TETRA MASTER

[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.

[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. 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. 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.

[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]

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. 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!