DCFFVII Research Thread

I had forgotten that apart from Accuracy Rate being a challenge, getting enough Killchains is an even bigger concern. I got 54 killchains, compared to the required 50 so that's where I actually got the closest to below an S ranking. My recorded playthrough demonstrates how it is possible to get enough killchains without using a cheap method like deflecting missiles with melee attacks to build up a killchain. At least I got a better Accuracy Rate than I initially hoped for!

Fun fact: This marks the first time that I have gotten All S Rankings in Chapter 8-1. Great justice.


YouTube Update: Apparently annotations don't work on cell phones. I was told this in conjunction with an update that includes a new tool called "End screen". I don't like where this is going. Keep this in mind if you're watching the videos on mobile. You won't be able to see my annotations which include the often helpful commentary.

Good job, dude. Things got close on the killchain, but you pulled it out.

Here's your reward -- Grimoire Valentine has uploaded more Multiplayer Mode videos to his channel:







Not gonna lie, that last one made me salivate a little.

Indeed, Grimoire uploaded all the videos I pointed out to him. He also re-uploaded Scene 9 of the online mode's story, because binnsennto's recording lacks the last scene with Este-D. I've asked Grimoire if he can find me any translation help for my Multiplayer Archive. Currently waiting for a reply.

EDIT: We can actually date that salivating, last Multiplayer video you embedded Tres. Due to the presence of the two SPECIAL missions against Galian Beast and Chaos respectively, we know that the video was made between September 7 - September 29. These two SPECIAL missions became available with the version update on September 7 and as we all know the Multiplayer service ended on September 29.

I've spoken about Chapter 8-2 many times. In a casual run, it has typically been the most infuriating chapter of all. Granted, some chapters become even more infuriating in an All S Rankings run, like Chapters 1 & 2. It consists of three segments, with segment #2 being the one where you need a great deal of luck and marksmanship. While I have achieved top grades once before, it came after MUCH suffering and countless retries.

So here are the stats for Chapter 8-2, from page 135 of the DCFFVII Complete Guide.

Targets Destroyed - 70 or more
Accuracy Rate - 70% or higher
Damage Sustained - 7999 or less
Critical Hits - 50 or more
Killchains - 70 or more
Items Used - 6 or fewer
Limit Break Used - 6 times or more
Mako Collected - 90% or more
Times KO'd - 0
Time Expired - Less than 28 minutes 20 seconds


Stage Missions:
- Avoid the aerial mines! : 3 out of 3
- Destroy the robotic assault units! : 2 out of 2
- Assist the WRO members! : 3 out of 3
- Defeat the sentry robots! : 10 out of 10


Despite using advice from the official guide, I have never been able to guarantee that I avoid all the aerial mines. This is quite infuriating. Even more so because in segment #2 I want to backtrack to get more gil, which means I have to go through the aerial mines TWO more times. I may or may not bother with this extra chore for the recording.

The second Stage Mission is essentially "defeat the two Black Widows", which can easily be done with the right preparations but managing to properly one-shot the first Black Widow by shooting its belly can be a challenge. You have less than a second to take the shot and if you fail you are dead.

While I have become better at assisting the WRO members, it still adds to the stress of multiple challenges you have to overcome where bad luck could easily destroy everything for you.

The sentry robots are just the red saucers. Nothing problematic here. In fact I'm surprised they turned this into a Stage Mission at all. The saucers aren't hard to find and only a speedrunner would end up neglecting all of them.


Everything in this stage acts against you, so that you will easily fail and die. It also sets up the obstacles to encourage your Accuracy Rate to plummet, by placing exploding drum cans, boxes and mines about. Particularly in the room with the second Black Widow it is important that you destroy all the boxes from afar so you can get that killchain to one- or two-shot the Black Widow. You don't have MP to spare for destroying the boxes and you can't walk up to them for melee attacks because that will summon the Black Widow. Unless you've somehow managed to get a high killchain from a separate room, you have no choice but to shoot the boxes and thusly lower your Accuracy Rate.

I have now made recordings where I achieve All S Rankings in Chapter 8-2, but I'm going to be sitting on these videos while I'm away for the weekend.

In the recordings I perform decently, with the primary minus being that I fail in what would have been an otherwise cool trick. It's the one where I backtrack to the beginning of the stage so I can destroy the respawned boxes and build a killchain so I can one-shot a Black Widow. However for some reason my shot ended up really weak and while I did defeat the Black Widow, it took a while and two NPCs died. Like with most WRO NPCs in this chapter the game doesn't grade you for letting them die, but it still looks bad. Especially after all the build-up of backtracking and going past the aerial mines two more times!

On the upside, I trigger two glitches which make the video more humorous. First one drum can ends up floating in mid-air and second there are two bazooka dudes who end up not spawning!

Input by the reader/viewer would be very much appreciated! Do you want to see me perform great and look cool doing it, or do you prefer a video where I "just get it over with" (and in this case, trigger two glitches)?

The slippery slope I'm entering now that I'm doing my best not to get stressed is that I end up too casual about this challenge. There is also the growing feeling of just wanting to get to the end as quickly as possible, because this challenge is getting old.

Then on the other hand, why not be casual? Nobody else has ever published recordings of getting all top grades in Dirge of Cerberus. Even when I perform "badly" and embarrass myself, I still do better than anyone else out there. All these questions make me uncertain as to what I really want.

I'm cool with whatever you want to do here. Either way, though, I do think you should upload this current recording.

It's also alright that you're getting more casual. That's a sign of true mastery in a subject. Once upon a time, your stress was just in achieving the All S Rankings. Now you're trying to create challenges for yourself that go beyond the worst the game designers even imagined throwing at you. =P

Personally, I'm not terribly concerned about you pulling off something like the one-shot trick on the Black Widow here. It's a cool trick, but not one that necessarily even needs to be in the same video as your All S Rankings run. If anything, that you still achieved that goal for the stage while performing "sloppy" is a testament to how much you have made this game your bitch at this point.

Remember also what I told you before: Enjoy yourself! You're doing something nobody has before.

Basically what he said. Trust your feelings, you know they be true.

What can we figure out about this short recording made via somebody's cell phone?



There is more to say about the Black Mage NPCs, because it seems they were not always dressed with a mage hat.

In these two screenshots the NPC "Hiren", who was situated in the centre of the North Lobby, is dressed pretty normally.





The first screenshot is from the February 25 entry of DGyaco's blog. The second one is from Kupoa's February 21 blog entry. Meanwhile, the version of Hiren with the Black Mage outfit is from Grimoire's FFVIIExcavation site, where an exact dating of the screenshot can't be made.



My bet is that NPCs would sometimes change appearance with the version updates.

Este-D is another example of an NPC who changes appearance.

In Monster78's blog entry from February 8, Este-D looks like this:



Yup, it's the same image that hito transcribed and translated.

In later photos, and in the cutscene recordings we have, she always has the lab coat and the gas mask.



Este-D will give you a Gas Mask when you give her the flower she was looking for, so her updated appearance thusly matches her sidequest more.

In the two Extra Missions "Cait Versus the Empowered" and "Deepground" (the latter in which you get to tackle Azul, Rosso, Nero and Weiss all at the same time) you get to roam the centre of the East Lobby. I created a composite image of the map as it appears in these post-JORG scenarios, as well as marked out the area which you are allowed to roam.


You can roam the green area (minus the central pillar) :


You never get to explore the East Lobby any further and you are never allowed to visit any of the other lobbies.

Compare this post-JORG map to a snapshot from the Multiplayer.


As you can see there is supposed to be a southern path to the South Lobby. This is consistent with
It would be interesting to undo the barriers in the post-JORG missions and see if the northern and southern paths are truly gone. Even if you can't access the other lobbies, just removing the barriers and running around the rest of the East Lobby would be awesome.

EDIT: Oooh, imagine if you could get to the underground area! In the northwest and southeast of the East Lobby, you see arrows that point to the entrances to underground areas (I don't know if the two underground rooms were connected). If my understanding is correct, this underground area is where you could meet the friendly Black Widow "Black-J", who was especially important for the sidequests during the "Turk of Turks" event from June 5 - June 26.

The new Chapter 8-2 recordings are done but I can't upload the videos to YouTube via Vegas Pro.



Rendering the videos separately and THEN uploading them via YouTube *seems* to give a lower-quality upload than if I had used Vegas Pro for the YouTube upload. Ergo, I'm looking to see this problem with Vegas Pro corrected before I make the Chapter 8-2 videos available.

I am using Vegas Pro 13.0 and I'm on Windows 7.


EDIT: Wow! I did not expect to see Shelke in World of Final Fantasy! Here she is passing by during the ending credits screen (don't worry, no spoilers while Shelke is on screen).

EDIT#2: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE (watch from 2:52 and onwards)



Instead of calling the technique "Technical Cancel", here it is called "Countertek".

EDIT #3: Watch Shelke's summon at 2:27 - 2:59 in this video!

More Shelke goodness here at 1:51 - 4:42 (and 13:58 - 14:17), this time in a scene with Squall.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I NEED TO GET THIS GAME

The ending credits confirm that it is indeed Kari Wahlgren who returns as the English VA for Shelke. So far I think she sounds a bit different in World of Final Fantasy, but it's still a good Shelke.

Personal progress made in emulation of Dirge of Cerberus on the PCSX2.



Thanks to these advancements it is now way less cumbersome for me to boot up DC:International with a Japanese console setting. Having game saves where everything has been completed already is a considerable help.

The snapshots from PCSX2 are by default BMP files, which imgur refuses to upload. Apart from the extra step of having to change the BMP images into PNG (or other), in general the retrieval of high-quality snapshots is faster now thanks to the emulator and my memory card saves being successfully transferred.

Event Viewer -> Deepground Past (Online Mode Cutscenes)



My ultimate goal is to be able to hack the game and do things like deactivate this barrier so I can explore the East Lobby. This will be way easier to do on emulator than with a Gameshark applied to my physical console and game.



That said, emulating Dirge of Cerberus isn't exactly..."pretty" at all times. >___>

While testing out the European version of DCFFVII in PCSX2, something highly unexpected happened: The game text was in Japanese! This happens only when I boot up the game the fast way, skipping the PlayStation logo screens. If I start the game in the full/slow way, everything is in English just as it is supposed to be.

We are not unfamiliar with Japanese text being found inside the European version of the game. Ultima espio found a map list in the game's files, which hito then translated.

I tested out the Region Faker on my physical console to see if this, too, would load the PAL version with Japanese text. IT DID! Using the Region Faker to force the console into a Japanese setting did nothing when tested on the US version.


What shape does the Japanese text take in the European game? While the voices are still in English, the dialogue in the cutscenes are sometimes in English and sometimes in Japanese. The speaker names are always in Japanese.


The English text is, naturally, in the font that those letters belong to in the Japanese tables.

Upon first look I'm not spotting any discrepancies between the Japanese in the "Single Player"/"Main Game" and the Japanese text in DC:International. The post-JORG item Manasoul has the same name and description in PAL-JP as it does in INT-JP.

Discrepancies show up in the other menus. Upon entering the Tutorial Menu...


The Japanese Tutorial does go into some of the system requirements for the Multiplayer, but apart from that the Tutorial Menu mostly considers the Single Player.

What do we find in the post-JORG Extra Features menu when PAL is turning Japanese?


The PAL-JP text is more spartan, lacking the word &#12462;&#12515;&#12521;&#12522;&#12540; [gallery] and spelling out "Event Viewer" in katakana [&#12452;&#12505;&#12531;&#12488;&#12499;&#12517;&#8213;&#12450;] instead of in kanji.

I have not compared all the menus in great detail, but here is what I spotted in the Event Viewer menu.


If we venture into the Official Trailers menu, a bug is present in PAL-JP.


I did check the names of all the Extra Missions in detail to see if PAL-JP differed from INT-JP, but there is absolutely no discrepancy here. I did find Shalua's messages in PAL-JP humorous though.


The visible text is the same as the final localization. Because the font is too tall and with a greater gap between rows we are not allowed to see the full messages.


So there you have it. The European version of DCFFVII when played in Japanese has some text in English, some in JORG Japanese, some in post-JORG Japanese and some in a stage inbetween JORG and post-JORG. It's a nice way to explore what is essentially the blueprint for what became DC:International.

One might say that the PAL version can be played in 5 1/2 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and partially-Japanese-partially-English. Obviously the game was never intended to be played with the console set to Japanese.

TECHNICAL CANCEL!



Meeting Shelke in World of Final Fantasy - Japanese

Congratulations, Shad, you have now sold me on that game. Fortunately for me, I don't have a PS4, as I am not the best at time management.

Vegas Pro 13 could no longer connect to the YouTube server and I was unable to acquire a version of Vegas Pro 14 that had the "Upload to YouTube" option. Ergo, I will from now on simply be rendering the videos in Vegas Pro and then uploading them on YouTube with my browser. It is possible that the perceived drop in quality (and slightly darker shade) via this method is my own illusion. Even if the quality difference is real, it is so tiny that nobody thinks about it while viewing the video. Not even me.


Chapter 9: An Empire in Ruins. S Ranking requirements below.


Targets Destroyed - 120 or more
Accuracy Rate - 75% or higher
Damage Sustained - 4999 or less
Critical Hits - 60 or more
Killchains - 80 or more
Items Used - 5 or fewer
Limit Break Used - 5 times or more
Mako Collected - 90% or more
Times KO'd - 0
Time Expired - Less than 40 minutes

Stage Missions:
- Collect top secret Deepground data files! : 5 out of 5
- Destroy the surveillance mines! : 90 points or more out of 99 maximum


This chapter is easy and will be mostly a breeze. There will be some re-memorization in how to destroy the surveillance mines in an efficient way. You get more points by having the mines explode each other, so simply shooting every mine you see isn't the way to go if you want the maximum score. I aim to get the maximum score of 99. I will also have to memorize the exact point where I need to run across the platform so that all the exploding surveillance mines don't kill me.

Another goal is to get a high enough killchain to one-shot Azul's first form. If I recall correctly this is not difficult at all.

Chapter 9 was the first chapter ever where I got All S Rankings. I was surprised to see that this happened as late as January 13 this year! Wow. Feels like forever since then.

I'll be honest and say I don't really read anything in here, but, it does come by with my daily new poast round.

You love this game, don't you? You've done the impossible and played the shit out of a game that nobody likes.

dafuq yo.

I like it.

I have certainly mastered a game that even the people who like the game haven't mastered. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

Just stumbled upon a YT channel with Dissidia videos where the person has imported the Dirge of Cerberus models into Dissidia. There are many fresh videos, and a video uploaded just a few hours ago that show a bit on how to extract- and manipulate the models from Dirge. The Dissidia modding scene is quite amazing.

- G-Bike Yuffie rip, with Yuffie "Moogle Outfit" rip from Dirge of Cerberus used for the EX Mode

- Vincent Valentine (Squall) versus Galian Beast

- Vincent Valentine (Laguna) versus Vincent Valentine (Squall)

- Cid Highwind: Normal model is from G-Bike, EX mode model is from Dirge of Cerberus. Naturally Kain is the character used.

- Ripping Models from Dirge of Cerberus

There are also videos with custom-made Hellmasker and Death Gigas, and a Barret vs Dyne video with models from G-Bike.

Now that I can emulate more of Dirge of Cerberus, and thanks to Kuroyukihime Sora reminding me of the wonders of the Cheat Engine, I have now played around with this software and managed to manipulate the typical values you usually begin a cheating adventure with. In this case, Gil, HP and EXP.


Playing the game normally, your gil cap is 99,999,999. Without cheats you can't get higher than this value. Consider though that the save where I manually acquired 10 million gil took two or three journeys through all of Ex Hard mode.

The gil cap uses eight digits, but the gil menu is able to display nine digits at one time. If you cheat your way to the 100 million mark, this amount will be displayed properly but you can't acquire any more gil until you get back below the natural gil cap. If you cheat your way to the 1 billion gil mark, nine digits will be shown and the tenth digit (to the most right) will not be visible but you'll still have 1 billion gil.


The way I levelled up in the image above was changing the value of the EXP gained during the stage, then getting a Game Over and levelling up. In this case changing it to 52670, the exact amount needed to move from Lv1 to Lv50 (max level).

At Lv50 your max HP would be 3000, but here I've changed it to 32767. If you go higher the shown HP value will turn negative, even though you actually have increased your HP. Then increase it further and the value turns positive again. As such...



In these cases when I have manipulated only the Remaining HP and the Max HP, these codes have turned out to only work for specific checkpoints and missions in the game. Outside of these zones, you need to find new addresses for changing Vincent's HP. I have not checked what happens when you hack your HP and move between zones that don't use the same addresses for Remaining HP and Max HP.


My ultimate goal, as I have stated earlier, is to disable the EM barriers in the Deepground East Lobby (see both images above) so that I might roam the full area. How I am to ever accomplish this is still unknown. We're talking about a part of the game that almost surely works by the coding "barrier on" and "barrier off". A change from a 1 to a 0. This is far, far more difficult to find than searching through more unique values like HP, EXP and Gil. Hacking the barriers is still my best shot though, since I hold even less hope at ever making Vincent teleport.

I don't know the details of CheatEngine, but I imagine it allows you to view and edit the memory. So I would have thought making Vincent teleport would have been the easier choice, rather than find a bit that is constantly 0 or 1.

Because Vincent's X, Y, and Z value are stored in memory. And if you move in one direction X and Z will increase or decrease. So you just need to determine the values that change when you move (that don't change when idle), and then find the ones that seem to make proportional sense given distance moved. I imagine XYZ are probably stored adjecently, so testing with jumping should make it easier to locate.

Although this is all theory and I've never done this kind of thing myself, nor do I know the extent of CheatEngine.

Thanks to the logical solution you presented JBedford, I found two addresses for adjusting Vincent's position on the Z axis. With this trick I was able to hover beyond the EM barrier in the East Deepground Lobby, land safely on the other side and explore!





The order of images got changed during the upload but I tried to re-arrange most of them properly. The overall journey is from East Lobby, I consider going north but then decide going south to visit the lobbies clockwise. At the end I reach the one accessible basement (North Lobby) and then I revisit Rosso and Azul in the East Lobby for a chat.



- Because the emulation isn't perfect the sky is messed up and the shadowing does not act properly. Keep this in mind when viewing the snapshots. If I can achieve better emulation (I know that this is actually possible) and find a decent recording software for my computer then I will create videos where I roam the lobbies.

- Despite that the East Lobby map shows no paths to the other lobbies, the paths are actually there! You are free to explore ALL THE LOBBIES! You are free to roam all four lobbies! Each lobby has two basements. The door is closed to all basements except for the northeast doorway in the North Lobby: Here you can just phase through the door! The programmers forgot to make the door solid.

- When you roam the other lobbies and the basement, your map still stays fixed on the East Lobby. After you cross certain points you'll have to navigate without a map.

- None of the terminals I've approached have any menus that can be unlocked by simply pressing the X button as though they were shops. There are also zero NPCs about in the area. Your only companions are Rosso and Azul. Weiss and Nero get summoned when the battle against them starts. By returning to the East Lobby battlefield from a different direction than what the game expects, you can actually stand right next to Azul and Rosso without being in any danger because the Tsviet Quartet battle hasn't started.


- The address will only work for Extra Mission #44, "Deepground". Ergo it can't be used to explore elsewhere in the game.

- Although the addresses (I have no idea why there are two addresses that do pretty much the same thing) can indeed make Vincent hover, the process of getting past the EM barrier is very wonky and something that I have actually never "seen" happen. When I enter values that makes me pass the barrier, the screen turns mostly black and I have no idea where Vincent is. Presumably the camera loses track of Vincent. In many attempts I can't get Vincent to land on solid ground again, so another error is probably that I have hovered beyond "safe" areas.

Amazing! This is so exciting. I didn't expect results so soon and look forward to your vids. What other maps are worth exploring with this hack?