Hex editing reactions

[philsov]

I'm curious about how one can locate which byte value has which effect on the game.

Using Raz's topic:  http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1785

he was able to locate values in both Battle.BIN and SCUS, so that people such as myself can go in there and tweak stuff like Katana Break % and starting cash.  

More specificially, I'm interested in the reaction abilities.  For the sake of example, let's say I'd like to make Regenerator trigger a different or additional effect -- given the inflict status parameter, I should expect to find a value of 40 (regen, with 20 being protect and so forth) to be at whatever the targetted byte address is, correct?  

Given I can toggle equipX functions in SCUS

Equip Knife - Katana + Ninja Blade
SCUS_942.21
0x4CAEC change 0x04 to 0x24

(or change 04 to 06 to enable katana + whatever is at the first byte-thingy) like so, it is reasonable to assume that I can do the same with regenerator, and with it, reactions like Caution, Dragon Spirit, Sunken State as well?  And if so, is it likely to be in SCUS?  Battle.bin is my second guess.

And, from there, is there a better method than carpet bombing a section (x4AXXX, e.g.) and replacing all the 40's (for regenerator) to different values (60 to inflict Protect + regen, or something) until the desired effect crops up?  I don't really mind this process, but it's a lot of trial and error and game crashing.  I'd just hate to be barking up a tree in the completely wrong forest.

[Cheetah]

I believe that decoding this stuff should be possible. I support you in your endeavor, perhaps I will find some time to take a look at the structure.

[Vanya]

There is a better way than carpet bombing.
Use pSX's debugging utilities to look at the ASM code being run at during a reaction effect being triggered.
This, of course requires knowledge of ASM opcodes and RAM addresses to make break points at.

[philsov]

this is a bit... unwieldy.

For starters r3000 is the only debugger that won't crash when I try to even bring it up.  

But, yeah, don't even know where to begin once the r3000 is active.  I guess looking at Zodiac's ASM lessons will help?  I hope so.  But if you're aware of a method that'll help me, I'm wide open to it.  ^_^.

[Vanya]

I wish I had a better way myself. ^_^