TETRA MASTER

[Kalimairo]

any chance we can have tetra master back :(

[Alhanelem]

None.

It was doomed to fail when it wasn't made within FFXI. I'd been hoping for some time that since they did triple triad that at least FFXIV would do it, but so far that hasn't happened either.

I did a youtube video of my laughably incomplete collection on the day of the shutdown, I did play it whenever FFXI happened to be down.

[Beastorizer]

any chance we can have tetra master back :(

Hmmmmm.........Wonder if they can add it in-game, something like how VIII and others have done.

Think it would be pretty neat content to have some Yu-Gi-Oh! type card collecting game were players can battle each other & NPC with monsters emerging from cards. Getting way ahead of myself, they want to use as little resources as possible for XI. Hence, Tetra Master among other things no longer exist.

[Teraniku]

Hmmmmm.........Wonder if they can add it in-game, something like how VIII and others have done.

Think it would be pretty neat content to have some Yu-Gi-Oh! type card collecting game were players can battle each other & NPC with monsters emerging from cards. Getting way ahead of myself, they want to use as little resources as possible for XI. Hence, Tetra Master among other things no longer exist.

As long as the Deck & cards were in their own separate inventory, and probably could work since the deck would only need to be parsed if you were getting ready to play or at a specific card dealer in game

[Zenion]

I would love to see Tetra Master again in some form, but I'm not sure if tying it to FFXI or especially PlayOnline would be a great choice any more. Doing it in-game seems like it could be as feasible as, say, two-player Mandragora Madness, but... they never did that, either, did they.

(Perfect-world unlimited-resources impossible dream version, it would be neat to update Pankration and tie Tetra Master to that: Take pictures of monsters, turn them into cards, add them to your card case. Give the cards quality tiers based on the quality of the photo, so you really have to try to get those perfect shots.)

You know what would be really cool though? Some kind of a standalone FF card game greatest hits thing, where you collect cards which are statted for Tetra Master, Triple Triad, and... would that work for the FF7 remaster card game, or is that one fussier about what the cards actually are?

[VanaFan82]

I'd love to play Testramaster again. It's still my most favorite card game.

[Dzspdref]

(.... turns on his PS1 and inserts his FF9 disc to go play Tetra Master game...)

[Alhanelem]

Ultimately it would either have to be within one of the MMOs like TT, or part of an FF9 remaster.

[RichLester]

I'm hoping that there will be a proper remake of FFIX & Tetra Master would be in that but if they brought it back here, at least have a mechanism of gaining cards like given a card a day, in case we end up losing cards at the beginning, ending up with no cards to play with.

[Immortal]

I used to play it during maintences, theres 0 chance they would bring it back though. They have slashed the budget so much, they even got rid of the vanadiel live that probably costed them almost nothing to upkeep.

[Alhanelem]

I used to play it during maintences, theres 0 chance they would bring it back though. They have slashed the budget so much, they even got rid of the vanadiel live that probably costed them almost nothing to upkeep.
I don't think its much of a loss to be frank. they just kept the camera in the same place for like the last 8-10 years. If it showed different stuff on a rotation or something, it might have been a little more worthwhile. Instead they just plopped the camera in a zone with people in it without any regard for how interesting of a location it is.

[Beastorizer]

I honestly don't even remember playing this tbh lol......maybe once? Kind of a "You never know what got til its' gone" type of deal. Of course I want to play it now, that I can't, but didn't when I could.

[Immortal]

They actually had unique cards too that weren't in the original game, I have tried to find them and their pictures but never was able to.

[Alhanelem]

They actually had unique cards too that weren't in the original game, I have tried to find them and their pictures but never was able to.
I have a yt vid where i just go through my collection and play a game or two but it was far from a complete collection.

[Zenion]

They actually had unique cards too that weren't in the original game, I have tried to find them and their pictures but never was able to.

I'd have to imagine those were stored client-side; if you could find a physical install disk and install to a computer without updating, they'd be in the TETRA MASTER directory which seems to be missing from digital installations.

[Dzspdref]

I'd have to imagine those were stored client-side; if you could find a physical install disk and install to a computer without updating, they'd be in the TETRA MASTER directory which seems to be missing from digital installations.

I still have the original 5 disc installation set that included RoZ, along with my original CoP disc set. Operating systems are Windows 98/ 98SE/ Me/ 2000/ XP.
There's probably a way a more tech-savvy person can use Disc 5 [that has Tetra Master and POL viewer on it] to get all the cards if they had that disc, but not in my ability.
Still have the whole box, instruction manual (with registration codes in back cover flap), and even the Best Buy receipt in it.
Gosh, back when /shout and /yell didn't even exist yet.

[Immortal]

Well if yall find it, let me know lol. I was trying to find them because I had an artist on Etsy who makes Tetra Master/Triple Triad actual physical cards and they did both sets for me. I then asked them if they could do the XI ones and they said they had no idea they existed. Some of the cards were like Beatrix, FF10 characters? I can't remember, I had some that were never in FF9 so I remember they exist.


I have a yt vid where i just go through my collection and play a game or two but it was far from a complete collection.

Yeah I saw that video, that would be nice to see with them all complete.

[Dragoy]

I'd have to imagine those were stored client-side; if you could find a physical install disk and install to a computer without updating, they'd be in the TETRA MASTER directory which seems to be missing from digital installations.

I still have my disc-install going from before 2010, when I switched to Linux, and the TetraMaster directory is only 5.2 MiB.

It looks like it might have had 250 cards (150 from FFIX, 100 from FFX), and looking at a PlayOnline greeting card, which is 44,2 KiB, I suppose 250 of them could make about 12 MiB and images don't tend to compress well beyond png/jpg/etc.

I also seem to have empty 'music' and 'se' directories under 'data/WIN/sound', so it would seem like not all of it is there.

I suspect actually launching the game would have downloaded a lot of things, which I don't think I ever did for some reason. I suppose doing that probably came with an additional fee which I did not want to pay.

Might check a look into the couple of different discs I have, to see if any of them have any more data with them (would /think/ that they'd include at least /some/ to make downloads smaller but... yeah...).

[Zenion]

I still have my disc-install going from before 2010, when I switched to Linux, and the TetraMaster directory is only 5.2 MiB.

It looks like it might have had 250 cards (150 from FFIX, 100 from FFX), and looking at a PlayOnline greeting card, which is 44,2 KiB, I suppose 250 of them could make about 12 MiB and images don't tend to compress well beyond png/jpg/etc.

I also seem to have empty 'music' and 'se' directories under 'data/WIN/sound', so it would seem like not all of it is there.

I suspect actually launching the game would have downloaded a lot of things, which I don't think I ever did for some reason. I suppose doing that probably came with an additional fee which I did not want to pay.

Might check a look into the couple of different discs I have, to see if any of them have any more data with them (would /think/ that they'd include at least /some/ to make downloads smaller but... yeah...).

I wonder if they'd use the dat file format they use for stuff in-game, since that seems to be both model and texture. Some of those are pretty small, and I imagine a 3D model and rigging would be the larger part of one. Of course, that's still like... 250 files that would be hanging around somewhere, so it would be pretty obvious if they were around anywhere. Might have been a patch you downloaded when you first ran Tetra Master or something. I really hope not, that would mean having to find someone who played Tetra Master back when it was a thing, and hasn't uninstalled from, formatted, or lost access to the machine they were playing on at that time.

I've got a laptop somewhere which might still be able to boot which had FFXI on it before Tetra Master ended, if I remember correctly, but I never played it so unless that was pushed as general PlayOnline content it wouldn't be there. I'll take a look and see just in case. (EDIT: No dice. The laptop won't boot and I don't have kit handy to recover data from a non-SSD laptop hard drive.)

[Dragoy]

I wonder if they'd use the dat file format they use for stuff in-game, since that seems to be both model and texture.
Ah, yeah, probably plausible if not very likely even, but yep, still not much there.

Was thinking if they had removed files via an update or something, but I'm pretty sure I never launched the game, and I do have an older state of the directory around still too, just without the FFXI one. That directory is similar though it is missing the 'data' directory as well...


(EDIT: No dice. The laptop won't boot and I don't have kit handy to recover data from a non-SSD laptop hard drive.)

Won't even power on?

I have one oldie laptop around, which refused to power on with the battery attached, which is dead. If it does power on, could use any Linux/other boot disc/USB thinger I suppose to go looking at least.

[Zenion]

Won't even power on?

Power on, caps lock flashes, power off without screen activation. Machine as a whole is toast, but it's probably just one failed component; doesn't get far enough to try to read the HD, so that could still be salvageable.

Depending on when Tetra Master got dropped, I might have the goods on the machine that replaced that, but that doesn't power on at all; if I'm lucky, it's just a drained battery, but I don't know where the charger is to find out.

... so, in checking timeline to decide whether that's worth doing, I discovered that the Final Fantasy fandom wiki (I know, ew) has a sheet showing all the cards (https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Tetra_Master_(PlayOnline)?file=Tetra_Master_PlayOnline_Cards.jpg#Trading_cards). It's low-resolution, but it's something?

[Alhanelem]

Power on, caps lock flashes, power off without screen activation. Machine as a whole is toast, but it's probably just one failed component; doesn't get far enough to try to read the HD, so that could still be salvageable.

Depending on when Tetra Master got dropped, I might have the goods on the machine that replaced that, but that doesn't power on at all; if I'm lucky, it's just a drained battery, but I don't know where the charger is to find out.

... so, in checking timeline to decide whether that's worth doing, I discovered that the Final Fantasy fandom wiki (I know, ew) has a sheet showing all the cards (https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Tetra_Master_(PlayOnline)?file=Tetra_Master_PlayOnline_Cards.jpg#Trading_cards). It's low-resolution, but it's something?


I know it sounds stupid but try checking the cmos battery. Some machines, especially laptops, won't boot without a working one.

[Dragoy]

Power on, caps lock flashes, power off without screen activation. Machine as a whole is toast, but it's probably just one failed component; doesn't get far enough to try to read the HD, so that could still be salvageable.

Depending on when Tetra Master got dropped, I might have the goods on the machine that replaced that, but that doesn't power on at all; if I'm lucky, it's just a drained battery, but I don't know where the charger is to find out.

... so, in checking timeline to decide whether that's worth doing, I discovered that the Final Fantasy fandom wiki (I know, ew) has a sheet showing all the cards (https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Tetra_Master_(PlayOnline)?file=Tetra_Master_PlayOnline_Cards.jpg#Trading_cards). It's low-resolution, but it's something?

It does seem to be alive, but indeed, would need the cord-of-power to get anything done.

And yeah, ew, but neat! ^^;

Thanks for trying!

[Zenion]

I know it sounds stupid but try checking the cmos battery. Some machines, especially laptops, won't boot without a working one.

Yeah... I tried googling the problem, the solutions I found were basically, like... "replace something." Flashing caps lock is a general hardware fault on that model, CMOS battery worked for some users, memory cards for some, pretty much just "take it apart and replace bits until it works."

Luckily, the SATA-USB adapter that I thought was junk was just the thing for this job.

So, I got into my old TetraMaster folder. Seven suspect files.

gW000.dat (1,027 kb)
gW001.dat (461 kb)
gW002.dat (502 kb)
gW003.dat (258 kb)
gW080.dat (109 kb)
gW101.dat (910 kb)
gW201.dat (599 kb)

So, most of those sound pretty small, but 000, 101, and 201 seem like sensible sizes for sheets of cards that sections would be picked from to display textures? Dat is a bit of a nuisance format, I can only think of like four programs that handle it and two are pretty strictly tied to the FFXI file structure so I'm not sure if they'll like random files. I'll play around with AltanaView and see if I can make it dance. Hopefully results to come.

EDIT: Noesis, AltanaView, and ChangeTex agree, those ain't image files, at least not in a format similar enough to main FFXI dats to be read.

[Dragoy]

Yeah, those are what I saw, the most prominent things there be, but not for them cards.

[Zenion]

Cracking the file open in Notepad++ is... well, exactly as helpful as it sounds, just garbled nonsense. However, the string "OPTPiX iMageStudio 3.0 http://www.webtech.co.jp/" appears repeatedly. That is, apparently, an image optimization program, which leads me to believe that those are indeed supposed to be image files. We just don't have the technology to decode them because they aren't built quite like the ones used in FFXI proper. Feels like a dead end; I'm inclined to say we have what we're looking for, and just have no idea how to use it.

Pity you can't just open up PlayOnline without connecting and having updates pushed, that might have been an avenue to get a look at the files in their original context, though I suspect you'd only be allowed to see cards in your personal collection that way anyway.

[Dragoy]

Cracking the file open in Notepad++ is... well, exactly as helpful as it sounds, just garbled nonsense. However, the string "OPTPiX iMageStudio 3.0 http://www.webtech.co.jp/" appears repeatedly.

I had looked at the readable strings in them too, but didn't really think much of that... but it is a good point. Those gW binaries are the only thing that have it under Tetra Master, while PlayOnline has it in the greeting cards (png compressed image files).

Some (128) of the FFXI data files have it as well.

For the Tetra Master files, there are 995 occurrences (might have been fun if was 250 precisely).

I suppose they indeed could be it, but I guess it's starting to get into reverse engineering/data mining territory... which is a little bit off the topic on these here forums. ^^;

[Immortal]

Maybe we will never see those cards again :( I really did a deep dive into google and came up with nothing. Doesn't help this game is so obscure that anytime you type "XI" into searches they try to auto correct to XIV. Then, these were all done and shut down before the internet really took off like it is now where everything is archived pretty much.

[Zenion]

I suppose they indeed could be it, but I guess it's starting to get into reverse engineering/data mining territory... which is a little bit off the topic on these here forums. ^^;

... why thank you for that helpful hint. So, long story short, I found them. Not going to get into details because that is out of scope here, but it actually isn't as involved as I was afraid. Retrieval is laborious but not difficult.

EDIT: Finished scraping them. Complete gallery is at https://imgur.com/a/fXtiLt7. Sorry for the format, they weren't stored as one big happy sheet so that's not what I got, it's 250 separate images. Couldn't think of anywhere that would let me just upload a zip of them.

Amazing how much detail they got on such tiny images. And that that was high definition graphics when POL was first rolled out.

[Dragoy]

Very nice!

I had some ideas to try, but didn't get to it yet at all... perhaps some time we'll have a chat about it elseplace.

At least imgur let's one download the whole "post" so that works for that.

[Immortal]

Awesome thanks for that, I knew I remembered FF10 ones