Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles freeze at Goblin Wall

[Dr. Dingleberry]

Game runs fine, but after defeating the boss at Goblin Wall, the game freezes while the mail moogle music continues playing. After searching for a bit, I found that this has been an ongoing issue for a few years now. Any updates on a possible fix?

[JosJuice]

Nope, no updates.

[Dr. Dingleberry]

(02-06-2019, 11:17 PM)JosJuice Wrote: Nope, no updates.

Do you know if anyone is working on it?

[JosJuice]

Nobody is working on it right now as far as I know.

[Metro-GCN]

I'm just leaving this hotfix guide here that I briefly made, in the hopes of helping out others who also suffer from this issue. After failing to find a guide or post that was concise, well-explained and to-the-point in regards to addressing this issue, I decided to document the steps I took in order to help myself not to forget this fix in the future if ever need be. So I thought others would benefit from this info as well, rather than having to hunt it down in a research-frenzy.

Metro-GCN Wrote:Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Fix for Goblin Wall Crashing/Save Corruption Error on Later Versions of Dolphin Emulator


"As of 5.0-540, the Goblin Wall level is impossible to clear. After defeating the Goblin King and responding to the subsequent letter received via Mogmail, the screen goes black and audio seems to stutter. Earlier versions of Dolphin can progress past that point, but save files created after that point will have a corrupt header and cannot be loaded." - dolphin-emu.org wiki page



Requirements:


- Current stable release of Dolphin

- Old Dolphin version 5.0

- A hex editor such as HxD



What I did to fix this issue:


- Save (to memory card) BEFORE entering Goblin Wall on current version of Dolphin

- Load memory card save on Dolphin version 5.0 (only 5.0, nothing newer) and play through Goblin Wall as you normally would

- Beat the boss and go through the mail screen and artifact selection screen, end up back at the world map

- Save (to memory card) on a new in-game save file (preferably use the fourth save slot)

- Close the old version of Dolphin 5.0 and open up current version of Dolphin, but do not load FFCC yet

- Go to "Tools > Memory Card Manager (GC)" to open up the Memory Card Manager, and be sure to load your current memory card file into slot A

- Select your last FF Crystal Chronicles save (corrupted save should be under your original backup first-slot save prior to beating Goblin Wall)

- Right-click and "Export Save" (should be exported as 04-GCCE-FFCC.gci but due to corrupted header it won't export with a name by default, name it either that or put an 01 instead of 04, the number you use will determine what in-game save slot the save will occupy)

- Open your newly-exported .gci file in a hex editor like HxD

- Select the four lines between and including lines 00000000 to 00000030 and replace the following values FROM:

Code:

47 43 43 45 80 6D FF 02 46 46 43 43 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 1E B1 26 12 00 00 00 40
00 55 00 AA 04 00 00 E3 00 16 FF FF 00 00 00 00

TO:

Code:

47 43 43 45 30 31 FF 02 46 46 43 43 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 1E AF 72 FD 00 00 00 40
00 55 00 AA 04 00 00 13 00 16 FF FF 00 00 00 00

(copy the second code, select the old four lines in the editor and right-click > "Paste insert" to paste in the new values over the old ones)

(be sure to check this post on the FFCC thread page if you need a visual representation on how to do this)


- Save the changes you made to the .gci file in the hex editor and exit

- Go back to Dolphin's Memory Card Manager and press the "<-Import GCI" button, select the .gci you finished editing

- Load up FFCC again and try to load your memory card save, it should work normally again and the problem should be successfully bypassed






Resources:


https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-gc-final-fantasy-crystal-chronicles--25957?pid=413638#pid413638

https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Final_Fantasy_Crystal_Chronicles#Goblin_Wall

https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/