The DDR Research Master Thread - UPDATED 2023-04-15 - Minor Addition - SOME DDR GB1 Memory Addresses

Did a little quick research and...

It is listed in READ_DT.BIN:


And by extracting files with the ol' trusty comptimfinder.exe, the banner and BG are definitely in the data:

quoting so this won't get bottom paged

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I would DEFINITELY want to work with comptimfinder and see for myself what I might find in the DDR PSX data.

I seriously doubt you'll find that "beta" chart unless you get ahold of a beta Hottest Party 1 JP ISO.

MAX JP through Extreme 2 (including Strike!, Party Collection, etc) all seem to have tons of leftover debugging data - a lot of it symbol data (function and object names, variable names, and the like) - been a while since I checked, but I dunno if the Dancing Stage PS2 mixes have debugging data left in as well.

In any case, that debugging data doesn't help me at all in figuring out how and where are files stored..

Update about Petit Love in Extra Mix: Sadly only the graphics remain. There's no audio files for that song (but I can't confirm or deny the existance of stepcharts)
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Since root670 suggested somewhere else... pinging Travelsonic..
Since I'm pretty confident that the game uses SSQ files (that, as we now know, contain the song's "BPM", the start/ending offsets of the song, the stepcharts and most possibly the BG Movie scripts), I'm convinced that such array points to the SSQ files contained in said chunk 🤔

this "comptimfinder" could be so much useful for solving the mysteries in the european games
I'd love to work with it as well, but i'm not sure if it's compatible with them, or if the program is even available anymore

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/rf1iae42lb29ahs/CompTimFinder.exe?dl=0

It works with all PSX based games. I highly recommend changing the search offset from 2048 to 1.
Since I didn't make it there's no source code available 😢

With the program in hands, i decided to search for some stuff.
In ADDICTED TO BASS' case, the CD is the only remaining graphical data of it; the banner and background slots were blackened out
Groove is in the Heart does not seem to have graphical data; it was likely removed during development
but i managed to find leftover drummania data in GuitarFreaks AC but that's irrelevant

APPEND:

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now with that how do we get the game.dat..

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when it comes to ddr, most of the times the file with the graphics (in the ps games) is READ_DT.BIN
game.dat only applies for some of the arcade titles

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But how do i actually extract it? like im new to getting all these graphics

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1. use jpsxdec on the game's iso/bin file (for the arcade titles, you have to convert the chd of the game using chdman for jpsxdec to recognize)
2. extract the file you think the graphics are (most of the times it's READ_DT.BIN or game.dat, but it could be different)
3. make it so that both CompTimFinder and the extracted file are in the same folder, preferably empty before use
4. open CompTimFinder and put the file's name in the empty slot
5. change offset from 2048 to 1
6. click "Go!"
7. when CompTimFinder's bar exceeds 100%, it will crash. it means it has searched through all of the file.
8. tada

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Thank you!

I found this and i never seen these characters before in DDR which is odd. (DDR USA PSX)

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Actually, it might help with the how (at least in a general sense of figuring out these storage mechanics) - maybe with this endeavor, maybe not, but it absolutely did help, IMO, with things like labeling and flushing out the game's metadata structure, and even with properly IDing the components for the filedata table.


Indeed they do, the offsets are all relative to the end of the oiffset array (or am I misunderstanding what you're saying I have not yet had my morning coffee. )

I wonder, given the discrepancy with bg script data seen in AC and CS mixes with regards to how it is stored, specific chunk values, etc, if what we associate with being with the SSQ format is actually more of a general container system (the chunks, types, etc) - and that system happens to be used with the game's SSQ format rather than outright belonging to the format.

It certainly has been done by other game manufacturers... the 1990s CyberFlix PC game Titanic Adventure Out of Time, for instance, is one that recycles a container format among various file types (all belonging to their proprietary DreamFactory engine). And yes, I really want to mod that game, hence my bringing up my limited knowledge as an example, hahaha)



I dunno why, but Saxxonpike not adding exception handling, allowing the program to crash, was always amusing to me.

So I've restarted work on my disassembly, from scratch, but I am using the latest vers. of IDA, which follows the executable data with memory mapping information, and thus should allow us to get a more complete picture compared to using older version.

I should go and make a complete list of all the symbol data that is left over in PS2 mixes - the respective files in the game's source, and the symbols belonging to them, so we have a better idea of what parts of the game we are likely able to accurately label as my disassembly takes shape again. Guess that means digging through MAX, MAX2, EXTREME, etc, AND seeing if such data was left over in PS2 Dancing Stage mixes (I think that was a negative last I checked, but I gotta look again to be sure), but it'll absolutely be worth it.

Thanks to valuable help from someone in certain tracker, I confirmed my suspicion: the games use actual SSQ files.
They're compressed in one of the files that are inside FILEDATA.BIN.

I've extracted the SSQ files from 3 PS2 games so far: Party Collection, Extreme2 and.. MAX2 JP.

Remember when I mentioned that Dive Into the Night has a Challenge chart? For some weird reason, it's Kakumei's Challenge chart, and not only has the singles chart but also the doubles one.

Does this mean official CS data and offsets soon?

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mmmmm maybe?


Offset= 0.000 😁

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I'm seeing some of the "extra" doubles charts in songs that aren't supposed to have them, and the ones in Do It Right (80's Electro Mix) fit pretty nice but I'm sure they are from another song.

And I now know why when I tried to play a lower Single difficulty on the Oni-only songs the game showed the Oni chart. THEY COPIED THE CHART to the other difficulties.
Maybe as a safeguard because of the PS2 engine? that doesn't happen in the Arcade SSQs.

<3 that'd be cool, I remember last time I reported an error on simfile error thread, I think it was for Heaven Is A Place On Earth, the person in charge of simfiles couldn't be bothered to update it, and the person who had last updated it, it wasn't surprising coz they sight read so, having a steady beat simfile wouldn't really bother them too much.

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Been going through the leftover symbol information, for the MAX US demo disc, and stripping away the data between each symbols - surprisingly arduous as tasks go.

It has been rather fascinating with regards to the picture that becomes visible once the rest of the crap is separated from the various strings. Various data structures in the game become a lot more clear in terms of what data is encapsulated within them

Once I get more of the MAX Demo Disc's data cleaned up a bit more, I'll post some examples.

I hope to repeat this with the MAX2 demo disc, E3 EXTREME prototype, as well as the various U.S, JP DDR, and EU Dancing Stage retail releases for the PS2 … it may be really arduous, especially since inevitably there will be commonalities shared in terms of what symbol data is left over, but I do feel like we can get a pretty good picture of the source structure, and get a lot of information that can help make disassemblies more readable.

LOL

"cource"

And now a semi-random smattering of what seem to be data structures - structure names + member variable names

_DDRCommonHeader
Type
Platform
Hardware
Version
Area
tmp
title
t_info

G_INPUT_W_
dp
buffer
_InputData
player_input
player_input_trigger
player_input_released
etc
etc_trigger
etc_released
padding

@anon11
beat_count
start_mct
disp_ct
pos
move_type
frame
play_w
music_counter
beat_counter
cur_p_counter
last_p_counter
begin_beat_count
go_beat_count
finish_beat_count
end_beat_count
game_start_music_count
game_finish_music_count
back_trans_start_music_count
last_fs_nct
last_input_count
history
cur_his
pre_nct
cur_nct
disp_nct
cur_great_combo
cur_miss_combo
max_great_combo
max_miss_combo
miss_start_count
input
dead
strictness
panel_count
message_ct
message_id
meter_cur
meter_vol
meter_ct
dance_class
bar_start
bar_end

_tag_cDDR7OniRecord1
Score
Time
Combo
Miss
Stage
Clear
Level
is_first_clear
pad
sq_header
size
kind
division

Fortnutately, the debugging/symbol data is laid out (and this may be a "NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!" thing to say, I get that) where a sort of header containing the name of the compiler, and the full file path + file name precedes each function, and is followed by function name, and parameters, with such a header separating each function. For example:

MW MIPS C Compiler E:\usr04534\ddr\usam2\src\CS\lesson\les.c
SetLessonState
level
section
val

MW MIPS C Compiler E:\usr04534\ddr\usam2\src\CS\lesson\les.c
GetLessonState
level
section

Even if the functions are in the same source file.

I am seriously tempted to just copy and paste the leftover debugging data into a program I can throw together, to just strip the excess shit out, and give us the symbols for each game executable, it'd certainly save a load of time (especially with the mixes that have almost a full megabyte of symbol data left in the executable)..