2013-11-02, 11:48 PM
Hi there Prevch 
I have a very similar memory of when I bought Brigandine. I didn't have money to get a new game very often so I spent a lot of time trying to pick out a good one. The stores kept all the games locked up so you basically had to decide based on the cover art. I had narrowed it down to Brigandine or Vagrant Story. I was a big Final Fantasy 7 fan so Vagrant Story made by Square Soft was in the lead, but there was just something about Vaynard's portrait on the LoF cover that made me feel like I'd be in for an adventure went with Brigandine. An boy did I make the right decision!
Hmm, I had not considered teaching at a college level, but I can picture it being a better environment since the students mostly want to be there. I guess I thought of college teachers as being brainiacs who all have doctorates in their field (which I don't). I know the city college in a nearby town has an automotive degree program, I might just make some inquiries. My main interest in cars is from a mechanical engineering point of view- which you don't get to employ very often as a mechanic, but I can picture the engeneering aspects being used more often when teaching.
Anyways, about your hit-odds mod: it is certainly possible, but it would take some understanding of Playstation assembly language and how to use a debugger. A "debugger" in this case means a program that reads the Playstations "machine code" (binary 1s and 0s) and translates that into tags that humans can understand. If you don't have any experience with using a Playstation debugger, then I would recommend you try some simpler hacks first to "sharpen your teeth".
You would probably be dealing with two parts. First,adding a routine to calculate the odds, and second, adding a routine that displays the results on screen.
As far as calculating the odds: Brigandine obviously has a "calculate odds" routine already, which is probably run when the attack is finalized. If you are lucky, you might be able to simply tap into the existing routine and run it before the attack is finalized. If that won't work, you would have to write the routine from scratch. It would look up the pertinent variables (attacker/defender AGI etc) and process them into a final percentage.
As far as getting the calculated percentage to "print" on screen, I have not looked at LoF's text system, but usually, there is a built in process to draw text on screen. It is fed the text's start location in memory (which would be the hit percentage number in this case), and the screen coordinates where the text will be drawn and everything else is already built in. The hard part is figuring out where/when that process is run and how to tap into it properly.
One of the best debuggers for Playstation that I have found is built into the Psx v1.13 emulator, but I think LoF may have issues running on it. It loops at the new game screen unless you push buttons quickly and you can only play as Iscalio. But that is probably enough to set your hack up.
I have a very similar memory of when I bought Brigandine. I didn't have money to get a new game very often so I spent a lot of time trying to pick out a good one. The stores kept all the games locked up so you basically had to decide based on the cover art. I had narrowed it down to Brigandine or Vagrant Story. I was a big Final Fantasy 7 fan so Vagrant Story made by Square Soft was in the lead, but there was just something about Vaynard's portrait on the LoF cover that made me feel like I'd be in for an adventure went with Brigandine. An boy did I make the right decision! Hmm, I had not considered teaching at a college level, but I can picture it being a better environment since the students mostly want to be there. I guess I thought of college teachers as being brainiacs who all have doctorates in their field (which I don't). I know the city college in a nearby town has an automotive degree program, I might just make some inquiries. My main interest in cars is from a mechanical engineering point of view- which you don't get to employ very often as a mechanic, but I can picture the engeneering aspects being used more often when teaching.
Anyways, about your hit-odds mod: it is certainly possible, but it would take some understanding of Playstation assembly language and how to use a debugger. A "debugger" in this case means a program that reads the Playstations "machine code" (binary 1s and 0s) and translates that into tags that humans can understand. If you don't have any experience with using a Playstation debugger, then I would recommend you try some simpler hacks first to "sharpen your teeth".
You would probably be dealing with two parts. First,adding a routine to calculate the odds, and second, adding a routine that displays the results on screen.
As far as calculating the odds: Brigandine obviously has a "calculate odds" routine already, which is probably run when the attack is finalized. If you are lucky, you might be able to simply tap into the existing routine and run it before the attack is finalized. If that won't work, you would have to write the routine from scratch. It would look up the pertinent variables (attacker/defender AGI etc) and process them into a final percentage.
As far as getting the calculated percentage to "print" on screen, I have not looked at LoF's text system, but usually, there is a built in process to draw text on screen. It is fed the text's start location in memory (which would be the hit percentage number in this case), and the screen coordinates where the text will be drawn and everything else is already built in. The hard part is figuring out where/when that process is run and how to tap into it properly.
One of the best debuggers for Playstation that I have found is built into the Psx v1.13 emulator, but I think LoF may have issues running on it. It loops at the new game screen unless you push buttons quickly and you can only play as Iscalio. But that is probably enough to set your hack up.