THAW CAS Flash Glitching Deep Dive

[Challenger]

Background:

https://thpsx.com/forums/index.php?topic=288.0

I recommend reading that whole thread but TLDR, yesterday I confirmed the CAS color flashing glitch works in THAW (as well as THUG2 as many people already knew). Now that I have found the CAS clothing/accessory infinite saturation and value Gameshark codes for the colors...

Inf. Saturation Scales:
20D0CD54 00000000
20D0CD68 00000000

Inf. Value Scales:
20D0CD7C 00000000
20D0CD90 00000000

I began testing pieces in THAW in PCSX2 to see which clothing and accessory items flashed well. Unfortunately the color effects do not apply consistently across all items (I think this was the case in THUG2 as well) so the glitch doesn't work with everything. Also, secondary colors do work as well but the main color has to be flashed first.

Here is a list of what works with this glitch (items further down each list seem to not work).

Torso Options

Sleeveless
Ringer T
Long Sleeve T
Long Striped
Baseball 1
Baseball 2
Layered T
Military Coat
Hoody
Zip-Up Hoody
Pully Hoody
Zip Sweater
Leather Vest
Leather Jacket 1
Leather Jacket 2
Denim Jacket
Sleeveless Denim

All Left Accessories
All Right Accessories
Glove 2
All Misc Items
All Backpacks

Here's a list of what doesn't work. Since the selection of pants is much more limited and only a small number don't flash.

Leg Options

Camo Shorts
Hurley Icon Jeans
DVS Jeans
Etnies Jeans
DC Aidan DX Jean

Here is a list of what works:

Knee Pads
All Socks
All Shoes

Hair

Devil Lock
McSqueeb R
Liberty Spikes 1
Liberty Spikes 2
Spiked 2
Long

Hats

Baseball Cap
Cap Backwards
Upturned Bill
Trucker Backwards
Beanie
Brimmed Beanie
Beret Cap
Hat Hair Medium

Unfortunately glasses, facial hair, and skin (yes, really) are not flashable in-game.

[Challenger]

Screenshot photobomb incoming, 56k warning for those old enough to remember what that means:

https://imgur.com/a/YSOTqBl

Or open the spoiler:

 :

Crying rainbows, nuclear skies, and broken parrots, oh my!

[Challenger]

I hope my consecutive posting isn't an issue, there's too much to add to a single post and breaking these up hopefully makes things more digestible.

I went back to the hex editor and found the reason some items don't flash when have I hue set to the far left (red), saturation 17 ticks to the right, and value 18 ticks to the right. Some items don't end up with the correct pair of values to trigger the glitch. Injecting 0x65 for sat and 0x56 for val lets you flash literally anything. Just re-calculate the CRC32 checksum and inject the new checksum into the first 4 bytes of the CAS file.




The CAS parameters are almost halfway into the file at the top of the next block of data after a block of zeroes. I call this the LUSA zone (Sonic Reducer certainly ain't one).



A link for that checksum tool if anyone wants it (I think I got this from thmods.com before it died a few years ago):

https://archive.org/details/thug2-save-file-checksum-utility

A shirt (tanktop) that normally doesn't flash using the in-game adjustments:







For the hue, it's a bit weird. Here's how I found it. 2 bytes back from 0x65 0x90 0x21 0x56, there should be 0x1F before 0x90 0x20. Before that should be a 0x92. So the sequence should appear as follows to edit the hue/sat/val and flash an object on your CAS:



What I've marked up in red is what I noticed after moving the hue 1 tick to the right from the far left (red) position (hue in the far left position is needed for the glitch to work). The 0x92 at the beginning changed to 0x90 and 0x05 was inserted after the following 0x1F. Can't explain why, maybe it's a least significant byte that otherwise isn't needed. I deleted that 0x05 and changed the 0x90 to 0x92. Then the object was flashed since that set the hue to the correct far left (red) position.

Confused yet?