Sham Rock
Smash Apprentice
Sup y´all?
This was the last mod I made back when I was still interested in playing melee, thought I might share it with you guys.
Long story short: It does the same thing that achilles does in 20xx. It replace the file path name with a different one (for custom skins, ntsc chars, music etc.), only difference is that the table of contents of the iso has been modified to allow ADDITIONAL files to be placed inside the iso (that means you no longer overwrite trophies. You get the single player mode back, aint that a blast).
With this modification the following file´s will all get an additional copy (pretty much like an additional slot for all your custom goodies):
DbCo.dat
All effect files (Ef****.dat)
All stage files (Gr***.dat) (exept GrVe and GrPs, those already have 5 slots through language selection)
All textures (Pl***.dat) /also the char attack data to switch between ntsc and pal
BGM ( audio/*****.hps)
custom sound effect for chars
all conveniently accessible form the language select option screen:
If that sounds like your cup of tea download the files from https://www.mediafire.com/?4xllldu34zl35xf, get your custom skins and everything ready (you will only know if it´s working if you put custom skins in, otherwise you are just replacing vanilla files with copied vanilla files and you won´t see it) and prepare yourself to copy/paste like never before in your life.
[COLLAPSE="How to set up your iso"]
I´m assuming you know the following things in advance:
-how to export/rebuild isos with the rebuilder.
-what filename does what( for instance PlCaRe.ukd is red skin for CF etc)
There won´t be any pictures or visual tutorial here, you´re a strong independent melee modifier who don´t need nobody to tell him how to do things he has probably done a million times for the 20xx pack anyway.
Okay, let´s go....
1) Open your PAL iso with the rebuilder and export the root somewhere and close the rebuilder again (duh)
2) Add the files form the rar into the iso. They are mostly already prepared ntsc chars. you can of course add your own crazy melee minus chars, the only thing really important are the start.dol & game.toc in the "&&systemdata" folder
3)Add your custom files.
3.1) custom sound effects
the additional slot for custom sounds is the "audio/us" folder, paste all your sound effects there without changing their name at all
3.2) custom BGM
add your custom BGM into the audio folder after giving them the ending ".hpz"
warning: there´s still the 1,45 gb limit on the total iso size, don´t add 30 custom tracks that are all 30mb big, that will obviously NOT work. For starters just copy the original OST and maybe 1 or 2 small custom songs.
3.3) custom stages
add the custom stages to the root, give them the ending ".daz",except the 2 stated above.
for those 2 just overwrite the .gmd and .spd version of that stage
3.4)DbCo.dat & All effect files (ALL Ef****.dat)
just like 3.3 with the ending ".daz" into the root folder
3.5)All textures (ALL Pl***.dat)
you guessed it, just like 3.3 with the ending ".daz" into the root with those suckers
and yes, you have to add all of them or else the rebuilder give you an error message "file zzz.ppp not found"
in case you dont have a custom version of that specific file just copy the original one and change the ending
4) (OPTIONAL) language fix
my guess is that most won´t be able to read all 5 languages of the iso so let´s just replace all texts with the english version. for that go through the entire iso and everytime there´s a file in multiple iterations with the endings
.gmd / .frd / .ukd / .itd / .spd
copy the one with .ukd 4 times and replace all the others with that one
5) rebuild and test
[/COLLAPSE]
known issues:
-additional languages now only have english audio. sorry, had to save some space at some place. But honestly I shouldn´t be excusing myself for that. If you really want the german/french version of jiggs there´s something seriously wrong with you.
-the code only takes place after you switch the language once, meaning after bootup everything is always going to be vanilla pal until you change the language once (can someone get a dol mod going to always boot up in english?)
-no texts etc of the menu where changed. I tried to find the flag-icons in the MnMaAll.ukd file but failed miserably and gave up. If you want to try feel free to test your luck
[COLLAPSE="Notes about adding files to an ISO"]
*Pasted by Achilles from a Facebook conversation with Sham Rock stating he is having trouble logging in.
Some of the information is just based on assumptions and I´m not even sure how accurate it is. But in case you ever want to play around with it yourself the 1 definitive thing I can recall from the top of my head is that the toc is devided into 2 parts. the first part contains the structural information about each file and the second part contains the file names. You can clearly see the where the second part begins in HxD. If you take the length of the first part and divide it by the number of files in the iso you get the length of one property/parameter string. They usually have like a 00 00 in between them to to make it even easier to see. Now specific parts of that string have different settings, for instance there are 2 byte that describe the y-offset and 2 that describe the x-offset in the second part of the table, meaning (in compiler logic) something like: look at the offset yy yy xx xx of this toc, that´s where the name of this file starts. go there and copy the name until and end sign is hit ( 00 IIRC). That´s the basic logic behind it as far as i know. Also I tried to find something related to the final size of the iso to get rid of the pesky 1,45Gb limit, but that also failed..............
However there´s good news: NONE OF THE ABOVE MATTERS, you don´t need to know anything about the toc to add files. I´ve discovered at some point of the middle of testing that the gc iso rebuilder already has a functionality to do so. What you do is you export a root, add/remove as much as your heart desires and then before you open that root again you go under option and tick "do not use game.toc". That will cause the program to add everything that is in the root into the iso (except the systemdata folder, you´re not allowed to add misc data in there for reasons only cthulhu knows, so remove the .bak after editing the start.dol). That´s really all there is to it. Sometimes serendipity is worth far more that effort^^.
For space reasons i would highly recommend you to replace the special melee video thingy that´s only in the ntsc version of the game with a custom one second long black video, that should give you enough space for all the custom goodies. Or at least that´s my assumption since brawl also saved 4Gb from removing the story mode video cut-scenes.
[/COLLAPSE]
EDIT: found my (mostly) clean notes on the code and the start.dol modifications
EDIT 2: Added a blip from Sham Rock about adding files to an ISO. - Achilles 11/30/14
This was the last mod I made back when I was still interested in playing melee, thought I might share it with you guys.
Long story short: It does the same thing that achilles does in 20xx. It replace the file path name with a different one (for custom skins, ntsc chars, music etc.), only difference is that the table of contents of the iso has been modified to allow ADDITIONAL files to be placed inside the iso (that means you no longer overwrite trophies. You get the single player mode back, aint that a blast).
With this modification the following file´s will all get an additional copy (pretty much like an additional slot for all your custom goodies):
DbCo.dat
All effect files (Ef****.dat)
All stage files (Gr***.dat) (exept GrVe and GrPs, those already have 5 slots through language selection)
All textures (Pl***.dat) /also the char attack data to switch between ntsc and pal
BGM ( audio/*****.hps)
custom sound effect for chars
all conveniently accessible form the language select option screen:
If that sounds like your cup of tea download the files from https://www.mediafire.com/?4xllldu34zl35xf, get your custom skins and everything ready (you will only know if it´s working if you put custom skins in, otherwise you are just replacing vanilla files with copied vanilla files and you won´t see it) and prepare yourself to copy/paste like never before in your life.
[COLLAPSE="How to set up your iso"]
I´m assuming you know the following things in advance:
-how to export/rebuild isos with the rebuilder.
-what filename does what( for instance PlCaRe.ukd is red skin for CF etc)
There won´t be any pictures or visual tutorial here, you´re a strong independent melee modifier who don´t need nobody to tell him how to do things he has probably done a million times for the 20xx pack anyway.
Okay, let´s go....
1) Open your PAL iso with the rebuilder and export the root somewhere and close the rebuilder again (duh)
2) Add the files form the rar into the iso. They are mostly already prepared ntsc chars. you can of course add your own crazy melee minus chars, the only thing really important are the start.dol & game.toc in the "&&systemdata" folder
3)Add your custom files.
3.1) custom sound effects
the additional slot for custom sounds is the "audio/us" folder, paste all your sound effects there without changing their name at all
3.2) custom BGM
add your custom BGM into the audio folder after giving them the ending ".hpz"
warning: there´s still the 1,45 gb limit on the total iso size, don´t add 30 custom tracks that are all 30mb big, that will obviously NOT work. For starters just copy the original OST and maybe 1 or 2 small custom songs.
3.3) custom stages
add the custom stages to the root, give them the ending ".daz",except the 2 stated above.
for those 2 just overwrite the .gmd and .spd version of that stage
3.4)DbCo.dat & All effect files (ALL Ef****.dat)
just like 3.3 with the ending ".daz" into the root folder
3.5)All textures (ALL Pl***.dat)
you guessed it, just like 3.3 with the ending ".daz" into the root with those suckers
and yes, you have to add all of them or else the rebuilder give you an error message "file zzz.ppp not found"
in case you dont have a custom version of that specific file just copy the original one and change the ending
4) (OPTIONAL) language fix
my guess is that most won´t be able to read all 5 languages of the iso so let´s just replace all texts with the english version. for that go through the entire iso and everytime there´s a file in multiple iterations with the endings
.gmd / .frd / .ukd / .itd / .spd
copy the one with .ukd 4 times and replace all the others with that one
5) rebuild and test
[/COLLAPSE]
known issues:
-additional languages now only have english audio. sorry, had to save some space at some place. But honestly I shouldn´t be excusing myself for that. If you really want the german/french version of jiggs there´s something seriously wrong with you.
-the code only takes place after you switch the language once, meaning after bootup everything is always going to be vanilla pal until you change the language once (can someone get a dol mod going to always boot up in english?)
-no texts etc of the menu where changed. I tried to find the flag-icons in the MnMaAll.ukd file but failed miserably and gave up. If you want to try feel free to test your luck
[COLLAPSE="Notes about adding files to an ISO"]
*Pasted by Achilles from a Facebook conversation with Sham Rock stating he is having trouble logging in.
Some of the information is just based on assumptions and I´m not even sure how accurate it is. But in case you ever want to play around with it yourself the 1 definitive thing I can recall from the top of my head is that the toc is devided into 2 parts. the first part contains the structural information about each file and the second part contains the file names. You can clearly see the where the second part begins in HxD. If you take the length of the first part and divide it by the number of files in the iso you get the length of one property/parameter string. They usually have like a 00 00 in between them to to make it even easier to see. Now specific parts of that string have different settings, for instance there are 2 byte that describe the y-offset and 2 that describe the x-offset in the second part of the table, meaning (in compiler logic) something like: look at the offset yy yy xx xx of this toc, that´s where the name of this file starts. go there and copy the name until and end sign is hit ( 00 IIRC). That´s the basic logic behind it as far as i know. Also I tried to find something related to the final size of the iso to get rid of the pesky 1,45Gb limit, but that also failed..............
However there´s good news: NONE OF THE ABOVE MATTERS, you don´t need to know anything about the toc to add files. I´ve discovered at some point of the middle of testing that the gc iso rebuilder already has a functionality to do so. What you do is you export a root, add/remove as much as your heart desires and then before you open that root again you go under option and tick "do not use game.toc". That will cause the program to add everything that is in the root into the iso (except the systemdata folder, you´re not allowed to add misc data in there for reasons only cthulhu knows, so remove the .bak after editing the start.dol). That´s really all there is to it. Sometimes serendipity is worth far more that effort^^.
For space reasons i would highly recommend you to replace the special melee video thingy that´s only in the ntsc version of the game with a custom one second long black video, that should give you enough space for all the custom goodies. Or at least that´s my assumption since brawl also saved 4Gb from removing the story mode video cut-scenes.
[/COLLAPSE]
EDIT: found my (mostly) clean notes on the code and the start.dol modifications
EDIT 2: Added a blip from Sham Rock about adding files to an ISO. - Achilles 11/30/14
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