Thursday, March 23, 2023
Another P3FES one for today, we’re going to be talking about THE DEBUG MENU.
This fun tool is only accessible by using this cheat, which can be used by placing the file in your "cheats" folder of PCSX2 and enabling cheats in the emulator.
NOTE: The Debug Menu does not require hostFS to be set up to work, just that you have PCSX2 set up and a copy of the US version of Persona 3 FES.
Once you have the cheat installed, its time to boot up the game. Start a game (doesn't matter if it's a new game or a loaded save) and wait until you get to a "3D cutscene," which is a part of the game where their are 3D models on the screen but you can not move around the characters, and press the "Right Trigger" or "R2" button on your controller.
You should see a screen like this pop up over the game.
Once this screen pops up, you know that you have successfully set up the debug menu. If it does not pop up, check to make sure you have cheats enabled in the PCSX2 menu and try again.
There are a couple of things we can do in the debug menu. I will go over the buttons and what they do now.
[DEBUG MENU OPEN] + △ (Triangle) button:
THE EVENT EDITOR
We are not going to get into the Event Editor now as it will require MULTIPLE posts to get through all the things you can change in the game. Just know that you can bring it up by going into the Debug Menu and pressing Triangle and can leave it by pressing Circle.
[DEBUG MENU OPEN] + ○(Circle) button:
CLOSE DEBUG MENU
Pretty simple function, this button closes out the Debug Menu. You might not think this function is very important, but now that we've opened and closed the Debug Menu, we have a few new options at our disposal.
[DEBUG MENU CLOSED] + □(Square) button:
FREE CAMERA
This option brings up the free camera, basically a camera that can be moved around by the Analog Sticks to see anything on screen, its a great way to look around and see whats happening in hidden parts of the scene. One thing you will notice at this step though, is that the event seems to be paused, and there is a simple way to fix that!
[DEBUG MENU CLOSED] + START button:
PAUSE / UNPAUSE EVENT
When an event is paused, animations will still play, like in the GIF, but everyone will be locked in place. The game is always paused after closing the Debug Menu.
When the game is Paused, you can also time travel!
[EVENT PAUSED] + L1 / R1:
REWIND / FAST-FORWARD
This is what it looks like when you rewind all the way to the beginning. Slight FLASH WARNING for this screen. Rewinding to this screen is important when making changes to the Event Editor, as it resets all the characters and animations to their original states, and will help you see how the changes you made will look when watching the scene casually.
I have never used the Fast-Forward function in my life.
[EVENT PAUSED] + RIGHT on D-PAD:
STEP FORWARD
This button moves the event forward by one frame at a time. Useful if you want to go forward one frame at a time. Cant go backwards one frame at a time! IDK why.
I think that's it for today! This was a lot of info to dump so I'm not going to even try to talk about the Event Editor.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!
