PS2 game requires 100% acccurate LBAs, can't find a proper tool for this task

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SlyCooperReloadCoded
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Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:39 pm

PS2 game requires 100% acccurate LBAs, can't find a proper tool for this task

Post by SlyCooperReloadCoded »

Star Wars Starfighter, specifically the PS2 release, has a very strange system where it'll check the LBA of each file, and if even one is even a single byte wrong, the game will intentionally break and not boot. This is 100% intentional and confirmed by the ex-lead developer. This makes modifying files near-impossible. The game is also fully debug-enabled and I've been working on documenting all of it, so since I have the ability to run scripts, I'd like to modify them... if only this LBA system wasn't an issue.

What I need is a tool that can take the original ISO, export a file that contains a list of the files and their original LBAs, then when I'm done modifying the ISO, I can re-import that file and it'll automatically set the LBAs back to what they were. IML files are close to what I'm looking for, but not exactly. CDGEN, CDVDGEN, and iml2iso will not work for this. CDGEN has an LBA character limit that's one character too short for me to type in the LBA, otherwise that would work. CDVDGEN claims that the game's original LBA locations are "incorrect" and gives no further information. iml2iso is useless to me because I can't create an iml file using the other tools.

Some game preservation communities said that other ISO tools like ImgBurn work better for sensitive games like this, but no, this game is an exception. LBAs have to be 100% identical or else no game.

Does anyone know of a tool like this or another way to accomplish this? I'd even be willing to patch out LBA checks if there's a global way to do that.