[OUTDATED] [TUTORIAL] Lighting up the Deep Dungeon maps

[Nyzer]

Jan 08, 2024:

This tutorial is now outdated, as it resulted in an inferior version of a fix to the Deep Dungeon maps, vulnerable to having the lights flicker out and be unable to return under certain circumstances. For all current uses of lit up Deep Dungeon maps, use one of the XML files found here.

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Originally this topic talked about using Ganesha to edit the lighting of the maps. However, the maps have a hard cap on the max amount of light allowed per state, with the highest light levels only being allowed on states inaccessible to the ATTACK.OUT editor. This post has now been altered to show how to make them work with full light, which is done via hex editing instead.

If you just want to download the files directly without editing them yourself, you can find them here.

All credit goes to Xifanie, of course! She's the one who showed me what to edit in the first place.

To get this to work, you've got to do some hex editing. To the best of my understanding, the Deep Dungeon maps use multiple different states to determine the lighting, and the fully lit map is set as the fifth state. Which you can't access with the ATTACK.OUT editor since only the DD maps work this way. So, instead, we just hex edit the .GNS files for each of the maps to set all four previous states to have the same texture lighting settings as the fifth.

Open up your ISO in CDMage. Open the MAP section. Scroll down to the .GNS files for each of the maps (you can tell which of them is which by looking at the numbers on FFH's Maps page). Export them. Open them up in a hex editor. I'm using HxD, personally, and I don't have a whole lot of experience with other hex editors so I'm not sure how they might look, but hopefully enough of the process is similar to be able to follow along. For the sake of this example I'm going to be cracking open MAP106.GNS.

spoiler: After opening MAP106.GNS in HxD

It's currently set to show the rows 16 bytes wide, but it'll be a lot easier to see the parts we need if they're set to 20.

spoiler: 20 bytes wide, the five state numbers in red, the five texture light bytes in blue

Now you can see the five separate states labeled in order here under column 02. They start at 00, not 01, as is common with hexadecimal work, so they go from 00 to 04. And 04 is where the useful data is. Looks like the only difference is with the bytes under column 08, so let's take the one from state 04 and copy it to 00-03.

spoiler: Edited

That's that. Save it, reimport it with CDMage, and test it out in game.

Edit: It turns out that if a specific byte is set to a different value than in the other states, it'll spawn a glitched second level that crashes your game depending on the tile. And Map 112 has this problem. You'll also need to edit that byte so it matches the value that the other states have.

spoiler: One different byte

spoiler: Success

Success.[/color]

[CONMAN]

I've only played with the lighting in Ganesha once or twice before.  Anyway I believe that Xifanie (I think? Maybe Emmy) gave me a copy of the deep dungeon maps with the lights turned on a couple years ago.  I simply imported them and then changed the maps to the 2nd state in the Attackout editor and got perfectly lit up dd maps.  I don't have the sprite issue that you detailed.  How that was accomplished you probably know better than I. 

Anyway.... Here are some maps.

[Nyzer]

I did try the maps on both states before Ganeshaing the light up IIRC, but not after. I'll try that on its own and if that doesn't work out I'll import the maps you've got. Thanks!

[Nyzer]

And... nope. Loading the VALKYRIES map gives me the same look - darkened sprites, and the map light itself is set low (just not to zero like normal).

And I checked the ATTACK.OUT state. I did have it set to Second State already - and setting it to First State left it dark, no matter how bright the map was.

[CONMAN]

  Damn Sorry Nyzer.  I just peeked through all my old inbox messages and couldn't find an answer.  I might take a look at my old hard drive tomorrow and see if I can find something.  I can't exactly recall how I got my dungeon lit up but I'll peak around.  I feel like the maps I posted are at least part of the puzzle.

[Xifanie]

Well, I decided to download the zip files to get back my .GNS file edits from the good old days... and what do I find in that zip file? No GNS edit. Only mesh file edits. I did not create that. Someone from Arena didn't bother asking me what my edits were and instead just created new ones for the newer arena. MY edits handle what Nyzer tried to accomplish perfectly fine. Arena's doesn't.

It's pretty simple, I just made all states load the last mesh file, i.e. the one used with map state 0x04

[Nyzer]

Yeah, we're still running into some issues with it stemming from using ChangeMap, but Xif provided a .GNS of 110 that works perfectly in First State if I don't ChangeMap from another map. I'll update this with fixed files later once we're all done playing around with it.

[Nyzer]

Nearly a year later is still technically "later", right?

Updated the OP of this topic.

[Nyzer]

And all uploaded & updated, just in case anyone's watching this topic but missed the new topic with the files.

[Nyzer]

Update: Found an issue with MAP112.GNS that breaks it, and also needs correcting before using.

[illithidbane]

I'm sorry for the necro, but I haven't found much other discussion on the matter.

I am trying to mod the PSP WotL ISO instead of the PS1 original version. So I cannot use Attack.OUT editor or touch the individual GLS files. On a whim, I took a look at the whole ISO in HxD, since that was successful for my efforts adjusting the number of characters I can deploy. (Starting at 0058BF6A for PS1, 002F9AAE for PSP) But in this case, I cannot find any similar hex sequences in the PSP ISO like I can in the PS1 BIN to hand edit.

Has anyone successfully modified the lighting levels in WotL? Either with a utility that works on WotL ISOs, or hex editing, or CWCheats, or Valhalla ASM hacks, or otherwise?

[Nyzer]

Damn Sorry Nyzer.  I just peeked through all my old inbox messages and couldn't find an answer.  I might take a look at my old hard drive tomorrow and see if I can find something.  I can't exactly recall how I got my dungeon lit up but I'll peak around.  I feel like the maps I posted are at least part of the puzzle.

Years later and I just did a test of importing the NOGIAS files. They seem to work just fine, so I don't know what my issue was way back then.

That said, it's definitely still the Arena-style maps with the units rather darkened out. Doesn't seem to be compatible with the GNS edits shown here, at least via the ASM hack Pride provided. But it does mean that crystallization doesn't make the light go out, as it does with the GNS edits.