this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Emulation

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Emulation across the ages

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I apologize if this isn't cross-posted correctly. New to KBIN and difficult to find how to do this.

This is for use in Emulation of Monster Rancher (1), a Playstation (1) game which is a fantasy pet raising and breeding simulator (often accused of being a Pokemon Clone, though it's not really a Pokemon style game). Additionally, this app can actually be used to burn CDs for use on the console as well, but the files themselves can be used directly in several emulators, even if you have no optical drive at all.

The original game used a mechanic that involved (when prompted during game-play) to take out the game disc and insert a music CD or other PSX game to generate a monster. The game would read some meta data on a disc to determine the Breed, if it had a mixed sub-breed, and what seemed like randomized stat offsets. This is difficult with emulation, especially in the days of no optical drives.

The Monster Rancher 2 "Make-A-Monster" app is more robust, and i'm working on a tutorial for this too, which supports Offset variations of the 33 Breeds (many of which can be crossbred) and 19 uniques, totalling over 609k total possible outcomes (and equating to every possible entry within the game that a CD could make.

The files generated consist of a table of contents file with track data (what the game reads to make a determination) and a data file with empty data that equates to the size of the disc expected. (There's no copyright data generated by this, no copies of CDs or Games, just the necessary track information and blank data file of the expected size to trick the game into THINKING it's a given disc).

If there's any ranchers out there, I hope you enjoy :)
(ALSO, there's a remaster, MR1&2DX, on Switch, Steam, iOS with a revamped Shrine mechanic that we've also cracked)

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[–] MonsterFenrick@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Links to MR2 tutorial (mostly the same with a couple extra things) and links to the app
https://kbin.social/m/MonsterRancher/t/496208