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HOW TO RIP SKY ODYSSEY US NTSC v1.10
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By: go-kun
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Before I begin I'd like to have some time to say a little something. THIS TUTORIAL IS BASED ON THE RELEASE BY DYNAMITE. Unlike so many other groups in the scene today, Dynamite has always been VERY co-operative with me when it comes to sharing information. It seems to me that the folks at Dynamite are less concerned with being "1337,¨ and MORE concerned with HELPING the scene as a whole. I personally find this trait very admirable. Further, without their help, this information would not be available right now. So BIG PROPS to DYNAMITE for SHARING information! (^_^)
Ok, now that I've spoken my mind, let's get on with the tutorial!
WHAT YOU NEED:
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CD\DVD Generator or equivalent. --- NOT FREELY AVAILABLE!
ISOBuster or equivalent --- Freely available.
Hex Workshop --- Available as Shareware.
Master Splitter or equivalent --- Available as Shareware.
IML2ISO --- Available as freeware.
CDRWin or equivalent --- Available as Shareware.
Some blank CDs.
A Whole lot of spare time! ;p
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PART 1:
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As always the first thing you need to do is get all the Sky files to your hard drive. You can do this with Windows Explorer or DOS Copy. If you should have trouble copying large files, please see the tutorial on how to make a boot disc, available at
http://www.ps2ownz.com for details. Copy all files and folders to a temp directory on your hard drive. Name it something simple like "TEMP¨
or "SKY¨.
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PART 2: (CD #1):
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Now that we have everything on the ole HD it's time to downsize. This, however, will be a 2 CD rip so we will do things a bit differently, but I¡¦ll get to that later. First things first. Delete all the PSS files in the \MOVIE directory and replace them with valid PSS dummy files such as DEFAULT.PSS from Star Wars Starfighter. I do not recommend using BLANK.PSS or SKIP.PSS as they have been known to be problematic.
Just find the smallest PSS file that you can from any PS2 game and use that. Copy, Paste, and Rename this file into the \MOVIE directory such that all the original files appear to still be there(although obviously they will all be much smaller). We're done with the movies.
Next go into the EDAT directory and erase VOICE.DAT. Replace it with a 0 byte txt file that has been renamed to VOICE.DAT.
Now make another TEMP directory and copy SO.MPD (from the SKY root dir) into it. Once that is done, Go back to the SKY root dir and use Master Splitter to split SO.MPD into 450MB parts. It will create 3 files: SO.MPD.000, SO.MPD.001, and SO.MPD.002. Erase the original SO.MPD, and parts 000 and 002. Rename SO.MPD.001 to SO.MPD. You now have a 450MB SO.MPD. Now we have downsized enough to fit on CD.
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PART 3: (CD #1):
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Now that we are done downsizing we are ready to edit the SLUS file. Go to the SKY root directory and open up SLUS_201.34 in Hex Workshop. Rather than make you look for all the strings, I'm going to just give them to you. HOWEVER, I strongly recommend you do a standard search for 0200 0424 and examine the results yourself FIRST because there is something noteworthy with these checks. There is no 0100 0424 occurring before them! Thus this is an excellent opportunity to study what non-standard checks can look like for your future reference. That being said, there are 4 strings and they are as follows:
OFFSET STRING CHANGE
------ ------ ------
000026F0 DA07 080C [02]00 0424 DA07 080C [01]00 0424
00002730 DA07 080C [02]00 0424 DA07 080C [01]00 0424
000B5918 DA07 080C [02]00 0424 DA07 080C [01]00 0424
000E9DA8 DA07 080C [0200 0424] DA07 080C [0000 0000]
This will correct all DVD checks in the game for you. Again, I recommend you examine these strings so you will be better able to recognize similar strings in the future. We're done with the SLUS, so save your work, close it up, and let's move on.
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PART 4: (CD #1):
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CD #1 is now just about ready. Open up CD\DVD Gen and create a NEW CDRom Master Disc. Under the VOLUME tab, enter in SKY_ODYSSEY as your volume label, and enter in SLUS20134 as your disc name. Now click on the DIRECTORY TAB. First create all your game directories. They are: EDAT, MOVIE, REPLAY. Now drag and drop your files into the project in a manner similar to their layout on the original DVD as viewed in ISOBuster. Once this is done, Go to the File menu and Export IML File. Save the IML file to the same directory where you have installed IML2ISO.EXE. Now open a DOS prompt and go to the directory where you installed IML2ISO.
So, for example, if you installed it to D:\TEMP, you would type in:
D:
CD\TEMP
Once you are there type in something like this:
IML2ISO sky.iml SKY.ISO
Once your ISO has been created you are ready to burn.
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PART 5: (CD #1):
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Open up CDRWin and select File Backup And Tools. Select to Record an ISO9660 file. Select SKY.ISO as your ISO file. Select CDROMXA Mode 2 and you are ready to burn. Voila! You've just finished CD #1! Way to go! (^_^)
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PART 6: (CD #2):
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Ok, time to do a little backtracking. Go back to your SKY dir and erase SO.MPD. Now, remember that copy we put in another temp directory? Copy it back into the SKY root now. OK, now open SO.MPD in Hex Workshop. Your first couple of lines will look something like this:
0058 0000 0097 0000 00F0 0000 0097 0000 0088 0100 0097 0000 0020 0200 0097 0000 00B8 0200 0097 0000 0050 0300 0097 0000
This is an offset table. Allow me to give a very brief explanation on how it works: The first entry in the table is 0058 0000. This = 0000 5800. Goto this address and you'll see something like this: FFFF FFFF 0000 0000 0000. This is the start of the first file in SO.MPD. Ok, back to the start (0000 0000). After the first entry you see 0097 0000.
This has to do with filesize\padding. How exactly it works doesn't matter as we won't be altering it anyways. All we need are the file offsets, which we now have. Ok, goto 0000 1810. This is still part of the table. The second entry on line 1810 should be: 00A8 9A09. This translates to:
099A A800. Goto that line and you'll see the start of a file.
Place your cursor here, in front of the FFFF FFFF. Now use the scroll bar on the right to scroll back up to the end of the table. For the record, the table ends at the first file, which we already know is at 0000 5800. Once here, shift click in front of the FFFF FFFF. Now everything between these two points should be selected. Delete it. We've now cut SO.MPD down to about 430MB or so. It will fit on CD and also include the part we left off CD # 1.
Now comes the very not fun part. We must now re-index the table. There are about 2800 entries to re-index, so I suggest that those of you with knowledge of programming use it NOW to make a program to re-index the table for you so you don't have to do it manually. It's not hard to do, it just takes a WHILE.
Ok, here's how it goes. In the table, all the file offsets are changed to 0000 0000 all the way to line 1810. Remember that line 1810 was where we got our reference point for where to cut,
thus, this is also where our first file now starts. Do NOT, however, change the size\padding strings. Thus your table would look something like this all the way up to line 1810:
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
0000 0000 0097 0000 0000 0000 0097 0000
At 1810, starting with the second entry, we will begin changing offsets. There is no easy way to do this without some kind of program to change the table for you. Basically you must find the new start of each file, and replace the current value in the table with the NEW start address of the file. This is VERY time consuming. As I said, there are a total of about 2800 entries and we only cut out roughly 770 files.
So that still leaves us with 2030 to change, plus about 770 to zero out. That's a lot of work. Again, I recommend that you write a program to do this for you if at all possible. Yes, there is one already made but alas, it is NOT currently released to the public, and I'm told never will be. So make your own, or just hunker down and get ready to spend a few hours in front of the computer.
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PART 7: (CD #2):
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Once the table is done, the hard part is over. Simply set up in CD\DVD Gen, export, and burn just as you did for CD #1. Voila! Done. Here is some important play information for you; the order in which the missions play may vary from person to person, however, here is which mission is on which CD so you’ll know when to swap (don’t forget to save after EVERY mission just to be extra safe!):
The missions are diverted over the 2 CD's as follows:
CD #1: CD#2:
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- The Adventure Begins - Take The Low Road
- The Desert Express - Blown Away
- Stormy Seas - The Great Devide
- The Labyrinth - The Ancient Forest
- Mid Air Rondezvous - Relief From Above
- Heart Of The Mine - A Calm Before The Storm
- Towers Of Terror - A Tight Squeeze / Maximus
- S.O.S - The SKY CANVAS mode
- Over The Falls
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PART 8: (No-MOD Version):
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OK, there is some slight modification needed for the no-mod version. It’s very simple however, so I don’t think it needs a lot of explanation. Obviously, you’ll need to move SYSTEM.CNF to 12231 if you’re using a v1.0. With 1.3 it shouldn’t matter, but I would do it anyway just to be certain. For other versions of GS2, I cannot say, but 12231 is always a safe bet. Anyway, here is the main additional step that needs doing:
You need to give yourself a tad more space to play with. Thus, while still in the downsizing phase of the rip, you would additionally go into the \EDAT directory and remove pic256.dat. Next you would create a 0 byte text document (ala notepad) and rename it to pic256.dat. This will, if memory serves, make you unable to play training mode,etc. However, it will give you enough additional space that you can safely move system.cnf to 12231. There you have it. That’s all you gotta do to fix up Sky Oddesey for the swap trick (no-mod).
Well, that about covers it. As you can see, there is a bit more to this one than might meet the eye at first glance. All things considered, this one was kind of a tough one. But who cares! We got it done, now we never have to muck around with it again! WooHoo!! Great job everyone-enjoy your brand spankin’ new backup. (^_^) 
