**Help me help the community**

[LiquidEmu]

I'm an avid fan of emulation and replaying old games that I own (I can't tell you how many times I've played through Earthbound, FFVII, and MGS).

Lately, I had the itch to play through Xenogears again, particularly since I can port the game save back and forth between my psp and pc.

Although I love the game, I'm no fan of the ludicrous amount of random battles. And so, I set out to find a gameshark/Pro Action Replay code to disable them.

Sadly, the only No Random Battles code that I could find was for the world map only. It works, just not outside of the map (you know, like 95% of the game).

I'm still playing through again regardless, but I'd like to find out either:
a) Why there is no code for this already given that the game is ancient by now (like if there's some good reason that I don't know about)
b) If anybody can tell me if they have any knowledge of finding this sort of code or if they know somebody who does.

Finding a set value is easy, I just don't know exactly what to look for when trying to find a no random battles code.

The only thread that I could find on these forums about this basically went unanswered because the link that was provided to the thread starter doesn't contain the code I'm looking for.

Even if you can just point me to some document explaining finding a random value or something, it would help.

If I find the code and get it to work successfully, I'll post it here and elsewhere.

Thanks in advance,
Liquid

[hushypushy]

I don't know why that is, I looked up codes and didn't find anything either so that would leave me to believe that, since there are 1800 other codes and this game is very popular, it's not as easy as it seems.

__________________
Dedicated to mediocrity and repetition since 1994.

[LiquidEmu]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

I don't know why that is, I looked up codes and didn't find anything either so that would leave me to believe that, since there are 1800 other codes and this game is very popular, it's not as easy as it seems.

My thoughts exactly. Final Fantasy VII had a code, but not Xenogears. Perhaps the programmers implemented some weird routine that initiates the random battle. On the other hand, since the world map no random battles DOES work, I'm hoping that it won't be impossible to find (but you'd think it would've already been found by now).

I'm going to attempt to use PEC to find the code on my PC. I'll be looking for an alternating 0 and 1 value. I'm hoping that whatever the randomizer does, it returns a TRUE or FALSE value. The only thing that I can really hope is that the value doesn't just clear once the glass-shattering effect begins when a battle starts.

During my search, I did find one interesting thing: if you're playing this game on an actual playstation, opening the lid keeps random battles from happening. After reading this, I remembered doing that years ago. I have no intimate knowlege of the playstation hardware, but does anybody know what opening the lid would do to memory addresses? Would there be a range of them that wouldn't get written to with an open lid?

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Last edited by LiquidEmu; March 19th, 2007 at 19:02..

[hushypushy]

Doesn't having the lid open simply stop disc access from taking place?

__________________
Dedicated to mediocrity and repetition since 1994.

[LiquidEmu]

I would guess, but then everything other than the random battles is still functional. To move to another room, you'd have to close the lid and let it load, but you can still get to the menus (if I remember properly).

If the battle randomizer routine was resident in memory, wouldn't it not matter if the lid was open or not since there'd be no need to access the disc? Maybe it just freezes execution of the whole program when the lid is open, but still allows and processes user input.

This is probably a futile search.

[hushypushy]

Well, that's because it stores the info for the menu in RAM, no? In other words, it's already loaded. Instead of freezing when it can't find the data (lid up), it just doesn't load it.

I can go plug in my PSX and try it, but maybe you should first Go try a game like FF7/8/9 or anything else with a "true" no random battles code available. Pop it into the PS with no gameshark codes or anything, and put the lid up. Does it ever find a battle? If it does, then you know the systems of battle finding these games are different, if it doesn't, then you know it's similar. Either way, you're finding something.

I have a feeling this is impossible, but feel free to keep searching. You're using the control + H method in PEC, right? (think those are the buttons)

__________________
Dedicated to mediocrity and repetition since 1994.

[LiquidEmu]

It can't be impossible, but hella diffcult? You bet.

The third post down on this forum says it all about random encounters: Xenogears Retranslation Project

I would assume that with the lid open, even if the random encounter routine would function normally, there are no battles because it can't load the data from the disc.

Oh well.

[fusioneko]

Not to revive thise post and such, But not all games use the same Random battle routine for true and false, Sometimes its not 1 and 0, it can be 5 and 10 it could be a range of random numbers per step. WHERE value = VALUE, RUN Random battle. mostly like that. In generation of each step. Try using

LINK: Game Cheater ArtMoney - Official site. Powerful and easy to use game cheating utility.

This program is great, Try to figure out how the World MAP Random battle encounters work, Then try to move onto the dungeon encounters, By looking for common similiaritys. It requires patience and alot of work.

[LiquidEmu]

Much appreciated, however I'd already given up finding the code. It dawned on me that if a community of dedicated code hackers hadn't already discovered the random battle, one lone guy with limited knowledge certainly wasn't going to do it either.

My theory on how the random battles work off of the world map (the world map code that's in existence already works) is that there are certain "hot spots" within a room or screen, and certain screens have more than others and/or have a higher probability of encounter.

I just beefed-up my characters and so now they're so quick and strong that enemies never get the chance to attack, let alone survive even one character's deathblow.

[fusioneko]

I see, Welll I tried to help. atleast I helped a little.