Need help from experienced PSX developer / reverse-engineer

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FatherlyNick
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Need help from experienced PSX developer / reverse-engineer

Post by FatherlyNick » December 15th, 2022, 11:59 pm

Hello PSX offtopic,

I am trying to understand how the OP of this video managed to get the debug functions to work.

Quake 2 came with main.sym symbol table.
From what I understand, .sym files contains some function names, var names etc and OP was able to link the debug functions of main.sym to the games executable SLUS_007.57. Quake 2's main.sym does come with some useful debug functions.
OP did attach their modified files to the video but I can't see why they made the changes that they did. What's the connection? Are they just changing the address of an existing function in SLUS_007.57 to one in the main.sym? How is that done exactly?

Could someone with experience, briefly (or preferably, step-by-step) explain this process? Maybe in a video or with screenshots? Or maybe link to an existing resource on this topic? I looked around but did not find a detailed explanation.
I would like to do the same thing for the PAL version of Quake 2.

Thanks in advance.

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ShonRT
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Post by ShonRT » October 14th, 2023, 12:10 am

Hi there. To link debug functions from a .sym file to a game executable, you need to modify the game's code. You essentially replace or redirect calls to existing functions in the game with calls to the debug functions. You'll need to disassemble the game executable to understand its assembly code. Tools like IDA Pro or Ghidra can be used for this purpose. You'll need to identify the debug functions you want to link to. These are typically found in the .sym file or within the game's code.

FatherlyNick
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Post by FatherlyNick » January 8th, 2024, 11:05 am

ShonRT wrote: October 14th, 2023, 12:10 am Hi there. To link debug functions from a .sym file to a game executable, you need to modify the game's code. You essentially replace or redirect calls to existing functions in the game with calls to the debug functions. You'll need to disassemble the game executable to understand its assembly code. Tools like IDA Pro or Ghidra can be used for this purpose. You'll need to identify the debug functions you want to link to. These are typically found in the .sym file or within the game's code.
Thanks. That's give me a starting point.

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