Important Melee, Hacks, and You -- New Hackers Start Here, in the OP!

[ETWIST51294]

you're cool, godfed. The dude just seemed desperate at the time.

 

[brawlshifter]

I don't know if this has been asked before, but is movie file hacking possible if you don't use the ISO hacking method?

 

[WarriorKnight]

I am currently working on Black Bowser. I downloaded Stelia's texture dumps. I modified all the .tga images using photoshop and indexed them. Then I created and filled out the .tcs with the appropriate script for some of them. Successfully created the .tpl using texconv cmd (btw this is a _9 texture with no transparency) I followed the steps from your guide in the best way I can. However, I have hit a dead end, I have not yet successfully applied a single texture to the Pl****.dat.

I've been trying to apply the Bowser's 42Eyefront tpi before moving forward with the others.
Dolphin keeps crashing when i select black bowser after doing the following. Using Hex Editor Neo "I copied line 00000260 from the .tpl and pasted it to the .dat line 00000260 overwriting anything that was in those lines prior.
After skipping the first 2 lines on the .tpi, I copied the following 32 lines and did not have a clue on where to paste it. So I pasted the 32 lines into the .dat starting from the 3 line from the top replacing the original .dat values.

I have been having extreme difficulty in locating where exactly to paste the contents of the .tpl file into the .dat file for each texture using the Hex Editor. The .dat files have a bunch of random characters in the texting column. Using Hex Editor Neo, Where and how do I find this specific texture and the others to follow within the .dat file?

Im usually kind of good at stuff like this and i'm feeling like a real idiot being stuck at this point. Im super frustrated lol and will be giving up for the night. Can somebody plz help me tackle this tomorrow?

 

[Steelia]

Hoho. I think I see what's going on.
42EyeFront... From what I gather from the PLACEMENTS.txt, it is the last texture you paste in Bowser's DAT file. No problem, then.

I see where you MIGHT have gone wrong.

With the majority of eye textures, they are located at the very end of the DAT files -- depending on the character, split into two groups, the Left eye, and the Right eye. Since you're dealing with Bowser (both eyes), he doesn't have that, so I won't cover the specifics of two just yet.
Here's the deal: By now, I'm sure you're familiar with how _8 and _9 files work normally in DAT files. You paste line 260 into the DAT, then directly following it you paste the 2 - 32 palette lines from the beginning of the TPL file into the DAT. Simple...
However.
Eye textures like Bowser and most others, follow a slightly different format.

~Paste line 260+ into the DAT (in your case, 42EyeFront is located on line 00074b20).
~Once you have done that, you must now find the 2-32 palette line. But since all the eyes are back-to-back, where do you paste it? Easy: All eye palette lines are located after the final eye texture. So, lucky for you, 42EyeFront is the final Bowser eye, so directly following it are the palette lines.

Here is where things may get a little tricky... You must figure out how big the palette lines are. Under normal circumstances, most are 32 lines. But in Bowser's case, they vary a little.

So let's see here...

42EyeFront (the texture itself, 260) - x74b20
---directly following the end of this texture...---
36EyeHalf palette line - x75b20 ~~32 line palette
---skip two spaces---
37EyeClose palette line - x75d40 ~~28 line palette
---skip two spaces---
51EyelidHurt palette line - x75f20 ~~32 line palette
---skip two spaces---
38EyeBack palette line - x76140 ~~32 line palette
---skip two spaces---
42EyeFront palette line - x76360 ~~32 line palette


As you can see, the palette line for 42texture doesn't go exactly after it.
Yes, eyes are a little crazier.
Hope that helped you out some, though.

 

[`DNS`]

Oh, so i swapped in something for the dk64 stage's HPS
but it has the same loop point as before and just makes a crackling sound for a minute before looping
how do i fix this

 

[Milun]

Ok, I'm back, thanks for waiting, here's the model editor, alive and well:

http://www.mediafire.com/?yyzkrxmdewe

on an unrelated note, anyone know where the trophy tussle stages are? I wanna see if I can make them playable over Icy mountain or Big Blue.

 

[Steelia]

Ok, I'm back, thanks for waiting, here's the model editor, alive and well:

http://www.mediafire.com/?yyzkrxmdewe

on an unrelated note, anyone know where the trophy tussle stages are? I wanna see if I can make them playable over Icy mountain or Big Blue.

Dammit, still doesn't work. I must be missing a program or something... Didn't even work on my XP computer, or newest one. );

Anywho, as for Trophy Tussle stages, your best bet would be to look through all the "Grxx.dat" stages.
I made a small listing for Melee stages (what they could be, the Grxx ones), and I got three stages in particular I couldn't figure out:
GrEF1.dat
GrEF2.dat
GrEF3.dat
They were called "Figure", and being there's 3 Trophy Tussle stages... might be more than coincidence.

 

[Milun]

Thanks! Did you try installing Game Maker 7 and running the editable? I really think it should work. If anyone else has it working, It'd be nice to know. It's a real shame. I checked through the GrEF1 and 2 files, and when using my model finder, I just found two spheres... I doubt it's the tussles, but I'm still not convinced. Could you please link me to the listing of Melee stages, I think it could help.

 

[brawlshifter]

I'll ask one more time, is movie file hacking possible if you don't use the ISO hacking method? I use the SD Loading method for Brawl, so I would like to know if I will be able to do this too.

 

[GodFed]

Oh, so i swapped in something for the dk64 stage's HPS
but it has the same loop point as before and just makes a crackling sound for a minute before looping
how do i fix this

HPS files are made up of blocks of sound data. Each block has a header, which points to the next block. If the music looped from the end to the very beginning, the last block would point to the very first block. If the music looped from the end to 7 seconds in, then the last block would point to the block that corresponds to that 7 second mark.

But where do you want it to loop from? If you just want it to loop to the beginning, that's easy. Find the last block of data in the HPS file that's not full of FF's, and change the header from this (0000FFFC 0000FFEF 000100C0 [/B ]00000000) to this (0000FFFC 0000FFEF 0000008000000000) 0x80 is the very first block of data, so if you change the header to point to 0x80, you'll loop to there. Bolded numbers were the changed ones.

If you want to loop from like 6.532 seconds to the end, try to reread the HPS guide. Specifically the part about changing loop points and such. I don't want to reexplain it here. Frankly, I'm probably going to change the entire guide to make it way more readable and understandable, and clear. To tell the truth, I'm not sure that this reply post is even very clear.

 

[`DNS`]

^Thanks!
I can't test if it worked right now because Dolphin doesn't work on this computer.. <33

 

[Tichinde925]

I'll ask one more time, is movie file hacking possible if you don't use the ISO hacking method? I use the SD Loading method for Brawl, so I would like to know if I will be able to do this too.

You only have 2 options of loading:

Either you burn a ISO, or you have a beast PC to run the Dolphin Emulator to run the ISO.

 

[Milun]

Hey, while looking through hex to try to figure out bone data, I accidentally stumbled upon hitbox data instead. Would this be useful to Melee hacking (at the moment). I'm afraid of looking into the hex more thoroughly, because it could lead to people using it to cheat in matches. At the moment, I only know the location where the hex is stored, and nothing else.

Oh, and if anyone knows anything about bone data (or making them visible in debug menu), could you please let me know.

 

[Tichinde925]

Could you like remove the hitbox from all items?

Or remove the hitbox from just the capsule.

 

[`DNS`]

lol
make puff's rest hitbox huge
SOOOO BROKEN

 

[Milun]

Could you like remove the hitbox from all items?

Or remove the hitbox from just the capsule.

lol
make puff's rest hitbox huge
SOOOO BROKEN

See, this is why I asked whether I should research into it or not, as It could be misused for the darkest of evils, and if that happens, it could make hacks questioned at tournaments.

Oh, and you could probably remove the capsule hitbox, but I can't do it yet because I haven't done much research.

 

[Tichinde925]

Items arent allowed at official tournies so I believe items are the only hitbox's that should be researched / looked at.

Can you also remove the hitbox from the klaptraps in Jungle Japes?

What other stages have absurd hitboxes that needs to be removed?

 

[Steelia]

What other stages have absurd hitboxes that needs to be removed?

Most of the hitboxes in stages in Melee aren't anywhere NEAR as absurd as half the stages in Brawl -- get hit by one or two of the elements on their stages (i.e. Port Town, Spear Pillar, DK scrolling stage, Mario Bros.), you're done like dinner.

Anywho, the stages I can think of that have damaging elements... are... Onett, Mute City, Mushroom Kingdom II, both Melee DK stages, Brinstar, Corneria, Venom, Flat Zone, and to lesser extents Princess Peach's Castle, Green Greens, and Great Bay.

By the way, could there possibly be made an option to turn off Whispy's wind effect on both Green Green Kirby stages? That'd be handy, and nowhere near as annoying.

 

[ETWIST51294]

Everybody likes DL64 wind because it barely ever blows.

Green greens SUCKS, the wind blows too much, exploding apples, and falling bombs. Green greens would be okay if you take all of that stuff away.

 

[Tichinde925]

Question: What were to happen if the floor's hitbox in Mute City was removed while the stage was moving fast?

 

[`DNS`]

it wouldn't be an instant-win for peach

edit; i was just thinking that it would be so awesome to hack the whole game like this

then i realized that's even more ridiculous than awesome

 

[Milun]

Well, I'll see what I could do about the stage hitboxes.

And I beg to differ, Jiggs would win.

 

[WarriorKnight]

Sounds cool lol.
On another note, I have a question.. How do I find a characters texture data in the .dat file? (the simplest way if possible). For example if i'm looking for the characters hair texture or face texture, how would I be able to locate it within the .dat file using the hex editor?

 

[Steelia]

Sounds cool lol.
On another note, I have a question.. How do I find a characters texture data in the .dat file? (the simplest way if possible). For example if i'm looking for the characters hair texture or face texture, how would I be able to locate it within the .dat file using the hex editor?

Eesh.
The best (and only known) way of doing this, is if you have the texture of the character -- and know how to convert it. Once converted, you simply seek where the texture may go in the .DAT/.USD file... Where the spot is, is based on your assumption, a spot that looks as close to the file as possible. They will NOT be the same word-for-word, but they'll look remarkably alike when compared (best way is to copy-paste over spot in the .DAT/.USD file, and see if they look close enough to each other).

 

[WarriorKnight]

whoops lol. I meant the palette data for those nasty _8 and _9 files. U know the 2-32 line thingy. Your same answer above also applies to palettes too right?

You stated converting in your post, What is the character's texture being coverted to?

Sorry for all the noob questions. I just really want to get this down so I could start doing lots of character and stage textures to share with everyone.
Again, thanks for all your help.

 

[brawlshifter]

You only have 2 options of loading:

Either you burn a ISO, or you have a beast PC to run the Dolphin Emulator to run the ISO.

****, I was hoping to avoid those methods. Thanks for the answer.

 

[Milun]

Well, since S. can't run my program, I've decided to do something I probably should have done instead of making the darn thing, and making a program that just exports to a .obj instead.

 

[Keatsta]

Wow so maybe I'm just an idiot who made things too complicated the first time I did it and didn't read the instructions but...

Since when could you edit hps files without hex editing? And whoever made that possible, I love you. The loop points aren't such a big deal when the rest is nice and simple. I'm going to resoundtrack the whole game now!

 

[Milun]

Well, I managed to reuse most of my old code, and It successfully exports to .obj. Here's the traditional hat (rendered in Blender).



One problem though, when it exports characters, they're divided into thirds, then their z values are scrambled (so for instance, half of Pikachu's face is underneath his legs, and his arms on his ears). I doubt it would be of use until I can figure out how to extract edges.

 

[`DNS`]

That one I can actually see.. unlike the mario one or whatever it was before

 

[cubaisdeath]

Hey, while looking through hex to try to figure out bone data, I accidentally stumbled upon hitbox data instead. Would this be useful to Melee hacking (at the moment). I'm afraid of looking into the hex more thoroughly, because it could lead to people using it to cheat in matches. At the moment, I only know the location where the hex is stored, and nothing else.

Oh, and if anyone knows anything about bone data (or making them visible in debug menu), could you please let me know.

what you should really do is make a mod called "Melee -" and just shift the mechanics to make it more like brawl.

LOL

 

[Steelia]

Well, I managed to reuse most of my old code, and It successfully exports to .obj. Here's the traditional hat (rendered in Blender).



One problem though, when it exports characters, they're divided into thirds, then their z values are scrambled (so for instance, half of Pikachu's face is underneath his legs, and his arms on his ears). I doubt it would be of use until I can figure out how to extract edges.[/QUOTE]

Oh, sweet, lookin' good so far. (Go figure, I can't see what the image is this time, but others can. :laugh: )
For the character exports, I believe Brawl suffers from the same thing; the models all look like a bunch of tripped-out spiders. I'm not exactly sure how that's fixed up to T-pose or however it is supposed to go, though.

 

[`DNS`]

what you should really do is make a mod called "Melee -" and just shift the mechanics to make it more like brawl.

LOL

umm o/t but what's your avatar supposed to say? Emo kids have too much HERACROSS their face?

 

[Keatsta]

umm o/t but what's your avatar supposed to say? Emo kids have too much HERACROSS their face?

read it as "hair across" their face.

 

[ETWIST51294]

Do you think there will ever be a time where the brawl characters will be in melee? And some of the brawl ATs too(DACUS, Pivot Grab, Glide Tossing, Momentum Canceling, Gliding, Crawling)?

 

[zBOREDOMKINGz]

ewwwwww
Why would you want that?
I mean Melee has it's own AT<3

Then again I suppose some Brawl characters in Melee would be pretty dope.

 

[ETWIST51294]

I'm getting bored.

BTW Those are the only good ATs in brawl. Notice I didn't put footstooling up there.

 

[Milun]

Oh, sweet, lookin' good so far. (Go figure, I can't see what the image is this time, but others can. )
For the character exports, I believe Brawl suffers from the same thing; the models all look like a bunch of tripped-out spiders. I'm not exactly sure how that's fixed up to T-pose or however it is supposed to go, though.

Well, I doubt they look as weird as this: (1st is Sheik, 2nd Yoshi and 3rd is a Pokeball):



The items show no issues, but BOY are the characters messed up, and I honestly have no idea how to fix that. I'll browse around the *shudder* Brawl hacking threads and see what I can. Edit: Nope, didn't find anything of use.

 

[Steelia]

I'll browse around the *shudder* Brawl hacking threads and see what I can. Edit: Nope, didn't find anything of use.

LOL, Sorry about that, then. I just know from being an ex-Brawl hacker that, had I not actually gone into the game, I wouldn't've been able to figure out so much as half of the things I have already (TCS, TPL, textures, sounds, the like).

As for the pic, now those I can see, for the most part... The Pokeball's an obvious; Yoshi's a little tougher, but Sheik looks like she could be anyone, haha. I see what you mean now. o_O

I take it you've already browsed around the Emutalk forums? I remember seeing something like this before there... bunches of dots.

 

[Milun]

If it's the link you sent me before, then those were for trophy data. Some people did try to edit the player data, but it didn't seem they had any luck. I think I may have discovered where the edges are stored, and I'm investigating, oh and this time I'm positive the program will work for you.