Hacking ROM Hack Editing GameID in mod breaks save functionality

Alexrose · 2024-08-08T16:39:33+0100

Just tried to play Phantasy Star Online EI&II: Return to Ragol, which is a mod. I added a custom banner for wiiflow, that obviously requires a new gameID, so I hex edited it to giive it a new GameID, but doing that broke saves inside the game.

Using the same game code, it has the same ID and thus my USB loader (Wiiflow-Lite, only one with good sd compatibility) shows it with the exact same banner art and name (which it grabs from a database and can't be overridden without a separate ID).

Anyone know how to change a game code and still have the saves work. I just downloaded a mod for Skies of Arcadia Legends and the readme even says the mod maker wanted to do the same thing but had the same problem lol

XFlak · 2024-08-08T16:47:00+0100

See if changing the ID using tools like wii backup manager or wit.exe (from wiimm's tools) makes a difference

As a workaround if nothing else works you could have one game use gamesaves in real nand and the other on emunand

Alexrose · 2024-08-08T18:08:10+0100

To be clear btw, this is for gamecube games on Nintendont. I haven't tried it on a wii game

Maeson · 2024-08-08T19:05:51+0100

Funny to click on this out of curiosity and seeing my and one of my hacks mentioned.

Since then, I have learnt what to do: You only change the last two values.

You see, an ID is composed of three parts:

Let's use Skies of Arcadia Legends, for example. It is GEAE8P.

GEA is the code of the game, E is the region (E is NTSC-U, P is PAL, J is Japan) and 8P is the Publisher or Developer, in this case, SEGA.

Turns out that ALL you needed to do is change the last two values, the publisher/dev ones.

So if I did GEAEPP, or GEAE88, I would have gotten it to work, but I tried to change the entire thing. This is something I've learnt looking at the awesome Super Monkey Ball modding scene. Now that I think about it, all the games mentioned come from the same company, and all have 8P.

lordelan · 2024-08-08T19:23:36+0100

Maeson said:
GEA is the code of the game, E is the region (E is NTSC-U, P is PAL, J is Japan) and 8P is the Publisher or Developer, in this case, SEGA.

Turns out that ALL you needed to do is change the last two values, the publisher/dev ones.

So if I did GEAEPP, or GEAE88, I would have gotten it to work, but I tried to change the entire thing. This is something I've learnt looking at the awesome Super Monkey Ball modding scene. Now that I think about it, all the games mentioned come from the same company, and all have 8P.

Very interesting. Did you by any chance did something similar on the Wii U?
Because apart from a title ID, games there also have such a short product ID but it is only 4 characters long iirc.

Maeson · 2024-08-08T19:36:32+0100

Sorry, I have not touched anything about the Wii U as I do not have one, but that's going to be a more difficult task now that you have to deal with games prepared for digital stores and such...

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It's painfully unfortunate that RHDN is going down, I thought I was going to update my Skies of Arcadia hack with the new ID, but now I can't edit the hacks page, and even then, patches will be lost on the 20th of this month it seems...

Besides that, I had no knowledge about that PSO hack, a less grindy single player experience sounds pretty neat.

lordelan · 2024-08-08T19:59:22+0100

Maeson said:
patches will be lost on the 20th of this month it seems...

They are not lost. The way I understood their news entry it will stay up in it's read-only state thus allowing you to download things.
However they also released a full dump on the internet archive.

Maeson · 2024-08-08T20:30:09+0100

As far as I know, several sections of the main web, including the patches, are to be removed on the 20th.

This image has been shared around these last days:

And sure, there is the Archive.org thing, but navigating that to find something is significantly more annoying compared to navigating RHDN itself, not to mention we still lose the descriptions and other info on each hack's or utilities' pages.

None of this has to do with Alexrose's question, anyway...

Hacking ROM Hack Editing GameID in mod breaks save functionality

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