Metal Gear Solid 5 cassette tape

Prophet (3528)

18-11-2015, 17:41

It is not possible. It is just a very small part of the game (less than 0.005%).
Anyway, it is just part of the original Metal Gear game. AFAIK there is any difference, just a few bits due to corruption.

By iamfromouttahere

Supporter (3)

18-11-2015, 18:34

i said this in NeverBeGameOver, but needed to tell it here right now, since i believe this is a good time in the conversation, so i registered just for this:

Could it be possible that if we take the modified header, then put it into the old rom and these small differences affect the game? Something like a spectrum POKE, but with a modified game binary?

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

18-11-2015, 22:53

Not really, since those modifications are caused by corruption.
This means that depending on the parameters selected in the WAV2CAS tool, some bits will be wrong or right. So it is quite probably that the content of the tape is just the first bytes of Metal Gear ROM (unmodified).

Also, those bytes are not really the game logic. They are just the ROM header, initialization code, entry points to decode 1bpp/2bpp graphics, fill VRAM rectangle, clear screen, etc.

By Vampier

Prophet (2415)

20-11-2015, 06:50

At this point in time I think Kojima just played us like a damn fiddle

He just needed something to create a sound and he chose metal gear 1 just to keep your obsessed people busy.

excellent work on all the tracking of this stuff.

By galactusprobes

Supporter (1)

20-11-2015, 10:19

I'm sorry if this has already been answered, but seeing as I know nothing about the MSX or how it's data works, as well as mining any sort of code or data from any sort of PC of any kind (Be it recent or from the past), I have a question that's been on my mind for many, many months and the only way I can ask it is what seems like the simplest.

Is there anyway to record the sounds of the tape in the game onto a real tape, and then from there put the tape into a Bitcorder and play it just to see what comes up? I understand the Bitcorder is a device for reading data from MSX data cassettes? Basically I'm just asking about the possibility of this.

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

20-11-2015, 11:59

Yes, you can record the sound on a real tape and try to load it from a real MSX, but the result will be the same that trying to load the WAV on an emulator and/or converting it to CAS format an load it from an emulator.

When loading a real tape, the MSX decode the sound and convert it to binary data. Tools like WAV2CAS do the same.

Anyway, in this case the data will not load correctly on a real MSX for several reason:
- The tape has a fake CLOAD header that does not match with the real binary content.
- That binary data is the beginning of Metal Gear ROM, that will not work because it is just a few bytes of code and in a format that needs extra hardware (MegaROM mapper) and designed to be on a ROM memory (not for loading it into RAM).

By cax

Prophet (3741)

20-11-2015, 20:49

In other words, what we have here is a Frankenstein combination of CLOAD header (which is normally intended to load MSX-BASIC code) with part of ROM (and binary ROM as-is cannot be loaded by CLOAD command from MSX-BASIC).

If you try to load this into an emulator or real MSX2 machine, you will just get error and/or some part of RAM with nonsense bytes in it (this ROM is just a binary code and cannot be interpreted as a tokenized MSX-BASIC code).

Technically, Metal Gear ROM can be loaded from tape to RAM/VRAM and run from there (I did it many times while working on MicroWAVer tool) - but obviously not like this.
It should be split into small parts, and each part should be loaded with BLOAD header. Alternatively, custom loader should be used.
In addition, ROM will not work as-is, it should be modified to work from RAM instead of ROM.
In other words, you need a specially hacked version of Metal Gear ROM (so-called "disk version").

Long story short: if you came here to find some hidden message in this MGS5 tape - forget it, there is no hidden message.

By ZONE

Supporter (1)

26-11-2015, 14:34

This may not be completely related to what you guys are trying to do, but does anyone have clean audio of the other side of the tape? The message that Big Boss recorded for Venom to hear? I haven't been able to locate it inside the game's audio files yet.

By domeless

Supporter (3)

06-12-2015, 04:57

When patched with a converted and cleaned up header the rom runs without further modifications, but now the Konami logo is hidden at the start.

Clean converted cassette data (converted with (10.0/1.25/2.0) settings then the empty header errors castool adds removed):

41 42 F3 41 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 43 44 07 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F8 C0 12 C0 32 C0 52 C0 10 C0 11 C0 30 C0 31 C0 50 C0 51 C0 92 68 F2 C4 F4 C0 72 C0 70 C0 71 C0 CD E0 41 18 4E CD E5 41 18 49 CD 7C 42 18 44 CD FB 5C 18 3F CD C9 61 18 3A CD AF 61 18 35 CD 54 62 18 30 CD 4B 64 18 2B CD 51 65 18 26 CD 61 69 18 21 CD EE 69 18 1D CD 00 6C 18 17 CD 5D 50 18 12 CD FE 51 18 0D CD 91 4F 18 08 CD F8 4D 18 03 CD 0E 4E 18 4E CD 11 50 18 49 CD 01 4F 18 44 CD 0C 51 18 3F CD 8A 51 18 3A CD 4D 61 18 35 CD B4 42 18 30 CD 93 4D 18 2B CD 59 4D 18 26 CD 66 4E 18 21 CD E1 43 18 1C CD 21 65 18 17 CD 10 51 18 12 CD 28 6F 18 0D CD 35 51 18 08 CD 2C 4E 18 03 CD A7 44 18 4E CD 1B 4E 18 49 CD 35 49 18 44 CD CB 4A 18 3F CF AF 44 18 3A CD AC 44 18 35 CD 0B 7D 18 30 CD 90 4E 18 2B CD C4 4E 18 26 CD 4B 4C 18 21 CD CD 4F 18 1C CD F3 5C 18 17 CD 4A 90 18 12 CD 2F 4F 18 0D CD FC 4E 18 08 CD CA 73 18 03 CD 84 42 18 4E CD 03 4B 18 49 CD 1D 5D 18 44 CD 36 6A 18 3F CD 3E 6A 18 3A CD BE 6D 18 35 CD 67 6F 18 30 CD 1D 4E 18 2B CD 4C 52 18 26 CD 92 4A 18 21 CD 33 4B 18 1C CD 60 6D 18 17 CD 7D 6D 18 12 CD 53 6B 18 0D CD 32 53 18 08 CD C5 53 18 03 CD 42 4E 18 03 CD FC 8F CD 48 42 F5 3A F6 F0 A7 28 08 F3 32 00 A0 32 F3 F0 FB F1 C9 F3 CD 3E 01 3E 04 32 00 60 3C 32 00 80 CD 00 60 3A F1 F0 32 00 60 3A F2 F0 32 00 80 21 05 C0 CB 46 C2 D9 41 34 FB CD C1 66 AF 32 05 C0 CD 3E 01 FB C9 3D 87 85

Simply add it to a Metal Gear (J) rom.

By iamfromouttahere

Supporter (3)

06-12-2015, 08:34

I KNEW IT!

iamfromouttahere wrote:

i said this in NeverBeGameOver, but needed to tell it here right now, since i believe this is a good time in the conversation, so i registered just for this:

Could it be possible that if we take the modified header, then put it into the old rom and these small differences affect the game? Something like a spectrum POKE, but with a modified game binary?