Modding potential on Apple Silicon Macs

[Shinto-Cetra]

I currently only have an Intel Mac, but was curious if Lunar SSST could be modded on an Apple Silicon Mac. iOS apps can can function normally on Apple Silicon Macs due to both using ARM chips. MacOS is still more customizable than other Apple OSes, etc, so you can natively (ie without any unsupported 3rd party hacks like Jailbreaking) modify file structures in MacOS.

For this mod, I am trying to: 1. Add the Working Designs dub for SSSC back in 2. Replace the FMV with the Windows 9x FMV which have more vibrant colors than the native Lunar iOS FMV. 3. Add the original PS1 font (or something that looks identical) back in.

I used jpsxdec (https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/658/) to extract all the dub acting from the PS1 game CDs, and mounted the Windows 9x Lunar CDs to extract the FMV, which was in .MPG format. I bought SSST and borrowed a relative's Apple Silicon Macbook, also I already had a Lunar font on my computer. The movie files for SSST are in .OGV format, and they have the audio embedded in the same file. Next I used iMovie to add the Working Designs dub for the opening FMV of Lunar 1's Windows 9x version, and remove the Japanese VA audio. Then in iMovie again, I added a bit of repeat of the water in the beginning, and extended a frame of Alex and Luna holding hands at the end to make it match the PS1 FMV. Finally I exported the movie as a MP4 (there was no option for direct OGV export) , then used a free online convertor to put it back in OGV format.

SSST loaded the movie without crashing however there were 3 big issues: 1. the animation part played too fast, and by the time I heard the vocals it was finished and the screen had gone black 2. It was more pixelated in-game than it was as an MP4 file (the MP4 file also played just fine in VLC Player). 3. the "Touch" logo was always present. 2 and 3 are visible in this screenshot. If anyone has any idea on how to proceed, please let me know.

Lunar ssst glitch.png (1.02 MiB) Viewed 28835 times

[Mr_conan]

Im not sure if its the issue, but does your resolution and new frame rate match the resolution and frame rate of the original sss touch video? The saturn version is finicky about that, and since this shares source code it may be as well. That would explain the video advancing at an odd rate. Id imagine youd also need to upscale from the 9x video since thats standard mpeg1 resolution and touch is probably using some sort of filters to get a higher resolution for iphone screens.

[Shinto-Cetra]

Im not sure if its the issue, but does your resolution and new frame rate match the resolution and frame rate of the original sss touch video? The saturn version is finicky about that, and since this shares source code it may be as well. That would explain the video advancing at an odd rate. Id imagine youd also need to upscale from the 9x video since thats standard mpeg1 resolution and touch is probably using some sort of filters to get a higher resolution for iphone screens.

Thank you for the information. I suspect the frame rate issue may be related as converting the MP4 file to an OGV file caused missing frames, hence why the video played so fast that it ended before the singing began. If you have any idea how to improve/match the frame rate, please do tell. Re: upscaling MPEG-1 video, I edited it with iMovie (ie to add the North American PS1 audio back in) to output a MP4 file, then converted that to an OGV. So I think the upscaling has been done with iMovie, but feel free to disagree, I'm no expert with hacking.

Since posting this, I've also experimented with using ffmpeg (https://ffmpeg.org/) to convert the file without a free online convertor. I used this piece of code: ffmpeg -i AN000_SAT.mp4 AN000_SAT.ogv -qscale:v 7 -qscale:a 3 as directed by someone I know online. It ended up having the same problems, sadly. Obsolete, see below

Also, as for the "Touch" logo always being present, it's not present when viewing the OGV file in VLC, so I think game must be calling it from some other image file, though I have yet to find where.

Edit: The path to the "Touch" logo is (starting with the game directory, click "show package contents twice"):LUNAR1DATA/XNA_UI/title/logo_ios_xtra.png . Deleting it causes the game to crash.

Said person I know online suggested this code with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i AN000_SAT.mp4 -qscale:v 7 -qscale:a 3 AN000_SAT.ogv

This gave near perfect results. The only issue is that due to FMV edits to match the song, the "Touch" logo doesn't sync with the "Lunar: Silver Star Story" logo, though it doesn't stay for the whole FMV as shown in that image I posted earlier. I don't mind the new logo, but I do want it to sync with the title properly. Either way, this should make editing the FMV/audio much easier.

[Shinto-Cetra]

https://archive.org/details/LunarSSSTMod IT'S UP! Note that this only contains the files needed to modify the game, not the full game. Please support the official release.