Tools for Convenient S5 Editing

[Topazd]

Tools and documentation (updated 18th Aug 2019) https://www.dropbox.com/sh/392xi56ys1uq ... ?dl=0&lst=
You’ll also need Nightmare https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1307/

I’ve wanted to make an S5 editor for a good while now, and thanks to Atonias’ post a while back was able to figure out a great deal of how the game tends to store its data. But eventually I opted for the path of least resistance—namely instead of reinventing the wheel, just making the game functional with an utility that’s both extremely convenient for fixed-length tables and one I already knew how to work with.

Modules included as of now will allow you to edit…

Enemies
Character base stats & stat growths
Character elemental affinities
All categories of equipment & accessories
Spells
Skill effects
Equipable skills
Weapon growths
MP growth requirements
Rune & healing item prices

Hopefully there’ll be more modules down the line as I hunt the addresses down (rune slots and formations most pressingly), but these should be enough to warrant a preliminary release. Obviously these will never be capable of very sophisticated modifications; both the scope of Nightmare itself and my level of knowledge are limiting factors there.

Instructions

Open S5tool.exe. After you've recovered from the awe of the expansive GUI, choose 'Extract' and navigate to your ISO (the program is now set to work with both NTSC-U and PAL, but I can't speak for the Japanese version). The program will let you know once it's done, and will have spat out an 's5_extract' with no file extension. Using Nightmare and the modules provided (shouldn’t be too difficult even if you’re unfamiliar with the program, but I’ve provided a short tutorial in the readme) make all the edits you wish to the extracted file. Once you’re satisfied, open the tool again and pick ‘Insert’. You’ll be prompted to first choose your ISO, then the modified file. If you see ‘Inserted!’ pop up, all went accordingly.

Huge thanks to Atonias for finding most of the addresses. If anyone has any questions or finds any mistakes I may have made (and I most probably have), do throw them my way!

[Antimatzist]

Awesome! Some questions ...

- using the EU ISO, how can I access the (for instance) German names of items, spells, ...
- Is it intended that for most modules, it displays "None" as default? E.g. when I go to the "Equipable Skill Editor" and select the prince, all skills are selected as "none" - or is this because I used the EU ISO and not the NTSC-U?
- Can you maybe elucidate the stat growth a bit more? We tried to figure it out in the boards some time ago. How does stat growth exactly work in this game?

[Topazd]

using the EU ISO, how can I access the (for instance) German names of items, spells, ...

These can be found (and edited, if you like) with HxD or any hex editor, really. Use the search utility to look for particular text strings like so. If you meant you just want to see the non-English names while editing I don't think I have a straightforward way to make that happen for now.

Is it intended that for most modules, it displays "None" as default? E.g. when I go to the "Equipable Skill Editor" and select the prince, all skills are selected as "none" - or is this because I used the EU ISO and not the NTSC-U?

That was indeed my bad; after brief investigation the PAL ISO turns out to be quite a bit larger (multiple languages and all, do I feel dumb now) and as such all the tables were located in different addresses. Good news is, the tool was fairly easily made compatible with PAL. It should now be able to identify what region your ISO is automatically: if the extract has '_pal' at the end all works as intended. If not, let me know and I'll add a manual toggle for it or something. And since I had to edit a few of the other modules as well you'll have to replace the modules you'd previously downloaded. Sorry for the hassle!

Can you maybe elucidate the stat growth a bit more? We tried to figure it out in the boards some time ago. How does stat growth exactly work in this game?

A character's stat growth is simply how much they can expect to grow in a given stat on level up. Upon join time, these are completely fixed (e.g. the Prince has a base magic stat of 5 with a magic growth of 5, hence once he 'joins' at level 3 he'll have a magic stat of 15). On normal level ups, the gain is in the range of stat growth +-1 (so the Prince will gain 4-6 points of magic per level—regrettably I don't know the specific probabilities for each alternative). One exception is the growth rate of 0, with which you'll never grow in that particular stat whatsoever.

[Antimatzist]

1. Yeah, my question aimed at extracting the item names directly from the ISO, but no worries; I planned to write them down myself anyway, but will try playing around with a hex editor.

2. It now works, thanks!

3. Wait, so stat growth is the same at any level? I think in all other Suikoden titles, you have different phases of growth level 1-20, 20-60, 60-99), this does not apply to Suikoden V? I can make some tests with save states (hoping that RNG is not an issue) and make some statistics on stat growth probabilities.

[Topazd]

Yeah, best as I can tell there's no level bracketing of any sort. Guess it makes sense for stat gains to remain consistently high, given the 999 cap in lieu of the usual 255. Any testing would be welcome!

[Antimatzist]

I will see if I can figure something out in the coming days! This tool definitely is very helpful, thanks for your work!

[Antimatzist]

I now made 15 tests, this is definitely ... interesting. Small sample size, all taken for the prince:
- HP growth rate: 7. However, 5 times it grew by 6, 8 times by 8 and only once by 7
- Magic and Tech both growth rate 5 (doubling my sample size): 13 x +4, 7 x +5, 10 x +6
- Attack growth rate: 4. 4 x +3, 5 x +4, 6 x +5
- MDEF, EVA and Luck all have growth rate of 3: 14 x + 2, 14 x +3, 16 x +4
- Luck growth rate is 2. 4 x +1, 6 x +2, 5 x +3
- PDF growth rate 1. 6 x 0, 5 x +1, 4 x +2.

So ... It seems that for higher (5 & 7) growth rates, it leans more towards the extremes (+1 or -1 the actual growth rate) instead of the actual growth rate. For 1-4, I would say chances for +1, 0, and -1 are even. Of course, this needs more testing. I simply restarted the game and recorded the stat changes for the prince. I used a savestate after I got sufficient EXP for the next battle to trigger a level up. Unfortunately, once you are in the actual battle, it seems that RNG will fix your stat growth, so testing is a bit more tedious. Maybe I will include Lyon as well to get more data points. Unfortunately, SIaleeds and Georg are too high in level to get a level up, but have some more stat growth rates (6 for Sialeeds HP, MAG and MDEF, 9 for Georg's HP).