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VSTrack (Vagrant Story Tracker)

VSTrack is a simple but powerful tool for Vagrant Story players, streamers, and speed-runners.

It collects a bunch of useful data from the running game, and stores it in standard .txt files. This gives you an easy access to information that is often buried behind multiple levels of UI, or not available to the player at all.

One way to use the collected data is to feed the output files into your streaming software as a text input (i.e. Text (GDI+) plugin in OBS), and use it as a part of your layout. Keep in mind, that most of the data is formatted with fixed-width fonts in mind (use proportional fonts at your own risk).

At this moment, you can track the following:

  • Weapon, Blade, and Shield stats and properties
  • Armor (all slots, plus necklace) stats and properties
  • Player stats (HP, MP, RISK, STR, INT, AGL, range, walking/running speed)
  • Player status effects
  • Player location (area name, room name)
  • Enemy tracking (name, HP, MP)
  • In-game timer (with 1 second precision)
  • Kill List and Weapon Usage list
  • Map and Chest completion (real-time!)
  • Controller input

VSTrack also detects when the last boss dies, and auto-magically stores the record play time in this very moment.

If you're working on your Ultimate Weapon, using Matt Hamand method, I got you covered. If the equipped weapon has a number 1-4 at the end of its name, the proper leveling stats (Class, Affinity) will be tracked automatically in the file game_data/weapon/blade_leveling.txt.

Prerequisites

Currently, VSTrack will work out-of-the-box with the following emulators:

Apart from an emulator, to use VSTrack, you'll also need the NTSC-US version of Vagrant Story (SLUS-01040) 1

1 Other SKUs of the game might work, but weren't tested yet.

How to use it

Make sure the game is already running in the emulator, before launching VSTrack

No installation is required. Just copy the executable into preffered folder, and run it from the command-line or by double-clicking. WARNING If you're not sure your user account has the writing privileges for the chosen folder, run the program as an administrator.

When you'll see the start menu, press key 1-6 to choose emulator version you're using to play the game, or 0 to exit. If your selection was correct, you should see some basic game information in the console window.

Alternatively, you can pass preferred emulator number as a command-line parameter, so if you want to use VSTrack with BizHawk, type:

vstrack.exe 2

During the first use, the program will create a subfolder called game_data, where all the output files will be stored. When you finish the game, record time will be stored in the folder game_data/time/records. Each record is preserved in separate file, with an unique name. For example, if the record file is named:

20191112T201730-record-time.txt

it means, that the last boss died at 20:17.30, November 12, 2019. Easy.

Contributing

Pull Requests

To make changes to VSTrack, please send in pull request to the master branch on GitHub. I will review it, and either merge or request further changes.

Issue Tracker

If you found a bug, want to suggest a new feature, or disscuss how the program works, please use the Issue Tracker on its GitHub page.

I encourage you to use the following labels:

  • enhancement: when you request new functionality
  • bug: if you want to report a part of VSTrack that is not working correctly, or not working at all
  • discussion: if you want to discuss improving something in VSTrack

Known Issues

Everything's fine. Really.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank:

  • Square-Enix and the game dev team, for creating and publishing such excellent piece of software
  • GameFAQs guide authors, especially:
    • Jay Tilton
    • Samuel Riesterer
    • Matt Hamand
    • Zy Nicholson
  • Data Crystal, for collecting and sharing a huge amount of information about the inner-workings of the game
  • The author of pSX emulator for an excellent PlayStation debugger, which was essential in testing a few big features
  • Cheat Engine authors and community:
    • besides being a direct inspiration for my little tool, CE allowed me to extract information from the game with ease, and test VSTrack behaviour in a very reliable way
    • CE forums are the huge vault of technical knowledge; I found a lot of programming gems out there
  • MSDN, for state-of-the-art documentation, which makes developing on Windows such a pleasure