Explorations of interesting code in RDR2.self

[atkinchris]

I've been hexing around inside a good few decrypted eboot.bin's over the past few nights, and have found some interesting stuff. This may be known to quite a few, but could have interesting pointers for others.

1) Paths and strings are sometimes null delimited. This means that each byte has a 00 or empty space between it, and is still interpreted as a non-delimited command.

For example; /dev_bdvd/ can also appear as /.d.e.v._.b.d.v.d./

I'm not quite sure why this is; does anyone have any more information on this?

2) One of the elf's I've been looking through the most is RDR2.self of Undead Nightmare. In this file there are a number of interesting and revealing comments.

Some are odd, informal comments;

"Howdy partner. You're playing with an executable built on %s %s"
"You're running a __FINAL build, pilgrim!"

Others, however, detail processes;

"Game data created:
%s.../dev_bdvd/PS3_GAME/ICON0.PNG..../ICON0.PNG......Copying icon from %s to %s"

Some, even have full, what appear to be intranet, paths in them, and instructions to developers;

"Are you sure you downloaded PS3 zips? Check https://rsgsanwiki.rockstar.t2.corp/...tle=RunningPS3 for instructions"

"Disable Redemption Zips.%u. %s..Setting Default Skipping Zips = TRUE....SkipZip = (%s)..LoadZip = (%s)..Skip loading of content zip, since you are a designer!"

There are also references to directories; game: and gamedata: Both appear to be short paths to USRDIR, with game: refering to hdd0 data and gamedata: being another bdvd.

Furthermore, RDR:UN has it's data in a .rpf, which from the commands regarding it, appears to be an image, one that can be mounted.

It appears separately from the standard .sdat archives with their "LoadZip = (%s)" commands.


Other interesting things I found:

"gdGameData::AutoDetectSku : get titleid failed (not booted from Bluray?) defaulting to %s (%x)"

They anticipated a scenario where game aren't booted from bluray (where they're not PSN games)? Where is this "%s" path?


"(*).....CheatedGame"

This obviously refers to save data with cheats! (RDR tags savedate with cheats enabled with an asterisk)


Is this all just well known stuff? Do other elfs have such blatant commenting in?

[michaelstone]

ive seen others with some odd shit in them...ive never really noticed anything like some of that though...

[kamelKase]

I've been hexing around inside a good few decrypted eboot.bin's over the past few nights, and have found some interesting stuff. This may be known to quite a few, but could have interesting pointers for others.

1) Paths and strings are sometimes null delimited. This means that each byte has a 00 or empty space between it, and is still interpreted as a non-delimited command.

For example; /dev_bdvd/ can also appear as /.d.e.v._.b.d.v.d./

I'm not quite sure why this is; does anyone have any more information on this?

2) One of the elf's I've been looking through the most is RDR2.self of Undead Nightmare. In this file there are a number of interesting and revealing comments.

Some are odd, informal comments;

"Howdy partner. You're playing with an executable built on %s %s"
"You're running a __FINAL build, pilgrim!"

Others, however, detail processes;

"Game data created:
%s.../dev_bdvd/PS3_GAME/ICON0.PNG..../ICON0.PNG......Copying icon from %s to %s"

Some, even have full, what appear to be intranet, paths in them, and instructions to developers;

"Are you sure you downloaded PS3 zips? Check https://rsgsanwiki.rockstar.t2.corp/...tle=RunningPS3 for instructions"

"Disable Redemption Zips.%u. %s..Setting Default Skipping Zips = TRUE....SkipZip = (%s)..LoadZip = (%s)..Skip loading of content zip, since you are a designer!"

There are also references to directories; game: and gamedata: Both appear to be short paths to USRDIR, with game: refering to hdd0 data and gamedata: being another bdvd.

Furthermore, RDR:UN has it's data in a .rpf, which from the commands regarding it, appears to be an image, one that can be mounted.

It appears separately from the standard .sdat archives with their "LoadZip = (%s)" commands.


Other interesting things I found:

"gdGameData::AutoDetectSku : get titleid failed (not booted from Bluray?) defaulting to %s (%x)"

They anticipated a scenario where game aren't booted from bluray (where they're not PSN games)? Where is this "%s" path?


"(*).....CheatedGame"

This obviously refers to save data with cheats! (RDR tags savedate with cheats enabled with an asterisk)


Is this all just well known stuff? Do other elfs have such blatant commenting in?

Text string's with one byte as a character and the next byte zero'd (00) are Unicode strings. They are for supporting languages with more than 255 characters.

Most of what you're seeing is debug strings.

That dev_bdvd/PS3_GAME/ICON0.PNG should be forwarded to dev_hdd0/RDR2GAME/ICON0.png etc, but that should only have to do with save games.

I'm currently reading up on PowerPC assembly so I can understand the disassembly a little better and figure out how these strings are getting used, and ultimately which ones to change and what to change them to.

[atkinchris]

Text string's with one byte as a character and the next byte zero'd (00) are Unicode strings. They are for supporting languages with more than 255 characters.

Thanks; I'm stunned I didn't already know this!

It'd be nice if they left something (accidentally or otherwise) in their comments that gave us something to chew on properly. How games map their data directories would be a nice one, especially for those eboots that don't have any paths in them. :S

[kamelKase]

Thanks; I'm stunned I didn't already know this!

It'd be nice if they left something (accidentally or otherwise) in their comments that gave us something to chew on properly. How games map their data directories would be a nice one, especially for those eboots that don't have any paths in them. :S

I'm looking through the Sony SDK docs to see how you're "officially" supposed to do it.

[hackoncrack]

what program do you use to look at the self files? im a noob that needs to learn...

[atkinchris]

what program do you use to look at the self files? im a noob that needs to learn...

Any hex editor will allow you to poke through the self files.