Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

The first and possibly only PS2 game to feature a Horse Wiener as an equippable item.

Debug mode
There is a debug mode! You can use it! Yes. Here is the Codebreaker... codes.

Master Code (Must be on to use Codebreaker on Disgaea) F0100008 00112C4F 20147078 00000000

Debug Mode 20100440 8F8485AC 20100444 34840002 20100448 1000000B 2010044C AF8485AC

OR! If you're one of them fancy city folks with their Emulators and their ISOs and their Junk Food and Rock 'n' Roll... you can just use this PCSX2 patch. You'll want to skip the BIOS startup by clicking "Run CD/DVD" instead of "Execute".

4D2CAC9D.pnach patch=1,EE,20147078,word,00000000 patch=1,EE,20100440,word,8F8485AC patch=1,EE,20100444,word,34840002 patch=1,EE,20100448,word,1000000B patch=1,EE,2010044C,word,AF8485AC

Main Menu
Once the game boots, you'll notice a few new and interesting options on the title menu...


 * Edit: We'll discuss this later.
 * Super: Starts you out in the Mid-Boss's Lair chapter with Level 100 characters, all areas unlocked, 100000000000 HL and Customer Ranking 12 at the stores (which have all items unlocked).
 * Miracle: Starts you out in the Celestia chapter with no extra levels unlocked, with characters in the Level 30-50 range with decent equipment.

Super and Miracle can start you out with some normally inaccessible characters like Prinny Kurtis.

In-Game
Once you've somehow made it into the game without breaking your hand from sheer excitement, press SELECT on controller 2 to bring up the in-game debug menu!

Some of the scripts that have been tested: 10: Freely walk around any map. 11: Starts a battle, then immediately ends it. 15: An empty Dark Assembly votes on nothing, then you're asked to name a non-existent character, then Laharl's stats glitch.
 * Flag: Lets you alter the event flags. You could theoretically use this to skip parts of the game, but without sufficient documentation it's probably best to avoid this.
 * Return to the Castle: Does exactly that - it dumps you unceremoniously outside the portal. Useful if you get yourself stuck.
 * Edit: I'm getting there, I'm getting there...
 * Interpolation: Disabled option. Presumably would have toggled visual smoothing at some point when the developers were still umming and ahhing about it.
 * D Drive & CD: Useless without a devkit. Probably disabled in the code, anyway.
 * Reload Script: Reloads scripts from disk without having to reset the game. Again, useless without a dev kit.
 * Demo: Watch cutscenes. Also moves you to that part of the game. If you care about your character data (and if you are, why are you using a debug mode?) be wary of throwing your endgame party back to the start of the game by acccident.
 * Script: Forces a script to run, usually with buggy and undesirable consequences.
 * Reload Effect: Another developer option we can't really use! Presumably would have reloaded effect data from the disk.
 * Char Test: Lets you view character sprites. See below!
 * 3D Test: This option deletes Laharl and sets the cursor to "where do you want to go?" mode. You can't get out of this without the Return to the Castle button.
 * SE: Surprisingly enough, lets you test the sound effects. D-Pad left and right changes the pitch (the far right number.) L1 and L2 change the sound effect (The left number.)
 * Infinite Action: Self-explanatory. Lets you do as much as you want in one turn without fear of running out of Time Units and being eaten by a Chryssalid.
 * Reload Random Map: ???
 * Exponential Growth: Opens another menu, where you can play around with various balance variables like Experience gain, as well as letting you force all items (even in stores) to be Rare or Legendary.

Character Test Menu
In this mode, you can view the character sprites at your leisure.

On Controller 1, R1 & R2 cycles through that section/characters sprites & animations, L1 & L2 cycles through each Character/Section, X repeats the animation, Square + D-Pad moves the sprite and X + D-Pad resizes it. The start button swaps between two sets of images, one having the characters, effects, and summons while the other has whatever temporary graphics are loaded. There doesn't seem to be any button combination to swap palettes manually which makes it possible to only view one version of each character despite some, like the Prinny class, having a variety of unlockable colors.

Along the top are numbers that indicate what image data is being used and some other handy information. The Palette Row Count (16 colors each) seems to overlap another number sometimes; the overlapped number's purpose is unknown but can fluctuate during animation.

The numbers displayed on the right correspond to image data used to display the graphics. Each set represents one rendered image.

Blend Mode/Layer is a bad description: It seems to be that anything on 2 has a Linear Dodge blend mode, anything on 1 has a kind of Linear Burn. Numbers like 8, 16, or 24 might indicate an attachment point or orientation for weapon or other external sprites. This needs more testing to confirm or deny.

GFX Test
In this mode, you can see all the visual effects.

To enable it you must hit the select button on Controller 1, it will bring up the  text and some numbers on the right. All the buttons presses need to be from Controller 1. The Left Stick moves Laharl around, L1 & R1 rotate the camera, L2 & R2 changes which effect and sound will play (as shown in the numbers), X plays the visual effect and Square plays the accompanying sound effect or whatever sound effect is in the slot number.

The first two numbers displayed on the right correspond (most likely) to the effect and sound data. The next number is the speed at which the effect plays, this can be controlled by holding down the X button and pressing left or right. You can even go into the negatives and the effect will play in reverse. Be careful when changing the speed because by holding down the X button you will be constantly creating effects and you can potentially lag the game or crash it. The next three numbers correspond to roll, yaw, and pitch respectively. Holding down the Square button and pressing up or down will change the roll, Square and left or right affects the yaw, and finally Square and Triangle or Circle changes the pitch.

Unused Maps
There is some map data left in the game that went unused.

Extra Maps
There are five maps, three unique ones, that are never used by the game and look like they were used for testing purposes. Using a cheat device or editing a save file will allow the player to access these maps through the warper NPC. Even though they are not used by the game they will appear under a new "Extra" category in the warper's menu.

Puzzle Maps
If you wait long enough at the main menu the game will eventually launch a demo mode where characters battle automatically. While these levels aren't technically unused, they are normally unplayable. As with the Extra Maps, by editing a save file or using a cheat device they can be accessed and act as normal levels with the autoplay code treated as story. Launching the map from the warper NPC allows you to "Skip Story" and play the level yourself. If you do not skip the story the game will lock out the controls and key presses will be issued automatically. Since your party isn't likely to be a match to the characters used by the demo sequence the key presses will almost certainly end up issuing the wrong commands or getting stuck in menus. When all of the key presses have been issued control will be given back to the player and the map will play normally.

These maps, when added to the warper's menu, are under the category "Puzzle."

Seraphic Sanctuary: Sacred Altar(D)
Where the ending scene takes place. This map even has a name in dungeon.dat!



Rank Exam 12 through 19 Maps
There is no data left for these maps except for textures for the Rank 12 Exam but they are identical to the previous map textures and are meant for the Local forum (Dark Assembly) map. The entries for these maps still exist in the dungeon.dat file. Each map has a name of the form: Exam for Rank #

It is probable that the developers didn't know how many ranks there were going to be and just made 19 entries to have a buffer. The maps would have been from mp21013 to mp21020.

Texture Only
There is one lone texture file for map mp03030 which has textures used by the Human World maps. The strange thing is that it is nowhere near mp01001 to mp01003 where the Human World maps are. Instead it is sandwiched between the last Cave of Ordeal map (mp03005) and the first of the unused Extra maps (mp03101).

There are also 49 texture-only files peppered between mp20101 and mp20299. Unknown purpose.

Unused Images
Many files were left on the disc, some of which show testing scenes, others are just filler for unused locations.