(PS2) Dark Cloud - The Quest For Immortality

[dw817]

Some yeasr ago I played and deeply fell in love with a PS2 game called, "Dark Cloud," which I could play at my friend's house.

Then I bought a PS2 myself and could play the game at home.

Without using any cheats I managed to get all the way to the end where the 2nd evil genie was and then promptly got whooped every time.

I then bought an Action Replay Max for it so I could get past that one point, determined this would work.

Well, yes and no. It didn't show my hits go down but my player died all the same. Whoever wrote the cheat did not check to see if the value was going down even if it =APPEARED= that it wasn't.

Now, let's wind the clock forward a bit.

I recently got a very good powerful computer. While my old one would only let me play the PS2 emulator for Windows (PCSX2) at one frame every 2-seconds, my new computer said it runs full speed only taking 17% of my system resources !

YAY ! So then it should be an easy thing to get that one cheat to give my player infinite hits right ? Once again, yes and no.

I tried the Dark Cloud (USA) from Emuparadise (here) and found that to make cheats for it, that it uses a weird format, you have to have the checksum of the game to save the cheat file and raw hexadecimal memory locations.

While there were many versions of cheat files out there written by others, they =ALL= had the same problem ! While it show my player's hit points at 255 scrolling past the little area where it's supposed to appear, even though the visual value never went down, I let a team of monsters pound on me for a few minutes with THE SAME RESULTS. My player died again.

So I tried to do it manually, converting Action Replay codes to raw hexadecimal using OMNICONVERT, designed just for this purpose. But it failed two different ways. Either it crashed the emulator or while it didn't show my hits go down, interally they did and my player died again.

So TO MY KNOWLEGE =NO ONE= has actually ever made a cheat for Dark Cloud which gives the player infinite Hits !!

But don't knock it - there's a bunch of other good cheat values for this great game other people have found including weapons that don't break and you never get thirsty.

The file is called 0BAA8DD8.pnach - Google it if you're interested.

So at this point I am finally using a program called, CheatEngine64. Bring up PCSX2 first. Load Dark Cloud, press [ESC] to pause it once loaded. Then load the Cheat Engine.

In Cheat Engine, click on the left-most icon that looks like a little computer.
Find and select the active PCSX2 application, then add the following information:

Name: Infinite Hits
Address: 21CEBE5E
Value: 70

Then return to RESUME in PCSX2 to truly lock the hit points so they never decrease, visually or otherwise.

Yet - I am hoping someone will make an updated *.pnach cheat file as this is standard with PCSX2 and am surprised no-one actually took the time to check and ensure the hits are not just invisibly decreasing, including the people who made cheat DISCs that have the codes hardwired - they all DO NOT WORK on this very one particular game.

Research: Too many days to solve this.

[Zorlon]

Big hairy hint

You can figure out what the difference is between the external hex address and the pnatch address values yourself

Just search for something that already has cheats for in the pnach files something simple like cash should do, then calculate the difference with windows calc while it's in Programmers mode (i.e. you want to be doing this in Hex mode)

You can verify this by finding other codes that are already in the pnach and making sure the same difference in address is there

Once you have the difference, either add or remove the diff hex value from the external search engine results to give you the pnach address value you need

Personally I found the game dull even though I owned it I never could pick it up again, maybe I did not play it enough to find the fun in it

[dw817]

Well one of the problems is - there are two different versions of Dark Cloud 1 out and with the cheats I've come across, some of them work for the 1st and not the 2nd, and some the reverse, =AND= some posted cheats work only on the 1st version or vice-versa and the other cheats on the same page for the opposite version - rending many cheats unusable and causing PCSX2 to crash later.

I believe Dark Cloud is the pilot game for PS2 so I'm a bit surprised someone didn't sit down to REALLY and truly confirm the cheat on hits they made were infinite with all the variations of cheats, cheat discs, cheat codes, and .pnach's out there.

Even the commercial Code Breaker I bought for the actual PS2 system didn't give infinite hits for Dark Cloud as it promised it would.

As for converting to .PNACH. I couldn't even convert Action Replay to a correct .PNACH (by reading the system console), so I'm lucky just to have this hex hack I found. If someone wants to tackle this problem and make a truly working .PNACH so all characters have real infinite hits and not just visually appear so, I wish you the best as no-one has done so yet !

As for my interest in the game. I've been playing it for years, mostly at my friend's house. He said it was pretty boring himself too of course now he has a PS3 and an eye on PS4. Minju, before this I was only playing SNES games with ZSNES for many years, then a bit of VisualBoy, and finally Final Fantasy 7 with EPSXE and now it's on my PSP to enjoy.

So to see a game like Dark Cloud with such rich graphics and music attainable on my new PC was quite a treat - and to finally confirm NO-ONE has actually made a working infinite hit point cheat for it yet - that really is disheartening.

Thanks for your input though, Zorlon !

[treos]

o.O infinite Hits = infinite hp?

also, cheat engine can handle your cheating problems with ease should gameshark or similar codes prove elusive. had to do my own manual cheating like that with some games (corrupt something will you, bad/defective cheat codes? i doubt cheat engine would ). a basic, exact value, search for your current hp would work:

set value type to all, scan type to exact value, enter your current hp and hit first scan. take a hit in-game then do some math and switch scan type to decreased by... and scan for the amount of hp lost. repeat tille you've found the correct value, double click it then click the little x box and freeze it. voila, instant inf hp.

same method works for just about any value in just about any game on any emulator. well, ALMOST any game/emulator. there's still some games for snes and genesis i've never been able to crack via cheat engine (mainly due to strange programming or so i usually assume).

oh and mind the byte type of any value you try and freeze, setting the value too high may crash the emulator or give you a stupid negative number (dumb gold, it'd take forever to farm enough to fix -1314234 gold...for example). it's not hard but like with any program, you mess things up (get your math wrong or set a value too high in the case of emulators) and you'll wind up breaking (crash usually) stuff.

[dw817]

Hi Treos.

Yep, I can use a utility to search for the value and then just keep it maxxed. Still, a working .pnach would be much more useful. It should be possible.

Thanks for commenting !

[Zorlon]

I think you miss understood what I said or just do not understand

pnach files are just raw address values and so is what you created, that is also a raw address

the only difference is that what you created looks at the memory of the whole program and the pnach file only looks at the games memory

pnach codes also start the address with a code type number like 2 ignore that part of the address, the real address starts after that

so if you can find the address of a code that exists and works inside of a pnach file with your external method, that works with both pnach and your method then you can calculate the difference between the two then apply that difference to the code you previously found

P.S. also your code will only work if users are using the exact same version of pcsx2 as the games memory will be in a different location in other versions of pcsx2 like one of the more recent 1.3.x svn releases

P.P.S. once you know what the difference value is you can apply that to all codes created externally to create more pnach codes by taking the difference value away from the code created externally to create the pnach code

Basic RAW code types =

0 constant write 8 bit value XX
1 constant write 16 bit value XXXX
2 constant write 32 bit value XXXXXXXX

Hint all values are a 32 bit address with the first digit indicating the code type

T = type
A = address
V=value

TAAAAAAA VVVVVVVV

for a 1 type code for the address 1234 freezing the hex value of ABCD it would look like

10001234 0000ABCD

if that was a 2 code type though the address would not change but instead of just freezing ABCD it would freeze 0000ABCD
or if that was 0 code it would only freeze CD

[dw817]

Hi Zorlon. I tried this. Either I don't have the right utilities or I'm just not understanding it.

I already did as you suggested, taking the initial hack value and trying to find what the .pnach equivalent is. Understand I wrote above earlier that I can't even get Omniconvert to work properly for me, by entering in Action Replay codes as a tutorial I read about detailed.

Without this little bit working, there's little chance of me getting this to function correctly as a .pnach.

Perhaps no-one has made a correctly working code to keep hits maxed because the game itself is using something tricky to prevent against it. I know I've come across a few GBA that did this.

[treos]

ok, so that's the PAL version of the game (well, the box art you posted up there is anyway) so if that's the case you'll need PAL codes and not NTSC ones.

let's see if i remember how to do this (i have a codebreaker ISO i use so i don't usually have to do this method anymore).

codes: http://gamehacking.org/?game=101102

anyway i...i uh...darnit! i can't remember how this works. i know you'll have to use PCSX2CE as well as omniconvert to make the pnach file(s) though. why don't we have a codebreaker (or something similar) iso or something around here? that'd clear the difficulty of all this up in an instant. no need for all this converting and pnach nonsense. assuming it wasn't against the rules and i could remember where I got it from, i'd give a link to this codebreaker iso i use. sorry, both of you, it seems i have become useless once again in regards to more technical means of ps2 cheating. (aside from cheat engine of course)

[Zorlon]

Hi Zorlon. I tried this. Either I don't have the right utilities or I'm just not understanding it.

I already did as you suggested, taking the initial hack value and trying to find what the .pnach equivalent is. Understand I wrote above earlier that I can't even get Omniconvert to work properly for me, by entering in Action Replay codes as a tutorial I read about detailed.

Without this little bit working, there's little chance of me getting this to function correctly as a .pnach.

Perhaps no-one has made a correctly working code to keep hits maxed because the game itself is using something tricky to prevent against it. I know I've come across a few GBA that did this.

Yeah your totally not getting it

Omniconvert will not help you at all for what I recommended or any sort of Action Replay Tuto

I'm not going to waste my time today trying to explain how simple it is, just read what I posted forgetting what you thought you learned before as it is not related to it in the slightest

I'm talking about the difference between the hex address from CheatEngine64 and npach hex address (remembering to remove the first digit from the pnach codes that is a type number rather than part of the address)

[dw817]

Well the lot of this would certainly be made a lot simpler if the PCSX2 had an internal cheat search or permitted both Gameshark and Action Replay codes, Zorlon.

That may sound selfish on my part, however, I can name many more game emulators that do this than don't. Perhaps future releases of PCSX2 will have this. It would certainly make a lot of gamers happier, not just me.

One good example is, Twinfire. It's a plugin for PCSX2 to add a needed ability of autofire for the controls. Apparently it works for many versions of Windows, but not Windows 8; at least according to the reviews I read. It is hoped that in the future it will work as that is the current operating system I have.

Not everything works perfectly. When I wrote S2 years ago I never anticipated future versions of Windows unable to run it. And yet, here we are, well past Windows XP now, and outside of running an XP emulator in future Windows, it remains to run only in Windows XP and prior.

I see where you are coming from, Zorlon. Some things may be simple for you and complex for others. And the reverse can be true. There are likely some things I can do that are simple for me but complex for others. PCSX2 is very new territory for me.

[Buko Pandan]

Here you go, just paste these codes in a text document and save the file as .pnach with your game CRC as it's file name then put it in your PCSX2 cheats folder,check enable cheats and you're all set. Have fun peeps!

Infinite Gilda
patch=1,EE,11CDD892,extended,0000FFFF

Max HP All Characters
patch=1,EE,11CD9552,extended,000000C8
patch=1,EE,21CD9554,extended,00C800C8
patch=1,EE,21CD9558,extended,00C800C8
patch=1,EE,11CD955C,extended,000000C8

Infinite HP All Characters
patch=1,EE,11CD955E,extended,000000C8
patch=1,EE,21CD9560,extended,00C800C8
patch=1,EE,21CD9564,extended,00C800C8
patch=1,EE,11CD9568,extended,000000C8


On a side note, these codes only works for the NTSC UC or US version of the game.

[Zorlon]

Well the lot of this would certainly be made a lot simpler if the PCSX2 had an internal cheat search or permitted both Gameshark and Action Replay codes, Zorlon.

That may sound selfish on my part, however, I can name many more game emulators that do this than don't. Perhaps future releases of PCSX2 will have this. It would certainly make a lot of gamers happier, not just me.

One good example is, Twinfire. It's a plugin for PCSX2 to add a needed ability of autofire for the controls. Apparently it works for many versions of Windows, but not Windows 8; at least according to the reviews I read. It is hoped that in the future it will work as that is the current operating system I have.

Not everything works perfectly. When I wrote S2 years ago I never anticipated future versions of Windows unable to run it. And yet, here we are, well past Windows XP now, and outside of running an XP emulator in future Windows, it remains to run only in Windows XP and prior.

I see where you are coming from, Zorlon. Some things may be simple for you and complex for others. And the reverse can be true. There are likely some things I can do that are simple for me but complex for others. PCSX2 is very new territory for me.

It's Action Replay (Action Replay is the same as GameShark) that made things complex

They tend to code there codes instead of just using raw addresses (both Action Replay and GameShark can accept raw codes as it happens, same as Xploder(Xplorer in some regions)/Codebreaker can) Not sure about the AR Max taking raw codes though they encode there codes funny, never did like them and found those hard to convert correctly

What would be cool though if PCSX2 had it's own code creator, though using an external code creator it is so easy to get the difference value, then you can create your own codes very easy, and that difference is the same for all games providing you don't change PCSX2's version, as the difference may change then

[dw817]

I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT

I can sorta see why both the makers of the CodeBreaker disc and other individual users had problem nailing it it. There are =3= such variables affecting the player's hits and 2 of them are flipping from the right value to 0 constantly. If you change either of these, it backs up the value and then forces it in undoing the code.

The 3rd value, however, was the one I wanted. And I checked it, =THOROUGHLY= it works perfect.


My gift to you. You do indeed have infinite hits and 255 of them to be precise.
Now the game can be explored to conclusion.

BUKO: the codes you have APPEAR to work. The player's HIT display will not go down when he is hit, but the internal value still goes down, you can check this by taking 255 damage and the player falls - which is why I made this code.

BTW, this also means I can make cheats regarding a decreasing value for any PS2 games now that are not yet already coded.

OS: Windows 8.1
EMU: PCSX2 1.3.1-20150417191332 - compiled on Apr 17 2015
CART: Dark Cloud [SCES_502.95] (EU) PAL

[attached]
PS2 Dark Cloud (EU) CHEAT - Inf HITS.zip