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

[genkaku]

is there some way to get stuff without megaupload?

 

[Little England]

Does anyone have this file [mth_make.exe] from the opening video guide? Yet another victim of megaupload.

 

[Rep]

Does anyone know if the location of the number of frames an attack takes is known? It isn't in the hitbox data or the character attribute data. I want to make an attack take less frames.

 

[standardtoaster]

That would deal with animations. The animation format has not been discovered yet.

 

[Rep]

I've heard that light shield has hitpoints and hard shield has hitpoints... Are they different for each character, or is the value the same for all chars? I can't remember where I read, but I think it's something like 65 and 85, but can these values be changed, perhaps to something arbitrarily huge to give a sort of infinite shield?

Also... Could I use asynchronous timers to lower the number of frames a hitbox is out for? How do these timers work exactly?

 

[SypherPhoenix]

Magus stated somewhere that the lightest shield has 68 HP, and the hardest shield has 83. Every character has the same shield HP, though varying sizes (editable in their respective Pl__.dat files). The value for shield HP is probably kept somewhere in the dol file, iunno. You'd probably only be able to change it globally.

I don't know how accurate Magus' numbers are, as I have no clue how he tested for them. They're probably exact enough for applicable gameplay (ie, ±<1%).


I know there's an "infinite shield" code somewhere on AR Central, that could possibly be used to help find the shield value.


EDIT:

Infinite Shields P1 (JAY007)
42451170 0CFC4270

Infinite Shields P2 (JAY007)
42452000 0CFC4270

Infinite Shields P3 (JAY007)
42452E90 0CFC4270

Infinite Shields P4 (JAY007)
42453D20 0CFC4270

for v1.0

I'd do this stuff myself but I still can't get breakpoints to work on Dolphin.

 

[standardtoaster]

Can you do value searches instead? It's easy enough to find the shield values if you do less than and greater than searches for unknown values.

 

[Rep]

Any idea what value prevents you from grabbing Giga Bowser? I went through the attributes spreadsheet, and it doesn't seem to be anything in there. Also, do you guys know if it's possible to change the character that is selected when you pick a character? For instance, what if I wanted to make one color of kirby go to GigaBowser? Any idea where this value is located and in which file?

And thanks for the shield codes, but I don't have the USB Gecko to find .dol offsets from AR codes. Also, something I just thought of... Could we possibly find the locations of animation swapping AR codes to gain some insight into how animations work / where they are located? Codes that do stuff like in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgWBb4OpBoU

 

[phish-it]

So I've been wanting to get into the ssbm hacking. I wanted to start with something simple like textures, but all of the 'New School' files were all on megaupload which doesnt exist anymore, so that is a giant turn off.

So I wanted to work with audio instead, I've read the guide by Godfed and I've followed it up to the Hex editing part which I am completely clueless about.

5. Manual hexing...
Open up your hex editor of choice. Open the original SSM, the original DSP, and the new DSP. Go back to the ssmex.exe program, and drag the SSM file over the icon. This will launch the program, but it won't extract the DSPs (I don't know why, but I don't mind). Instead it will just give the info on each file. Don't close this.
Hex time.
-Compare the original DSP to your new DSP. They should be very similar in length. Best case scenario, they're exactly the same. Absloute worst, your new one is a lot longer.
-In the new DSP, copy the data from 0x60 on. This might be in the middle of a bunch of 00's, but it's correct. Open the cmd.exe window and look for the original filename. The offset data will be right by it. So, go to the SSM, and paste the copied data at the specified offset. Double check to make sure you didn't make a mistake.
-At the end of the data, if there's still a little room before it goes to the next DSP, just insert 00's or FF's until it ends. If you think you went over the limit, you're in a little trouble. Ctrl-Z undo, mate. You need to find the length of the data from the cmd window, which has the beginning and end offsets for each DSP. Copy that amount only, and paste that. **I only think that the longer ones will still work. I haven't tested, though**
-Back in the new DSP, copy the funky looking data from 0x1C to 0x3C. This is the coefficient data responsible for correctly decoding the DSP audio. What we have to do is paste it in the correct spot in the beginning of the SSM. Either count from the beginning of the SSM (every 0x48 bytes is the end of a block of coefficient data for mono files....stereo files are a bit longer since each channel needs coefficient decoders. Just count out two mono coefficient blocks for stereo) to find it, or match the original DSP data from 0x1C to 0x3C in the SSM to find it. When you find where it starts (remember the coefficient data is always 0x20, or 32, bytes long), paste your new DSP coefficient data over it. Good to go.
Save the SSM in a safe place.

First off, when I drag the .ssm data into ssmex it does something for a second and then closes completely. Or, If I have hex workshop opened with the .ssm file loaded, the ssmex crashes with an error.

Anyone know what to do? Do I actually need to open the .ssm file in ssmex?

 

[adechrist]

Also, do you guys know if it's possible to change the character that is selected when you pick a character?

I would also like to know this.

 

[Rep]

Well, I know it's possible, I just don't know where the memory location is. If I had a USB gecko i'd be able to figure it out. Magus?

 

[standardtoaster]

I could definitely do this if my wii's disc drive didn't die recently.

 

[Acryte]

I'm starting to learn this stuff recently, and rep I think you can just use dolphin and L. Spiro memory hacking software to do it since it has a built in disassembler.

I'm just starting but I really want to see continued progress and contributions in melee hacks so I'm starting with making a mod using balancing (buff only) and modding chars (looking for new stuff) as well hopefully getting proficient in asm (for non melee purposes as well). What I really want is to get good enough to help further demystify the dat format but compared to the knowledge of people like revel or tcll I don't think I'll be able to find anything people haven't figured out already but who knows. I'm slowly starting to piece this stuff together.

 

[Rep]

I've looked into Spiro's memory hacking software, but I read that there was a problem with the way gamecube games write to memory. Something like the game writes to memory in little-endian mode and the memoryhacking software runs in big-endian or something. Have you used it successfully?

 

[Acryte]

Idk if that is true I don't know much about big and little endian except that they reverse the bit order of the least to most significant bits, thats about all I know about it. That could be true, I should look that up. ALSO!

3610 in PlSs.dat = samus bomb jump momentum. This can make bomb jumping better, or make it not effective. Can also turn bomb jumps into superwavedashes by accelerating you at the ground. Positive numbers go upward and negatives go downward.

36AC Running grab (# of frames)
36B0 Standing grab (# of frames)
36BC Running grab (# of frames before retracting)
36B0 Standing grab (# of frames before retracting)
36C4 Zair grab (# of frames before coming out)
36C8 Zair grab (# of frames total before hitbox disappears (i think))
36CC Zair grab (# of frames before it retracts)

If you have the # of frames before the hitbox disappears higher than the animation number then the hitbox (if its still out) when you do another zair performs a deadline like using Ness's YYG.
Im looking at superdoodleman's files for samus and it says grab 94 and 74 so the 0 counts as 1 frame technically? Eh, idk what I did but I tried to go back and do it again and now it wants to freeze every time where before it didnt freeze ever. I don't remember changin much really. Eh, whatever.

 

[standardtoaster]

Oh, you're doing float stuff? If you can, please add it to the wiki page. http://opensa.dantarion.com/wiki/Article_Floating_Points_(Melee)

If you need to make an account, click on log in/create an account on the top right.

 

[Acryte]

will do toaster. I'm new with a lot of this stuff but this seems like there is a large volume of information I can find out as far as all the characters and their move properties so I think I'll really start making progress on documenting these things. I'm going through a bunch of characters looking for move property values as well as other things because I'm currently just started on making a serious balance mod project (attributes, hitboxes, move properties, etc) where I boost up the lower tiers to around doc/ganon or above and fix major issues with certain characters. When I do all the low tiers I'll be findin lots of these so yea

I'll make an account tomorrow for that. Also it only goes in the floats thing if it's a 32 bit float right? otherwise if its just a hex number for an attribute then would I put it in the attributes stuff?

Also, a question:
I still am learning about the .dat format for melee and how it all is structured because I don't know **** about all that. I read this:

The purpose of the relocation table is not to give access to specific data structures, but to show the location of every other file offset located within the data section

Given knowledge of how structures work in code, it is highly unlikely for an offset/pointer to jump into the middle of a structure. Given this very strong assumption, it can be assumed that any file offset is going to point to the location of the beginning of another data structure. This can be very useful in determining the start and end of a particular data structure, as they should not overlap.

Is this where the offset for the "attributes" data as listed in the googledoc/magus post/Masterhand? If that is the case, can you explain to me where and how I view the relocation table and/or what the offsets are for the section after that (where I am currently going through and finding move property data). Knowing that will tell me how far I have to go to thoroughly cover all of that section of data, as well telling me where the next section starts so I can tinker around in there and see what I find.

:note the order of the move properties of specials seems to generally be in the same move order they're in in the hitbox/gfx/sfx area.

 

[Rep]

Acryte, Are you saying that you can change one value and it will change the number of frames the running grab takes? Like the actual animation becomes faster? Or just the hitbox stays out for a shorter period?

 

[Acryte]

The body animation doesn't change total frames unfortunately but the grapple changes speed and number of frames. You can make it quick but then after it retracts you still have a wait period till its actually finished

EDIT: OMG egg roll has so many damn floats -_- spendin all night on this one move. Also, 010 Editor is amazing. The bookmarking feature lets you highlight addresses with colors and also you can scroll through bookmarks and click it to go there... I think we should implement bookmarks as a standard or make some later. If we bookmark all the floats and attributes we have found for characters then it would make editing characters very simple even without tools. We would just have to click the proper bookmarks and then punch in the new values.

see in the bottom left, those are the bookmarks and all the colors you see in the hex there are bookmarked.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c238/Acryte/bookmarks.png


If someone wants to double or triple team this with me we could finish the floats for a character every 1 to 2 days each and finish all the characters in 2 weeks time.
Also anyone have tips on a good macro program? I want to make it so that after I change values and save I can have it automatically open the rom in GC-tool and then replace the dat, tab over to my emulator and open the rom, select my character and fd. That way I can automate some of the process and make it less physical work.

Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5EtD-LwnvI&feature=youtu.be

 

[phish-it]

Nice work Acryte, how do you go about finding the data to change properties of B moves? Just curious since Masterhand only identifies data based off hitboxes on the character and not projectiles or changes in physics during the B move.



Also, is there any way to obtain the organized texture files now that megaupload is no more. Can someone rehost them?

 

[Acryte]

Good question phish. They start pretty much after normal attributes section ends which is 017C from the attributes offset for that character's dat file. To find the individual properties for the moves, I comb through the file. Depending on how closely/loosely they appear to be packed in that section (which varies from move to move... sideb with yoshi was spread out a ton but downB and upB were like almost one after the other) I may go from byte by byte to even like 12 to 16 bytes at a time. I'll fill them with numbers that are fairly different from what they already contain, so I'll fill it usually with 44444444's, CCCCCCCC's, etc. Then I'll run through a second time filling in the ones that had no measurable affect with 00000000's to see if that changes stuff.

Usually it's in a specific order which is the same as the order listed in Masterhand for the hitboxes and stuff. This means that if you know it goes Neutral B, SideB, Up-B, DownB or something, and you are testing Neutral B, then use that. If you test like 16 or somethin bytes straight that had no measurable affect or if you feel like you will be approaching the start of the next move's properties, make sure to use that move too. Then you'll be able to notice when it swaps over and you won't miss any bytes. If you feel you may have missed them, just step back a few bytes and check them again if there's any question in your mind. The key part is to choose to set it to high *** numbers. It's best if you set it high enough to crash the damn game. Then you're like ooh, it crashed. Makes it easier to see which ones are affected by stuff. Right now though I'm lookin for yoshi's jump out of shield. I have an idea where to look so here's hoping.

I'm starting to really recognize the structures in these dats. I may not really know the formatting and what it means but I recognize what the purpose of each section is kinda.

EDIT: ****, nope. I've exhausted my ideas for jump out of shield. Uuum... I noticed that you go intangible once you press shield until it comes out because it doesnt come out for like 7 frames. So on frame 6 you can still cancel it into a jump. It's only when the texture comes out that you can't jump out. How can I find where the graphics load for the egg texture is being called from? I tried disabling the figatrees for other characters and guard, guardon, guardoff and guarddamage only pertain to shieldhitstun and shielddrop animation and wait times. :/ I combed through the majority of PlYs.dat looking for somewhere I could make it freeze when shielding or stop it from loading the shield graphic. I didn't find anything, though I may comb back through using a high value and not zeros now. Do you think that the data for it is in yoshi's effects file or maybe the common effects file? There was one part of the file that you could mess with graphics stuff like the offsets for downB stars and you could like rotate the stars so they were sideways etc. Maybe the texture load is around there, I'll poke around that area tomorrow.

I also tried letting yoshi drop his shield without shield lag so he can jump immediately but it also got rid of shieldblockstun and you weren't forced into the air so you could run around spamming the shield button (though your shield would get low and break) but yea thats OP as hell so im still lookin. One idea is to find where it makes yoshi's shield egg texture load and just have it load the normal shield and see if that works.

 

[Rep]

Can you post a list of the attributes you've discovered for yoshi's side-b and their effects, along with what you changed to make the effect you posted in the video? I want to add it to my balance mod.

 

[Acryte]

Sure thing man. I'll do that tomorrow. I've been meaning too but I've been going nuts this whole weekend looking for Yoshi's jump out of shield. Its interesting to say the least. I found the Normal character shield, shield texture load, shield texture graphic data, shield damage, shield texture reload after damage, and dropping shield data are all in the EfCoData (common data) file. Yoshi's drop shield data and egg pieces are in there but not his SHIELD ONE. So I've been combing even more. I eliminated like all the stuff from his EfYsData.dat and am almost completely done combing through his PlYs.dat (where I have found stuff that deals with the shield texture finally and what parts of yoshi it hides. A bit more and I may find where he can or can't jump out of shield or somethin. I MEAN **** I'm looking for a spot where I can get rid of the code and it will crash on shield pop. So far it has been unsuccessful though.. but I've made a lot of progress. I've also found where the landing detection is at in the EfCoData file :/

It made me sad when I found the drop shield stuff for yoshi in that file because it's format matches up with the one for the other characters mostly. If yoshi's other stuff was there I was planning to port it over to that but oh well, looks like I'll be doin it the hard way :/

I'm still looking for the pre-pop shield stuff. The important area. bah.

EDIT: I made an image of **** I found regarding shields... http://www.gamefront.com/files/21327354/Untitled-1.jpg
uum yea. Basically I went and found the shield drop stuff, but when it comes to the other part its just a shield texture load. I was hoping that the code I found for popping shield for normal chars was also containing the ability to jump out of shield, but that's probably not the case. It's probably just a texture load with nothing fancy in there other than the code for the shield damage, reloading the shield after shield damage, and shield drop stuff. It won't allow you to jump out of shield really. What I did find is that I stripped my dat file for Yoshi (PlYs.dat) bare enough that he lost the ability to roll. I noticed this quite a bit later though so uuugh... yea I'll start reapplying the stripping of it using my last one as a guide. Once I find out how to strip a character that isn't yoshi till they can't jump out of shield, and we know where it should be respectively for yoshi, we can try to insert it I guess. Yoshi has a separate shield drop and shield load than normal characters. The shield drop doesn't control the ability to jump out of shield because with a normal character you can just zero out the whole dropping shield section and are able to jump out still. I'm pretty sure its contained in the dat file for the character, now I have to hone in on where and how its used.

 

[Rep]

Good luck finding that. I have a feeling that this data could be very difficult to find, since it could simply be a one-bit flag hiding somewhere in unrelated data

 

[Acryte]

Rep, I have been going through and literally zeroing the majority of Yoshi's files. I mean like his dat file right now is 98% empty, same with the common file and all yoshi's other files.... I literally exhausted bits just making them all zeros. I have an unanimated yoshi that is able to stand, jump, and shield. Anything else crashes the game cuz the data aint there haha. Basically I emptied the common data too. The only things left in the common data are normal character shield graphics data, their shield code for loading the graphic as well as shrinking and and releasing shield, landing detection (because you start in the air and when you land, it will crash without it lol), and the loading for the spawn platform because otherwise it will crash when you spawn. That stuff, and yoshi's shield release as well, and the texture load for his egg shell pieces when releasing shield. The rest of the file is practically all zeros except for pointer **** (that's what I think it is anyays) for stuff where even though the pointer looked to zeroed places, zeroing that too would crash the game. So I had to work around tons of those. I had the idea that it was probably around some code for the shield functioning and that zeroing that section would cause the shield to either be disabled or crash when pressed. So I went crazy and slowly sectioned off and zeroed the files looking for that crash.

In retrospect, I think it won't crash like that... mainly because those crashes are just texture loads, there isn't anything else there (I think). It's probably something granted through the main dat file like rolling in shield which I managed to disable @_@. If that's the case, I'll find and enable the rolls, and use it as a quick way to hopefully find jump out of shield in normal chars. Then, when I know how to disable it for them and what code is needed, I can try to instead add it or enable it for yoshi.

 

[DDRKirby(ISQ)]

Anyone happen to know what causes Fox and Falco's aerial lasers/samus aerial missile animations/moves to cancel upon landing? Been messing around trying to replicate that behavior with other moves but to no avail.

Are there any ways we know of to cut animations short? Maybe by using a goto or some sort of other command? I've fiddled with the "autocancel" event but don't really understand what exactly is going on with that either. ^^;

 

[Acryte]

Yea I was also interested in that. After I do characters specials im going to look into both the landing cancelled projectiles as well as speeding up animations for moves.

Would be awesome if you were looking too though better chance we find it.

 

[Rep]

Is there any effect in the game that actually speeds up an animation?
Also... Any idea what effect changing the Z-offset (Of a hitbox) does?

 

[standardtoaster]

It would change how far from the screen it is. It's the Z axis.

 

[Lanceinthepants]

I'm starting to learn this stuff recently, and rep I think you can just use dolphin and L. Spiro memory hacking software to do it since it has a built in disassembler.

I'm just starting but I really want to see continued progress and contributions in melee hacks so I'm starting with making a mod using balancing (buff only) and modding chars (looking for new stuff) as well hopefully getting proficient in asm (for non melee purposes as well). What I really want is to get good enough to help further demystify the dat format but compared to the knowledge of people like revel or tcll I don't think I'll be able to find anything people haven't figured out already but who knows. I'm slowly starting to piece this stuff together.

Hey I am trying to use the L Spiro disassembler to work with dolphin, but I can't get it to work. I am probably messing up something simple. What steps do you take to get it working?

 

[Acryte]

uugh I haven't been successful either but I also am new with this stuff homie. I tried using it to find shield size stuff and I failed miserably which was weird because all I did was search for unknown, smaller, bigger, smaller, bigger, etc. same with cheat engine. Maybe I'll try Tsearch. Whatever, I just purchased a usb gecko.

EDIT: YO LANCE I FOUND THIS THREAD
http://forums.dolphin-emulator.com/showthread.php?tid=17578

I wonder if anyone has written "L spiro scripts" to automatically deal with big endian stuff.

Yoshi special offsets (values are for Egg Roll recovery)

Note that some of those you don't have to change for the recovery. I had changed the egg spin to zero because when the egg isn't spinning its super troll... looks like im raining down angry bird eggs haha. I had also previously changed Egg Roll when I was trying to make it still an attack but to where it grabbed the edge after hitting the ledge. This only worked with very high values of negative momentum on breakout. That kind of made it look like a moonwalk. I didn't care for it as much as having it more like a recovery option, plus he wouldn't grab, he just would hit the ledge and then get pushed above it like a metroid prime ghetto jump LOL.

I also had bookmarked the character attributes and subaction sections so you can see where it is in relation to that stuff.

Also, I'd start punching out tables on Dantarion's site except I hate doing the formatting crap when I could be searching code for more stuff (and there is a ton of characters that need to get done). I will document all these characters and export their bookmarks to a .csv file. Using 010 Editor you can then load the bookmarks and just click it to go to the address. This is a much more efficient means of editing the data without tools anyways. If someone else wants to take my bookmarks .csv OR the picture that I will post after finishing each character's specials and update Dantarion's melee float page for me, I would really appreciate it. Otherwise, I won't be updating it until I've gone through all the characters.
_______________________________

Turns out having a super empty file will really come in handy. For example, now that I want to be able to roll again, I can just copy paste large portion of Yoshi's normal file into the bare bones one and see if he can roll yet, if not, then its not that part. This may allow me to quickly locate differences between my barebones file and the normal file.

 

[Steelia]

...Just a side note, since Megaupload went down (RIP), I reuploaded alot of the texture packs I've got laying around onto Mediafire.

Characters

Miscellaneous

Stages

I'll get around to organizing and uploading stage folders later.

 

[phish-it]

Thank you Steelia, appreciate that.

 

[Acryte]

Hugely awesome update coming soon to a theatre near you (and no its not yoshi's jump OoS just yet :/ )

 

[Toomai]

Also, I'd start punching out tables on Dantarion's site except I hate doing the formatting crap when I could be searching code for more stuff (and there is a ton of characters that need to get done). [...] If someone else wants to take my bookmarks .csv OR the picture that I will post after finishing each character's specials and update Dantarion's melee float page for me, I would really appreciate it.

Went ahead and did so with that Yoshi stuff you had. Also crossreferenced with some of the Brawl values to come up with new associations.

 

[Acryte]

You're awesome man thank you. Also I should be done with some cool stuff by friday so look for a nice post around then

 

[darkatma]

...Just a side note, since Megaupload went down (RIP), I reuploaded alot of the texture packs I've got laying around onto Mediafire.

Characters

Miscellaneous

Stages

I'll get around to organizing and uploading stage folders later.

Thanks!
Is there any way to look at the files without going through each of them 1 by 1?
I wish there was a picture associated with each texture to make it nice and easy to see which ones are which

 

[Steelia]

Thanks!
Is there any way to look at the files without going through each of them 1 by 1?
I wish there was a picture associated with each texture to make it nice and easy to see which ones are which

Hmmm. I forgot about that... The colors of characters are usually pretty easy to figure out. "Nr" means "Normal", default texture; "Re" means "Red"; "Bu" means "Blue", etc.

I'll see if I can get around to updating the page 4 post with some information regarding those abbreviations.

 

[standardtoaster]

Acryte, I found some floats for pikachu. Could you add them to the wiki?

Thunder Jolt (Neutral B)
3C94 - 100 - Lifetime
3C98 - -0.69813168 - Aerial jolt angle (radians) about -40 degrees about -58 degrees in brawl
3C9C - 1.5 - Aerial jolt velocity

Skull Bash
372C - 90 - Charge time
3730 - 4 - Base damage
3734 - 0.277 - Damage multiplier
3740 - 0.05 - Falling speed
3744 - 1.4 - Base horizontal firing momentum
3748 - 0.01666 - Horizontal momentum multiplier
374C - 0.8 - Base vertical firing momentum
3750 - 0.01 - Vertical momentum multiplier

Quick Attack
3764 - 10
3768 - 5
376C - 0.02666
3770 - 0.2618
3774 - 0.8
3778 - 0.8
377C - 1.2
3780 - 0.2618
3784 - 0.8
3788 - 0.8
378C - 1.2
3790 - 2
3794 - 0.5
3798 - 4
379C - 5.9
37A0 - 0.9
37A4 - 0.6
37A8 - 45
37AC - 0.4
37B0 - 38 - Minimum direction change (degrees) for second segment
37B4 - 0.4
37B8 - 24 - Landlag

 

[Rep]

A note on what is listed as "Autocancel" on dantarion's events list. I changed that value from 1 to 0 on Roy's up-B and it caused his Up-B to drop like a rock when performed in the air. It still worked normally when it was performed from the ground. Is it possible that this value doesn't always mean just "autocancel"?

Also, Acryte, what are those bookmarked 0's after Yoshi's attribute data? Are those values that you've zeroed yourself for experimental purposes, or are they relevant somehow?
Also also, Did you get your 010 editor to properly display the values of IEEE 754 floats in your bookmarks? I can't get mine to display the correct value. When I set it to float, it gives me the wrong number, so it must not he an IEEE754 float. Any ideas?