Final Fantasy Hacktics

Just finished extracting the files from the iOS/Android version of 'fftpack.bin' and noticed that only about 140 files were different than the PSP version, mostly Event files, the .OUT files, and a few TUTO.SCR/MES and WORLD files. I've made a list and notes about which files are different and have the updated script I used to extract them based on 'fftpspext.c' which was incredibly informative

But it looks like the updated sprites weren't inserted back into the original bin which lead me to looking into the other files like g2d.dat which I couldn't find notes on as far as extracting from this file. It made me curious if others had already tried extracting this or if I am starting fresh here. I did find a couple notes on another forum which didn't end up leading anywhere

Quote"G2D.DAT's header is YOX" // specifically "59 4F 58" YOX
"Edit: It was a fat32 filesystem and I needed to mount it with Imdisk to open it." // I tried mounting this with imdisk as well as aim toolkit but neither seemed to have any success
"I've been attempting to extract the graphics from the android version of FFTWOTL, but have hit a road block.
The header has a fat32lib label, but unlike another thread I found with a similar issue, it's not openable like a regular archive." // I couldn't find the thread they were referencing here

The main goal I had was once the files are extracted I planned to make a texture pack for the psp version since it supports external texture replacement with higher resolution. I saw that "Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions Texture Pack" exists currently but the sprites seem to have suffered some color loss compared to the mobile versions running directly

EDIT: The other two files music.dat and sound.dat ended up containing the same YOX header, but inside were a combination of OGG and RIFF WAVfmt files. specifically music.dat had 95 ogg and 5 wav. meanwhile sound.dat had 668 sound effect wav files.
And noticing this trend with the files we then have "78 9C" headers all through the g2d.dat which is a zlib compressed format from what i've read so far. going to split the file up with this in mind and see where it leads

EDIT2: about 1/4 of the files extracted as .tga files (though 18 of them were missing their footer, adding that back on fixed the files) These mostly were things like the mobile touch screen buttons/controls, titles of areas, in game menus, the game credits, a few messages in japanese about iCloud. the rest of the files have no identifying headers or footers that I can figure out. But many do seem like they have the general 'shape' of the sprites layout when scrolling in the hex editor, but I am not sure what file type they could be

While we dont tend to mod the mobile ports, we always love seeing people find out new info about any version! And hey, someone's gotta do this stuff to get the ball rolling for other modders. Keep us posted, and good luck!

Feels very close now to identifying these files. they all seem to be byte-per-pixel representations of the art which I am guessing are the new sprites. the problem is that I am not sure how they are applying the color to the pixels since there is no header and no footer on these files. And no extra files that might be pointing to palettes. I wonder if they are using the regular palette that each sprite should have, and then mapping them to the new sprites based on these byte patterns. When opening one up for example in the hex editor I was able to go "yea that's clearly an egg" and "that one is clearly the cracked egg" and then when opening a different one I saw "oh that's the portrait sprite for a character" but without an actual palette to map these too, especially since it seems the lines reverse in an unexpected way. There may be a pattern that I just don't recognize. But here is a couple samples

00 00 00 00 00 00 4D E5 FF EE EE EE DE BB BB BB 9A 99 99 A9 ED FF 5D ED FF CC AB DC EE CC DD EE
00 00 00 00 00 00 4D FD FF EE EE EE EE AA AA AA 99 99 99 A9 ED FF 55 ED FF CC BC DC EE CD ED DE
00 00 00 00 00 D0 45 FE FF EE EE EE EE A9 AA 9A 99 99 99 A9 EC FF 55 DD FF CD CC DC ED DD EE DD
00 00 00 00 00 D0 44 FE EF EE FF FF EE 88 99 99 99 99 99 A9 EC DF 55 DD FE CD CC DC EC EE DE DD
00 00 00 00 00 50 44 FF EE FE FF FF EE 88 98 99 99 99 99 A9 EC DF 55 DD EE DE CC DD DC EE DD CDThis is a 32x96 portrait sprite, where this is lines 80-84 for the Female Orator

           31 97 AA AA AA AA 79 13
        10 73 A9 AA AA AA AA 9A 37 01
        31 97 AA AA AA AA AA AA 79 13and this lines 4-7 of the egg sprite without the crack in it (removed all of the plain 00's just to make the shape stand out more, but assume otherwise it's just 00 00 00 etc, notice the reversing on "31 97 AA" "AA AA" "AA 79 13" but the other one above didn't seem to reverse like that except for the last 2 bytes, so I am not sure if this a red herring, adding the 2nd egg same lines below

            31 97 79 32 39 25 79 13
         10 73 99 23 32 72 39 92 37 01
         31 97 5A 97 23 97 29 22 79 13
attaching images of the views from the hex editor screenshoted and zoomed out

EDIT: this makes more sense now, seems like the 'bytes' idea was wrong, it's 4bpp format i'm fairly sure. which explains why the number of rows is doubled compared to the originals but the width seems the same. if each is 4bpp then that is 2 per byte which adds up. Now just need to grab a palette to match these to and figure out which order the bits are pointing at. since going from left to right "00 10 72 A9 AA" might instead be read as "00 01 27 9A AA" i.e read 2nd set of 4 before the first 4. which makes more sense going from transparent to solid color and seems to match how it is done with the rest of the sprites in the base game

EDIT2: indeed they seem to use the same color palettes as the base game, then just apply it to the new sprites using the same method that base game does. Now the only question is, how can I get all of the palettes to literally everything so that I can apply them to the new files. Currently working through naming all of the files and grouping them by which palettes they should belong to

Folks we've done it, this can be marked as [Solved] all files converted to a generic greyscale palette, but the proof of concept worked. just need to now match 950 images to their correct palette, oh and also their alternate colours too. If anyone can think of a convenient or quick way to match the palettes that would be an absolutely massive help, in the mean time just going to keep naming all of the files so that once I have the palettes it'll be quick and easy to map them by their file number