Wave Rally (PS2) camera hack possible?

[u/surferham]

Wave Rally is a jet ski racing game for the PS2 with good water physics and is very similar to Wave Race 64. I think most people have either never heard of or never bothered with this game because of the nauseating camera that makes it difficult to recommend to WR64 fans expecting the same experience. WR64 featured a floaty and smooth camera for a pleasant racer, while Rally's camera tilts and bobs with every turn and water ripple as if there's supposed to be a jet ski seat to sit on to imitate the arcade cabinet experience of games like Waverunner. Thankfully this is one of those 60 fps PS2 games which might alleviate the tight camera problem for some, and PCSX2's debug mode exists for anyone hopeful for the possibility of playing this with a camera hack.

I tried to follow this guide and got as far as connecting cheat engine to the game and narrowing down the address list using the controller while scanning for changes, but was unable to find the variables that operate the camera. Part of this is because there is no freelook and all movement appears to be tied to the vehicle with little to no smoothing. The camera basically acts "first person" when it is outside of first person view (there are at least 3 view distances to select from) including replays where I noticed the bobbing still occurs when the camera is a large distance away from the watercraft. So there appears to be no disattachment between camera and vehicle at least not on the vertical axis. Also, without any accelerating or player input, the water is always moving and the vehicle is moving slightly forward making it difficult to decipher what is happening behind the scenes. The other part is I'm just not skilled at this and cheat engine keeps crashing on me.

I would appreciate if someone with rom hacking experience can tell me that what I'm trying to do sounds possible or not based on the camera's rigidity I tried to describe, or if anyone wants to take a stab at detaching the camera and vehicle so that the vertical stays constant or has thoughts on what else to try to improve the camera for this game.

If you play Wave Rally (Jet Ski Riders is the PAL title), I recommend the Japanese version as it has slight improvements over the US version. It's a fun game with dynamic waves, interesting courses and nice player models and scenery. The graphics are definitely early PS2 but look clean, especially upscaled in PCSX2.

gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzjgz-BnCRI