PSO v2 save file serial# location? (Hex editing)

[Hulex]

Hey so it's been a while. I'm a long long long time member from way back in the Dreamcast days and I have an important question for -anyone- that might still frequent this board.

So I have data for my character I leveled past 100 on v2, on the Dreamcast. I made a really stupid mistake and traded in my Dreamcast years ago to Gamestop.

I recently acquired a -new- Dreamcast after finding all my old VMUs and was hoping to maybe play the game again, even offline!

Here's where the problem starts: I lost my serial. It was legit and entered when I imported my chars over from v1 and I've played on the online servers but I lost that serial.

I know the serial info is saved to the DC's internal memory but this DC has been flashed so no PSO serial exists on there. I can put in any serial to use it.

HOWEVER, as you may know, the serial you input and register to the system must match that of your save file in order to use it.

I want to still use this data. I know I have a few options but none of them are easy, and I know this is a grey-area rulewise when it comes to what I can discuss here.

I can view the hex info for my save files and make edits using Dream Explorer. If I can determine where the value for the serial is saved on the game file I may be able to salvage this data. I have some experience hex editing but I am still relatively new to this.

I have access to 4 VMUs. 3 of them have saves that used my old serial, and the 4th, for testing purposes, I have been able to make a character on the clean Dreamcast system using a different serial.

I can browse these files side-by-side and look for consistencies of strings of numbers that may contain the serial. But perhaps someone has already done the work for me since I cannot figure it out.

Does anyone have experience with this? Perhaps the knowledge of where the serial is stored? I would really love to play my old characters again even if I am stuck with playing offline.

Plus, I've been looking for an active IRC channel for PSOW and have been unable to find anything. Also, are there maybe some "hacking" forums that may have more likeminded people that have knowledge of PSO game saves?

[VioletSkye]

If it's like the data on the GC version IIRC, then the save file is encrypted so you won't be able to just find the offset location and find your Serial # unfortunately

[DC_PLAYER]

That is the 1 million dollar question indeed.

Let me know if you find anything