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(The story is relevant...mostly)

So I'm over at my buddy's house playing some RE5 Gold Edition, beat the game, unlock a bunch of stuff, and then I copy the save file to my memory stick so I can take it home with me.

Of course, the save is locked to his profile so I can't play it on my PS3, even though I was there beating everything with him. Lame.

So, I've got this save file sitting on my memory stick, I want to see if I can hack it to work with my profile.

I figure if I just create 2 new saves on different profiles and do nothing else, they should be identical except for the profile information. Then I just have to replace my friend's profile info with mine, and it should work, right?

So I need a tool for diff-ing these 2 binary files so I can quickly locate the parts of the file that are different. I know there are plenty of tools for text, but what about for binary?

(Actually, there are 3 files, DATA0.DAT, PARAM.PFD, and PARAM.SFO... not sure if anyone knows anything about PS3 save files, specifically for Resident Evil 5 Gold)

Don't think it's going to be possible. Apparently the save file is "protected". All it would take to prevent me from tampering with it is if they hash the contents of the data using some unknown algorithm, and then verify the hash matches up upon load. Not sure if they're doing that, but... guess it would be kind of dumb if they weren't doing something similar.

mpen
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  • Personally i think this is probably a better fit on [superuser.com](http://superuser.com/), we'll see if enough people agree. – slugster Jan 07 '11 at 07:18
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    Maybe this question can help: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4559677/tool-for-3-way-binary-hex-file-comparison – Nathan Fellman Jan 07 '11 at 07:35

3 Answers3

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Hex Workshop is one of the premier hex manipulation applications and it has a file compare function.

But be aware that the game may not use a straight foward data saving mechanism, you may be dealing with a custom database structure, or the data may be encrypted. Game developers typically don't make it easy to hack save files, for obvious reasons...

slugster
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I thought most of compare tools can do that (like Beyond Compare which I love). For example, there is FC.exe in Windows 7 in System folder. Compares ASCII and binaries. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/159214 for some details.

Schultz9999
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  • Trying beyond compare, it's highlighted the differences between the two "fresh saves"...now how do I take the "different" stuff from my fresh save and copy it over the same chunk of my friend's save? Does it have any options for merging like that? – mpen Jan 07 '11 at 07:50
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    @Ralph: it can move stuff around. There is the left and right arrows in the toolbar which will move selection to the left and right file correspondingly, or you can select piece of text and right click on it and pick the same menu item. – Schultz9999 Jan 07 '11 at 07:53
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check out hex workshop. most other hex editors out there should have this feature as well.

一二三
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Nick
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