Stage Hacking: NEW Research + Documentation

[Milun]

Hey all, a veteran Melee hacker here. Just thought I'd share something this Christmas.
[100% tournament legal]

Link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/5cxbq2gc27zbb68/GrOp_-_ROKOVOJ_BEREG.dat
Horrible quality video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q31FQbJs_bY

- Milun

 

[Goxplex]

Amazing stage. Please share your knowledge so more people can create amazing stage hacks like this one.

 

[Milun]

Abraca-tutorial: https://www.mediafire.com/?767xyj1ehuh9uq3

^ For whatever reason, every site I've tried to host this on takes it down quite fast. Sorry, you're gonna need to download the whole site (it's not large).

That site has most of my documentation written on it since before my hiatus. It's not the best tutorial (in fact, Id say it's quite bad), but it's honestly the method I use.

 

[Achilles1515]

Not only is it a cool hack, but it’s fully textured as well. Super awesome!

You never cease to amaze, Milun. It’s great to see you back in the game! I can’t wait to try the stage and look at your hacking notes when I get home from work.

@ Z zankyou maybe you should turn this background into a super HD version

(I’ve never played Metal Gear Solid)

 

[Milun]

(Neither have I)

Also wait wait wait wait WAIT! You can make textures HD? As in, allow for a better resolution of texture? Because the reason it looks so blurry at the moment is due to the lack of pixels available to me. If you can up the resolution for it that would be REALLY amazing (I'll provide the image I used for that part in a better resolution then).

 

[zankyou]

(Neither have I)

Also wait wait wait wait WAIT! You can make textures HD? As in, allow for a better resolution of texture? Because the reason it looks so blurry at the moment is due to the lack of pixels available to me. If you can up the resolution for it that would be REALLY amazing (I'll provide the image I used for that part in a better resolution then).

I did it once though its weird and Im not quite sure of the limitations with it. It didnt load right until I changed a flag.
http://smashboards.com/threads/melee-hacks-and-you-updated-1-7-11.247119/page-111#post-18197978

Oh and I wanted to ask you about the Peach castle stage you were making a long time back.

 

[Achilles1515]

(Neither have I)


Also wait wait wait wait WAIT! You can make textures HD? As in, allow for a better resolution of texture? Because the reason it looks so blurry at the moment is due to the lack of pixels available to me. If you can up the resolution for it that would be REALLY amazing (I'll provide the image I used for that part in a better resolution then).

Hehe, it sounds like you haven’t been following the Melee Hacks and You thread. You and Zankyou…..need to chat….to say the least.

If you haven’t seen the stuff he’s made recently, here’s a quick synopsis.

Start here and read until the end of the thread.

Begun stage hacking on the trophy stage. Made ledges grabbable, fixed the edge lip, changed the pink rings to a regular platform.

Then made this stage hack:

Then made this stage hack:

Then added this higher quality background image to DL:

Then made this stage hack and a few variations of it:

Among other various awesome things. So yeah, you guys need to talk (/team up/power up/collaborate).

I don’t mean to hijack the thread. Just very excited for the future. I mean… Steelia AND Milun are back….wtf my life is complete. Onward through the golden age of Melee hacking!

 

[The Realest]

hyped af for more stages

 

[Doq]

Abraca-tutorial: https://www.mediafire.com/?767xyj1ehuh9uq3

^ For whatever reason, every site I've tried to host this on takes it down quite fast. Sorry, you're gonna need to download the whole site (it's not large).

That site has most of my documentation written on it since before my hiatus. It's not the best tutorial (in fact, Id say it's quite bad), but it's honestly the method I use.

You need a host, you say?

http://svpf.dr.k.vr.lt:82/~melee/~milun/

 

[Achilles1515]

@ Milun , I'm looking over some of the website now...it's great! Thanks @ Doq

If noone has already told you, the "C0/40" type you talk about are just 32-bit floating point numbers.
0xBF800000 = -1
0x3F800000 = 1
0x40000000 = 2
0x40400000 = 3
0xC0400000 = -3

etc.

Just use this website to convert decimals to hex and vice versa.

And there's no problem with using the lower order bits even if the game normally uses a whole number. You would just do this if you wanted to make decimal numbers.

Ex.

0x40b9999a = 5.8
(although *technically* not exactly 5.8 because that number can't be expressed to one hundred percent accuracy with 32-bits. But super duper close)

 

[Milun]

Wow. Thank you so much DoctorKirby! (Someone needs to tell the Melee, Hacks, and You guys to update their post).

I mean… Steelia AND Milun are back….wtf my life is complete. Onward through the golden age of Melee hacking!

Whoah whoah whoah whoaaaaaaah hold your horses there. I'm back, but I'm afraid it'll just be part time this time (a man's gotta live, no?).

Besides, I'm not sure why you guys need me after seeing that display and the one on the other thread. You guys have not only gotten the hang of my nonsense, you've surpassed it by far!

But for convenience, I should upload the notes I took for the other stages though (will do in a few hours). Looking at it now the website is a bit lacking in that department.

EDIT: Yeeeeeaaaah... my bad on the floats there...

 

[zankyou]

There are so many questions I want to ask you. I havent seen any type of documentation on stage timers until now. So many doors opened. But for now do you have a higher res pic of the background. I want to play with it a bit and see if I could get it working consistently.

 

[Milun]

Yeah alright, I'll link in a second. Thanks by the way. The stage was a gift for someone and having that background HD would be amazing!

Also um... refresh my memory here. Stage timers are things like "when the turtle comes up" right?

By the way I renamed the thread to be more on topic.

 

[zankyou]

Yeah alright, I'll link in a second. Thanks by the way. The stage was a gift for someone and having that background HD would be amazing!

Also um... refresh my memory here. Stage timers are things like "when the turtle comes up" right?

Also, is there a way for me to change the name of this thread? Because the discussion is great, but the title is a bit misleading.

Yeah events and what not. I spent hours trying to stop FoD platforms from moving. Never would have looked after the after the magnifier stuff. Also the image wont be too much higher. I think I jumped to 900x560... or that might have been the number I wanted to do.

 

[Milun]

Here's the big picture (note, in the Kirby 64 stage they have a large white border around it. I omitted that in this, but it should probably be included because I don't know).

 

[Achilles1515]

GrNFg.dat (FigureGet Tropy Stage)

Objects (Position Data)
------------
- offset is start of X coordinate (Y is the word after)


1ab14 - moves every object
1ab54 - trophy stand, the small raised center ground
1ab94 - trophy stand (datum?)
1abd4 - trophy stand something

1ac18 - all clouds and red translucent arrow
1ac54 - ??
1acd4 - ??

1ad54 - red, translucent arrow pointing in the pink rings

1ad54 - ?? stars maybe
1ae54 - ??
1ae94 - left column, middle wood section
1aed4 - right column, middle wood section
1af14 - main column, low, white section
1af54 - platforms, moves both (at least changing vertical moved both)
1af94 - main column, golden half domes and rotating balls
1afd4 - side columns, tan stone portion (not the wood insides)
1b014 - main column, small, top rounded caps of the multiple vertical posts
1b054 - main column, multiple vertical posts
1b094 - pink rings (moves all three)
1b0d4 - side column, white and blue bumper tops only
1b114 - main column, tan circular pieces
1b154 - main column, silver spin piece
1b194 - horizontal stage rails

 

[Milun]

Ah. I see you're also using my technique for documentation. Very nice!

 

[zankyou]

GrNFg.dat (FigureGet Tropy Stage)

Objects (Position Data)
------------
- offset is start of X coordinate (Y is the word after)


1ab14 - moves every object
1ab54 - trophy stand, the small raised center ground
1ab94 - trophy stand (datum?)
1abd4 - trophy stand something

1ac18 - all clouds and red translucent arrow
1ac54 - ??
1acd4 - ??

1ad54 - red, translucent arrow pointing in the pink rings

1ad54 - ?? stars maybe
1ae54 - ??
1ae94 - left column, middle wood section
1aed4 - right column, middle wood section
1af14 - main column, low, white section
1af54 - platforms, moves both (at least changing horizontal moved both)
1af94 - main column, golden half domes and rotating balls
1afd4 - side columns, tan stone portion (not the wood insides)
1b014 - main column, small, top rounded caps of the multiple vertical posts
1b054 - main column, multiple vertical posts
1b094 - pink rings (moves all three)
1b0d4 - side column, white and blue bumper tops only
1b114 - main column, tan circular pieces
1b154 - main column, silver spin piece
1b194 - horizontal stage rails

Someone else indexing offsets. I dont feel so alone haha. But really thanks to steelia's work stages he's done textures to dont really need this done. Wish I realized that before I went through fountain.

 

[Milun]

Here are all the notes I've had piled up (that aren't on the website). Keep in mind, they are in no way complete documentation. I just wrote down whatever was relevant while hacking them.
Warning: trainwreck ahead.

GrNLa (Final Destination):

4DEE0 - Collisions


GrFs (Fourside):

4B446 - Magnifier

4B48C - how HIGH the crane goes at a certain point.

Changing first 3 lines after magnifier made the crane move faster, and with weird positioning.
Changing the next two lines made the crane move and stop, and the UFO to appear/dissapear faster

2E690 - Background Skyscraper. - Appears to control HOW it moves when the camera moves.

30974 - Changes location of the light glow

36BB4 - Crane position

- The crane makes a square as it moves. I think these are the corners?
4B488 - Position low/left ---NO!
4B48C - Position high/left ---NO!
4B490 - Position low/right
4B494 - Position high/right

4B484 - 4 Hexs, how long it takes the crane to 'jut' up (on the left?).
The similar values before it are the time it takes for various things.

4B478 - THESE 4 Are the timers between the crane motions.

4B4A0 - Timer... UFO! Set it to 7F 7F for no more UFO!

K, one of these timers is the helicopter.

30978 - This and the next two are the 3 Lights on the middle section at the front bottom most part.

2E914 - This plus next 2 move the MIDDLE building.
2E9D8 - Middle floor model.

306F4 - Red lights
2EC54 - Move the right building
2EE14 - Move the left building

306F5 - Red (I don't know what I was referring to here).
30A34 - White
30B3C - This and the next two are the front left lights
2EA94 - MORE LIGHTS!

30978 - This and next two are the 3 lights at the right front.
2EA98 - This and next two are the 3 lights at the right back.
2ED58 - This and next two are the 3 lights at the left back.
2EB54 - One of the lights on the tower.
308B8 - The rightmost 3 lights.
30B34 - The 3 lights on the bump on the left.


GrGr (Green Greens)

5A570 - Camera
58F7A - Magnifier

58FD8 - block fall location... height?... the next is the block fall time.

59021 - amount of shake when blowing?... or leave... dodgyness?

58FA1 - 1st is his inhale, second is his wind. Duration, not time until it goes, the smaller the value, the longer the duration? Both have to be same value.

58FDC - (less means more). fall speed.
58FD7 - Frequency of blocks. Inverted.

I think 01 makes something happen? probably a bool.

58FE4 - time it takes for whispy to start wind, and apples.
58FE0 - Ditto the above, except it controls the intervals of two, and not the apples.
58FD0 - SIZE OF BLOCK COLLISSION BUBBLE FOR ATTACKS!!!
...it's like a timer. I think the timers nearby are also applied to them.
SOMETHING IN THOSE TIMERS CONTROLS CHANCES OF BOMBS!

58FCF - Bomb probability.
59038 - Explosion knockback. not inverted. Normal val.

5902B - Damage from bombs. It's the one number, converted to what damage is dealt normally. If 0, doesn't stun.

20E54 - Left grass and fence model.
20E94 - Right grass and fence model.

20F14 - Left block lower spread out.
The one below is the upper spread out. Collissions are not glitched. Spreading them out still keeps one around the original location. I guess I shouldn't have increased the spread lower down or something.

20F98 - general spread. Should be noted explosions are still kinda weird.

210D8 - The right blocks and co.

21694 - Main platform model
216D4 - Left and Right platform (right after).

2A538 - Wispy height, but not the wind.
2A5A8 - Wispy lower part of skeleton.

47954 - Mesh for blocks.

56418 - collissions.
5A581 - Camera

----
I'll leave it at this for now... I uh... hope these are useful?

 

[zankyou]

So i didnt test this on the wii but it should work since its the same dat I used for the blue background.
I can try to go higher if you want. This is 900x560 which didnt break on the wii.

 

[Milun]

Definitely better! Thanks!

...uh... what do I need to do so mine looks like that?

 

[Achilles1515]

GrNBa.dat (Battlefield) - Random Notes

6e1fc - start of string pointer table

string 29 = colldata

data starts @ 320FC

31f64 = start of link table
(flags for platform types/physics)

----------------------------------

string 30 - grGroundParam
33fa8 = pointer to data

33fc8 = Battlefield stage size
default = 0x3f4ccccd = 0.8

-----------------------
Objects (Position Data)
------------
- offset is start of X coordinate (Y is the word after)

1a3f4 - moves all stage elements
1a434 - energy ball (lightning and white glow will follow this and use as datum)
1a5f4 - lightning
1a634 - lighting that moves around the energy ball (modifies radius of movement?)
1a674 - white glow growing and shrinking surrounding energy ball
1a6b4 - "sparkly" multisided ball surrounding the energy ball below stage
1a6f4 - main stage (everything but energy ball and sparkly outside)

1a734 - left platform texture only
1a774 - right platform texture only
1a7b0 - middle platform texture only

---------------------------------

Alright, so I'm a little salty about some stage hacking stuff. The 20XX Pack has the Battlefield Platform Editor in it, meaning I figured out awhile ago how to RAM hack collision and position data. But I was super confused....because I would search the platform heights (RAM heights of 27.2 and 54.4) in GrNBa.dat and wouldn't find anything.

Little did I know that the stage was f***ing scaled down to 80% and the RAM platform heights were scaled as well. I saw IE's little note about this in his thread and then while I was driving home from work it hit me...

The equation I needed to now be looking at was:

(default height) * 0.8 = 27.2 (or 54.4)

This gave me default platform heights of 34 and 68, so then I plugged those into the dec --> hex converter, did a search in the file and PRESTO, there they were. I'm just salty because I could have been doing some stage hacking earlier.

But being able to RAM hack stages is still really powerful. It gives the ability to write codes to create moving/shrinking/growing platforms by modifying their collision/position data every frame of the game.

 

[Milun]

What what? RAM? IIIIIIIIIIIIiinterestiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing........ Um... as for your scaling issue, I think I know the value that controls that (it's the last value before the magnifier). I always thought it scaled characters down, not stages up though.

(Headsup, I'll be leaving soon for a day or so).

 

[zankyou]

What what? RAM? IIIIIIIIIIIIiinterestiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing........ Um... as for your scaling issue, I think I know the value that controls that (it's the last value before the magnifier). I always thought it scaled characters down, not stages up though.

(Headsup, I'll be leaving soon for a day or so).

I dont remember the flags I had to change. Its one of the texture one. But as for the image you just insert it into the end of the file and rebuild.
I really need to create document my methods before I start forgetting things.

 

[Achilles1515]

What what? RAM? IIIIIIIIIIIIiinterestiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing........ Um... as for your scaling issue, I think I know the value that controls that (it's the last value before the magnifier). I always thought it scaled characters down, not stages up though.

(Headsup, I'll be leaving soon for a day or so).

I found the offset already and listed it above. But I think it has to be scaling the stage and not the characters. If the characters were just scaled down, then the platform locations would never change. But as I experienced, this is not the case, and all location offsets from the datum get multiplied by this stage scale factor.

If you could never view the RAM, then I guess it would be a tossup. But since we can view the RAM, we have access to the truth.

Which brings me to my favorite Melee hacking phrase: "RAM don't lie!"

 

[Pac-Man Vs.]

I made a spreadsheet long ago with all the hacked stages. Looks like it is now out of date. Anyone is allowed to edit it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vR7FpoaTBELJYNjP6o32ZJsgTyvEOgjbDV0r2ZlL5lU/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Milun]

I dont remember the flags I had to change. Its one of the texture one. But as for the image you just insert it into the end of the file and rebuild.
I really need to create document my methods before I start forgetting things.

Hm... you'll have to excuse me. I never got into the kinds of hacks that would change iso sizes. Um... and I have no idea how flags work that's for sure.

Also, I noticed in "Melee, hacks and you" you talked about ground flags? Could I get more information on those please?
These are the collisions for Mushroom Kingdom 1 (top part is the actual collisions, bottom part is the weird boxes that need to surround the collisions for them to work). That's about as far as I got in that field...

Actually, if I may make a theory here (this starts on line EFDO):

00 04 00 02 00 45 00 01 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00 00

I predict that this line says something like this:

"Create a collision out of points 04, 02, 45, and 01 (in that order), and assign it the value of 01"

With the "FF"'s in there as filler?

 

[Milun]

In fact, here's the collision information for Kirby 64:

00 00 00 01 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 01 01 00 <-
00 02 00 03 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 01 01 00 <- I'd bet these create the 3 floating platforms.
00 04 00 05 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 01 01 00 <-
00 0B 00 0C 00 09 00 04 FF FF FF FF 00 01 02 00
00 0C 00 0D 00 03 00 05 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00 00
00 0D 00 0A 00 04 00 08 FF FF FF FF 00 01 02 00
00 09 00 06 00 07 00 0A FF FF FF FF 00 02 00 00
00 08 00 09 00 08 00 06 FF FF FF FF 00 04 00 00
00 0A 00 08 00 05 00 07 FF FF FF FF 00 04 00 00
00 07 00 0B 00 0A 00 03 FF FF FF FF 00 08 00 00
00 06 00 07 00 06 00 09 FF FF FF FF 00 08 00 00

 

[zankyou]

Hm... you'll have to excuse me. I never got into the kinds of hacks that would change iso sizes. Um... and I have no idea how flags work that's for sure.

Also, I noticed in "Melee, hacks and you" you talked about ground flags? Could I get more information on those please?
These are the collisions for Mushroom Kingdom 1 (top part is the actual collisions, bottom part is the weird boxes that need to surround the collisions for them to work). That's about as far as I got in that field...

Actually, if I may make a theory here (this starts on line EFDO):

00 04 00 02 00 45 00 01 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00 00

I predict that this line says something like this:

"Create a collision out of points 04, 02, 45, and 01 (in that order), and assign it the value of 01"

With the "FF"'s in there as filler?

These have been referred as links and spots (collision points). So the link is from spt 04 to 02. link 45 is connected to spot 04 and link 01 is connected to spot 02. I have no idea about the FF. Its not always theres as evident in your pic. After that its flags for what the link is. Wall/floor/ceiling. Then the next byte is the ground flag. 00 is basically just a collision. 01 means you can drop through it. 02 means you can grab it. 03 means you can grab and drop through. All Ive played with so far. Also im pretty sure you can add the table to the end of the file giving you more freedom to make your own. And I found out links HAVE to go clockwise. Also after the ground flag is the type of ground. I think blocks are 11. Theres really so much you can do now youd be surprised what people have figured out.

 

[Achilles1515]

Hm... you'll have to excuse me. I never got into the kinds of hacks that would change iso sizes. Um... and I have no idea how flags work that's for sure.

Also, I noticed in "Melee, hacks and you" you talked about ground flags? Could I get more information on those please?
These are the collisions for Mushroom Kingdom 1 (top part is the actual collisions, bottom part is the weird boxes that need to surround the collisions for them to work). That's about as far as I got in that field...

Actually, if I may make a theory here (this starts on line EFDO):

00 04 00 02 00 45 00 01 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00 00

I predict that this line says something like this:

"Create a collision out of points 04, 02, 45, and 01 (in that order), and assign it the value of 01"

With the "FF"'s in there as filler?

The part you have X'ed out are the flags. Idk about all the specifics, but they are more documented by Yax in this spreadsheet.

What I do understand is the ground ID flags. To the right of the "FFFFFFFF" column, ......nvm. As I'm typing this, I noticed Zankyou just responded.

Basically, to the right of the FFFFFFFF column, there's four "02" bytes after the "01"s. Those bytes are the ground ID flags for the link.

00 = no drop-through, no grabbable edges (regular stage ground)
01 = can drop-through, no grabbable edges (normal platform)
02 = no drop-through, can grab edges (edges of a stage)
03 = can drop-through, can grab edges

So if you changed those four 02's into 00's, then there would be no grabbable ledges on Mushroom Kingdom.

 

[Achilles1515]

Milun, do you know how to keep Falcon from insta-walljumping? Zankyou was running into that issue on the left side of his Yoshi's Island stage and I know you've encountered the same issue before.

 

[Milun]

Uuuuuuuuuuuum.................................................................................................... isn't that just something he always does?

If not I'd guess... make the left edge a teeny bit angled? like, if the top point is x = -90, the bottom would be x = -89.9 ?
Just a guess.

 

[zankyou]

Uuuuuuuuuuuum.................................................................................................... isn't that just something he always does?

If not I'd guess... make the left edge a teeny bit angled? like, if the top point is x = -90, the bottom would be x = -89.9 ?
Just a guess.

He does it on most of the non-legal stages which is why no one notices it. I tried making it angled but that didnt work. What bothers me is that the left side mirrors the right yet he only does it on that side. Ive been meaning to try to go back and fix that along with finishing hyrule temple though. Too many things to do.

 

[Achilles1515]

@ Z zankyou so where can we find texture flags?

 

[Milun]

Hm... ok. If he doesn't do it on legal stages, that could be used as some clues:

Battlefield: has really short edges (in height)
FD: Is in a similar boat.
Yoshis Story: The top half is slanted?
Fountain of Dreams: Is bowl shaped so maybe the angle thing?
Kirby 64: Same thing.

So based on that, there's no stages that have perfect squares as their edges? Again, this is just me guessing (I can't test anything for the moment).

Also I second achilles1515's notion.

 

[zankyou]

Easiest way would be to start by looking for the texture offset.

 

[Milun]

I checked Falcon by the way.

If you go on Fourside for instance, he has the wall jump problem on both sides. With legal stages, there's always something to the edges which doesn't make them perfect squares, which might explain the glitch.

As for texture offsets... you mean like Ctrl-F the location of the texture (example: "00017c00"). Because I tried that and it doesn't find 90% of the offsets so I'm not sure if the other 10% are just coincidence.

 

[zankyou]

its relative to the data block. subtract 20.

 

[Milun]

Oooh. Now that's a useful location in the HEX to remember. Thanks!

I tried doubling the size of the texture and doing what you said. Methinks Melee doesn't like people tampering with file sizes though (it just crashed in Dolphin).

Oh well. Thanks for the help regardless. At the very least, it means that textures can be swapped around between meshes easily (like making all the stars on Whispy into bushes for instance).

 

[Milun]

By the way, for those of you who've seen my Mushroom Kingdom tutorial, I did a dump of the models for Kirby 64 in Blender:

https://www.mediafire.com/?vkbv7sv0v6yrfy7

When you're done working with the models, you need to select ONE of the two that are in the scene and go export > obj.
When in the export window, be sure to have "selection only" and "keep vert order" selected.

Then, after exporting go to the .obj file, open it in notepad, and remove all rows of text that don't begin with data in the format of:

v 1.4390 3221.34 392.324234

You can then use my terrible program to convert them back into Hex:

https://www.mediafire.com/?z1a89nxgvofowhd

Finally, open the file the program spits out and copy all the Hex text. In your .dat, paste it in one of the following:

If you edited the part of the model which has the tree in it (the back half of the stage) paste it here: 0000480
If you edited the part of the model which was twice as large (the front half of the stage) paste it here: 0000E920