valkyria chronicles hex editing a save

[ladyjade90]

ive been trying for about a week now to learn how to hex edit my save for valkyria chronicles (1) on steam. ive read the guide. ive tried my best but i just cant seem to get it. is there anyone that can help walk me through this or just edit the save for me? honestly this isnt as easy as i keep seeing people say it is

 

[FAST6191]

You probably don't have enough posts to post a link just yet but if you can tell us where, and maybe break up the url
http : // www . somesite . com / blah / peh.html sort of thing that would help.
https://github.com/dhavard/ValkyrieEdit appears to be a tool that can extract from saves and shove it into a csv (a very simple form of spreadsheet) and then inject it back again.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=343149661 is what pointed me at it and includes some data.

Anyway not sure what there is to say. https://gbatemp.net/threads/rom-hacking-hex-editors-mid-2012-discussion.326873/ for a list of good hex editors for a kit.

Typically a hex editor has three main sections.
Usually on the left is the address within the file (or memory if memory viewer mode). Probably going to be in hexadecimal. If you are used to page 64, paragraph 3, line 2, word 5 then that is a form of addressing, computers tend to opt for just bytes though. You count along (starting at 0) and go up to... as wide as the thing is by most make it 10h wide such that the numbers on the left go up by 10h each time.
In the middle is the hexadecimal that actually makes up the file. This is values 0 through F, or indeed as most times it is bundled together in pairs then 00 through FF.
On the right is the text decode of the hex section. Usually going to be ASCII ( https://www.ascii-code.com/ ) unless you are using a ROM hacking editor which tend to be about doing custom decodes, though some do custom or other less popular things than ASCII for decoding.

You can edit the middle or right section by typing in there.
Depending upon the editor if you press insert (insert, delete, home, end, page up, page down part of the keyboard) then you will probably see OVR flash up in the bottom bar somewhere. This will be overwrite mode, as opposed to insert mode where new data is added and everything else shuffled forward. If you are familiar with the same thing on a word processor then same here, indeed many things will be similar to a word processor -- you can do find and replace, go to location, cut and paste...

 

[ladyjade90]

how do i use valkyrie edit though? i have it but its not clear how i use it. as for the guide ive been trying to use it but the data i see in the hex editor is not what shows up in those examples from the steam guide and i end up not being able to find the values i need to change to make units alive or dead. following the instructions using the hex editor from the examples is giving me different values and im not a coder so i end up lost as to why. i have 0 experience with coding or programming so its all japanese to me unfortunately. is there a specific way to use hex editors not mentioned in the guide?

 

[ladyjade90]

i was able to get the help i needed will post the save here should anyone else need it its on ng+ before first mission in prologue with a full roster plus generics. there are a couple units missing but they weren't unlocked yet

 

[FAST6191]

Sorry I missed the earlier reply. Glad you got it working in the end.

Values not being the expected ones tend to be you left a header on something (or removed it), the format changed because updates or the guide is wrong (possibly that the save uses pointers). Hopefully you figured out which it was.
For the former two you can usually search for what you expect and hopefully find it at a new location, for the latter you probably get to start over with traditional save editing/cheat finding techniques (save, spend 1 gold, save again, compare saves to see what changed, repeat for other items you care about, though might be able to make some educated guesses based upon what is in memory and what will need to be stored/restored upon loading a save*).

*obvious trap for newcomers is not all stats might be stored -- if your HP is a combination of level, defence, constitution and something else the total HP might be calculated instead.