't really make much sense all things considered, but hey, they exist.
For those curious, the 360 version does have the PAT placeholder for Patty, but no actual written out "Patty" or "パティ" anywhere in the script:
Strangely, though, they did some sort of accounting for Patty as the ship captain in the script, since there's a skit that has two variations for Rita's line:
So honestly, I have no idea how far they went with Patty before they scrapped her for the 360 release.
Anyway, moving on.
Some data for unused items exists, like that Holy Bottle 2 here. If you hack that into your save it works just fine and gives a yellow glow instead of the normal white one, but doesn't seem any different otherwise.
Not really unused, but it's interesting to note that every single in-battle attack has a name, a lot of them just aren't displayed anywhere.
On the same note, every enemy formation that can be loaded in the battle system has a name.
And finally, probably the most interesting thing in here, unused skills. Some of them exist and work fine in the PS3 version, mostly the mundane sounding ones, but a lot of them appear to not work at all and aren't even in the PS3 text anymore. A few of them are early stuff that was either implemented into other skills or the basic player ability set. Some sound awesome though and I wish they had actually implemented them.
The coolest sounding skill is this one though, with a ridiculously long description:
That finishes up the interesting stuff in STRING_DIC.SO, moving on to scenario.dat.
scenario.dat contains more or less all the code used to define in-game events and triggers. Namco uses their own script code for Tales games, which is stored in TSS files, named after the first three bytes in them. Tales System Script, perhaps? I can only guess. This data is compiled and surprisingly complex -- it's basically virtual machine code.
The game's cutscene dialogue is stored as strings within those files, so we had to get some basic understanding of them to rip and reinsert the text for the PS3 translation. Unfortunately, I don't understand the code well enough to where I can change events or make new ones, just enough to change the text in them, but we can still inspect the internal strings to get some insight into the game.
This is the start of the list of files in scenario.dat. The filenames do not actually come from the files in scenario.dat, but actually from a file in map.svo called MAPLIST.DAT, which, parsed, looks like this: http://pastebin.com/ms8gnQHt (with old notes from me next to some of them)
I'm not entirely sure why there are three names for the files and which column corresponds to what exactly, but the third column is definitely the scenario.dat script files, as the "dummy" entries in there correspond to missing files in scenario.dat, and the first column seem to be the internal map filenames used when loading another area.
The first few should be pretty self-explanatory: "startup" runs on game boot to initialize stuff:
By looking at this, we can assume that the full game still has the ability to boot the demo section of the game -- the PS3 demo puts you into Keiv Moc and "bugd00" is the first map of Keiv Moc. "caoi01_01" is a map in Zaphias, presumably Yuri's room, which is the map loaded when starting a new game.
"title" is the title screen script:
We can see a bunch of names for various assets in there. I'm not exactly sure on some of them, but "YUR_*" is Yuri's model data, "RAP_*" is Repede's model data, "E_A101_TITLE" is the file containing the title screen textures, "I-13" is the opening FMV, and "MUS_S01_TLE" is the title screen BGM.
"gameover" is the Game Over screen script:
The files starting with V are voice clips, VB specifically is in-battle voice clips. The game actually has a voice clip for every party member (except Repede) saying "And they were never heard from again..." when you game over depending on who died last, which are referenced here. Additionally, there's a clip of Duke saying the same for when you die at the final boss. "E_A103_COMINGSOON" is a texture displayed when finishing or dying in the demo, and "E_A104_GAMEOVER" contains the regular game over screen textures.
Then we have a bunch of debugging scripts. Unfortunately, the game crashed whenever I tried loading one of the debugging scripts/maps, so I dunno if they still work, but if someone figures out a way to load them that could be fun to screw around in.
After that, "field" is the world map, I'm not sure what "theater" is (maybe the developer sound test?), and the three-letter-underscore-letter-number things after that are the regular in-game maps. Each area has a three-letter code, but I don't really know how the other letter or the numbers are logically arranged. By looking into aho_t00, for example and placing the dialogue:
We can see that "aho" is the in-game map code for the hot springs, and "aho_t00" is the entrance area in front of the building. By replacing a map load command in any script with "ahot00" (compare with MAPLIST.DAT), we can thus force the game to warp the party to the hot spring entrance.
We could now spend a while looking through more scenario files, but I think you get the idea.
The other *.svo archives contain all kinds of game assets and configuration files, takes a while to look through and is mostly not very interesting. Some stuff though:
http://lpix.org/1726318/F_AHO02.png
http://lpix.org/1726319/F_APH01.png
http://lpix.org/1726320/F_CAP04.png
http://lpix.org/1726321/F_CAP05.png
http://lpix.org/1726322/F_CHE00.png
http://lpix.org/1726323/F_COG_03.png
http://lpix.org/1726324/F_FOR00.png
http://lpix.org/1726325/F_FRI00_01.png
http://lpix.org/1726326/F_FRI01_01.png
http://lpix.org/1726327/F_FRI02_01.png
http://lpix.org/1726328/F_GUI_03.png
http://lpix.org/1726329/F_MAN01.png
http://lpix.org/1726330/F_MYS_04.png
http://lpix.org/1726331/F_OAS_02.png
http://lpix.org/1726332/F_RUI00.png
http://lpix.org/1726335/F_VIL_01.png
http://lpix.org/1726336/F_WOO_05.png
These appear to be renders of game maps from above. I have no idea if the game uses those anywhere, but it's kinda neat to have them -- you can notice some difference between the actual in-game versions and the renders on some of them, such as on F_WOO_05.
This is a weird one and I have no idea why the game doesn't use it. I assume it was intended for that sidequest cutscene where Karol is holding a photo of Nan, but the camera never moves in a way where you can actually see it.
http://lpix.org/1091599/U_MINIGAMERACE00.png
http://lpix.org/1091600/U_MINIGAMERACE01.png
http://lpix.org/1091601/U_MINIGAMERACE02.png
http://lpix.org/1091602/U_MINIGAMERACE03.png
http://lpix.org/1091603/U_MINIGAMERACE04.png
http://lpix.org/1091604/U_MINIGAMERACE05.png
http://lpix.org/1091605/U_MINIGAMERACE06.png
http://lpix.org/1091606/U_MINIGAMERACE07.png
http://lpix.org/1091607/U_MINIGAMERACE08.png
http://lpix.org/1091608/U_MINIGAMERACE09.png
http://lpix.org/1091609/U_MINIGAMERACE10.png
http://lpix.org/1091610/U_MINIGAMERACE11.png
http://lpix.org/1091611/U_MINIGAMERACE12.png
http://lpix.org/1091612/U_MINIGAMERACE13.png
http://lpix.org/1091613/U_MINIGAMERACE14.png
http://lpix.org/1091614/U_MINIGAMERACE15.png
http://lpix.org/1091615/U_MINIGAMERACE16.png
http://lpix.org/1091616/U_MINIGAMERACE17.png
http://lpix.org/1091617/U_MINIGAMERACE18.png
http://lpix.org/1091618/U_MINIGAMERACE19.png
I already posted these somewhere I think, but here's some textures from a scrapped minigame.
I also found some unused skits in chat.svo, here's the audio from them:
VC529 - Fun for a Strategist: Presumably related to the cut racing minigame.
VC800 - Flynn Can't Win: Yuri talking about Ragou, presumably cut to strengthen the impact of the scene where he kills him.
VC852 - The Power: Party talking about Belius' death, presumably unavailable because there's no point in that sequence of events that has all members in the party at once.
VC860 - What It All Meant: Party talking about the Belius events after the Don's death, presumably unavailable because the game automatically jumps from Dahngrest to the scene on your boat where Karol and Raven rejoin.
VC916 - Tarqaron Appears: Party talking about Tarqaron destroying Aspio, dunno why this was cut.
VC919 - Partners and Rivals: And I already posted this one at some point, but for completion's sake, a Flynn conversation for the one battle you have him.
Additionally, I recently stumbled upon something neat in the 360 PAL version's game files while scripting up an automated version comparison. Apparently, the German and French skit files were not cleaned up as thoroughly as the English ones, so there's four unused skits in there that were taken out of the English files. And since the German and French localizations just use the English audio, we can actually listen to them in a language we all understand!
Here they are:
VC134: Seems like a random battle related skit. No idea when this was supposed to play.
VC535: Skit about Yuri's birthday. Unlike the other skits here, this was actually put into the PS3 version.
VC962: Skit about the relationship between the Union and Leviathan's Claw. I'm guessing this should have been soonish after the Don's death, maybe?
VC969: Skit about Raven's return after his fake death in Baction.
No idea why they were removed. They seem to be complete.
While we're on unused audio, there's a few unused voice clips for Mystic Artes.
Yuri has unused voice clips for a Mystic Arte called Brilliant Phoenix. It's different from Yuri's new Mystic Arte in the PS3 version, so this was just dropped at some point.
Estelle has clips for Ultimate Elements. This on the other hand was put into the PS3 version.
Likewise, Rita has clips for Indignation, which is also in the PS3 version.
Then we have two oddities, unused Mystic Artes from bosses! There are clips for a Barbos Mystic Arte, probably "Evil Eye", as well as a second Alexei Mystic Arte, "Imperial Destruction". As far as I can tell, neither of these actually exist in either version of Vesperia.
But enough with the theoretical stuff, let's actually look at some unused but functional content in-game!
Estelle and Rita both have an extra costume that you can never actually get. Estelle has her dress she wears in the beginning of the game, before she actually joins your party. This is used in the first Zagi battle, too.
Rita has the robe she wears when you first encounter her in her house. Unlike Estelle's title, this actually has a normal description.
Both of those costumes work perfectly fine, so I'm not sure why they don't end up giving them to the player at some point.
And finally, I have something extremely silly to show off: How does the game handle multiple of the same party member in your party?
Surprisingly well, actually.
(Also, note that the 360 version has 9 party slots, just like the PS3 version.)
Character data is stored by character rather than by slot in Vesperia, so modifying any of the character copies modifies them all in terms of arte setup, equipment, skills, etc. This leads to some... let's call it issues in battle.
If any of the character copies is set to Manual or Semi-Auto, all of them are, which has the odd side-effect of you controlling all of them at the same time with the same controller.
You can break this by switching to Auto, since the AI is, interestingly enough, processed per character slot, so they will end up doing different stuff when controlled by the game.
While I'm here, some interesting trivia: You might have noticed that we're in the Hundred Man Melee with four characters. Flynn is not treated as part of "everyone" when removing party members by the 360 version, so you can do this and pull one or more Flynns with you into the coliseum -- or any other part of the game that is intended as a section with few characters only, for that matter. Not exactly useful, but kinda neat.
Now, you might notice that all of the Flynn copies always have the same amount of HP and TP. Since character data is stored per character, all copies actually pull from the same HP and TP pool. This is pretty silly: One dies, everyone dies, one heals, everyone is healed, and so on.
But we're not gonna be content with just a multi-Flynn, right? What happens if you duplicate the character that causes the most special effects in battle?
There is a video for this if you want to watch it. / Baldurdash
It's very silly and lags the hell out of the game.
Also, remember how status is stored per character?
By going into overlimit, every copy of that character goes into overlimit. The AI can pull fun combos with this sometimes, such as one copy going into overlimit and before that animation finishes another activates a Burst or Mystic Arte. This, sadly, also has a negative side effect: Since four characters are effectively pulling from the same over limit bar, the over limit only lasts a fourth of the regular time.
The game doesn't quite know how to handle winquotes here, as it plays Rita's 200 Man Melee Win clip four times, at the same time, which is incredibly loud. I have manually reduced the volume in the video to prevent ear damage.
Also, for some reason, the game freaks the hell out if you do this in the coliseum. After winning the battle and giving you the reward, it...
...gives you a Game Over. I have no idea why, but I laughed quite a bit the first time I saw it.
And that's it for this bonus update! I hope this is a decent apology for the long pause since the last update. Next time, we'll do more PS3 exclusive sidequest stuff.