Spawning Items (TOTALLY not the same as Majora's thread)

[Jack Kieser]

Ok, so some people noticed that when you replaced the WWR when stage hacking, items wouldn't spawn unless you replaced a special file; I can't remember what it's called right now, but basically, this file seems to control item spawning.

I can't stress to you enough how important to Item Standard Play it would be if we could decode those files. It's really, really, super important. Here's a scale showing just how important this is to the project:

**************************************************************************
^                                         ^                             ^
Not important                  The Christ Jesus visits      Decoding those
                             an atheist and turns water           files
                               into wine before him

This would be a HUGE breakthrough for the project... Any takers?

 

[Kaye Cruiser]

Just to remind you, those are the Type[0] files you see in the "ItemMelee" Arcs. :3

 

[...:::VILE:::...]

The file is extremely simple, this isn't THAT important, ill look into the file for a while and post my findings.

EDIT: Ugh im tired and ive got school tomorrow, when i get back, i will look into the file, goodnight.

 

[...:::VILE:::...]

Oh i totally forgot, i didn't post what i found. Well either way, each item seems to have its ID in the first 4 bytes, then followed by 001388, then the next 4 bytes are crucial, it almost always starts with a 4X then 2 more other bytes then the 2 after are left blank. Im assuming this is the chance of spawn, i have tried yet, but fiddle around with these values. After all of that it ends with 00010001.

So the string would look like:

000000YY 00001388 4XXX0000 00010001

YY being the ID of the item

XX being the rest of the spawn rate.

 

[Phantom Wings]

I guess I can help out in the wine making process.

Have a cookie.

The .rel file goes in "module" inside your pf folder and of course the .pac file goes in stages/melee.

Edit: I'm not sure if you noticed Vile, but the 4XXX value is in floating point. Also, have you any idea what's with the stranger item id's such as 1D7 and the like?

 

[Jack Kieser]

Well, my SD card reader is busted, but I'll still try to get those files on to my card for testing. PW, do you think there is any chance that we'd be able to find pre-defined item spawn points, or do you think that the game creates item spawn locations dynamically?

 

[Untouch]

Chances are there is way to spawn items, look at the wifi waiting room, people have changed the sand bag.

 

[Phantom Wings]

Chances are there is way to spawn items, look at the wifi waiting room, people have changed the sand bag.

I think he's talking about having items spawn normally in the SSE modified stages. (they can't) It's a pretty quick process getting them up and running using Kryal's Brawl Box though.

Just in case you're interested, you should be able to use the subroutine at 0x809B1A84 for manually creating items - I haven't had a chance check out each parameter thoroughly though - but I think r5 was the item id...

 

[Jack Kieser]

I think he's talking about having items spawn normally in the SSE modified stages. (they can't) It's a pretty quick process getting them up and running using Kryal's Brawl Box though.

Just in case you're interested, you should be able to use the subroutine at 0x809B1A84 for manually creating items - I haven't had a chance check out each parameter thoroughly though - but I think r5 was the item id...

No no no, I mean the whole reason I was interested in the contents of these files was because of the chance that they could contain hard-coded spawn points for items. For instance, let's take FD. Right now, there are two theories:

*item spawns are procedurally determined based on the player's positions / percentages / Kills and Deaths to give items as "fair and balanced" as possible

*the game has item spawn points hard-coded, so that any player can, within reason, predict where an item might spawn on the field

In terms of ISP, that's a huge deal, since a lot of people use the unpredictability of where items spawn as a reason it isn't competitive (item spawns are also a big part of the "stage control" argument). If we, however, could CONTROL where items spawn, for instance, give FD 5-10 predetermined locations that items are ONLY allowed to spawn at, this reduces the random nature of items and is a big boon to ISP as a whole.

So, basically, do you guys have any evidence that we can use PSA / BrawlBox / hex editing / whatever to control where items spawn on regular stages like FD?

 

[Untouch]

There are bones in the StagePosition that determine where items spawn.

 

[Phantom Wings]

Ah, I see. Well seeing as I know the exact routine that spawns the items, it probably wouldn't be too hard to find out. I'm currently unable to do any hacking at the moment, but I should be free later this evening.

Weren't there predefined points in SSBM? I think I recall seeing them in the debug mode.

Edit: Heh, sniped...

 

[Untouch]

Lucario = Where he appears for his FS
Item = Item spawn point most likely
ICeClimber = Where the iceburg spawns
Pikmin = Either where the FS rocket falls from or something else.
Player = Spawn Points most likley

 

[Jack Kieser]

You guys rock socks. Seriously. Thank you for working on this; it's a BIG help for us. ^_^

*awards Internets liberally*

 

[IndigoFenix]

Of course, just because there are certain 'item spawn point' bones doesn't mean that items could only spawn there. They might just mark specific points on a stage to help the game determine more or less what the item spawn areas of the stage are, and then actually create them at random or player-determined points relative to said areas.

There are two reasons why I am saying this: One, in that BrawlBox picture, there are only 4 item spawn points, and I don't think that there are any stages that items can only spawn in 4 places. Two, again in that picture, if there were set points, I would expect them to be called things like 'Item0, Item1, Item2," etc. The names given there sound a lot more like areas used in a more complex algorithm used to determine item spawn points. Besides, if each bone represented a particular area on the stage, why would Lucario, Ice Climbers, and Olimar need 2 bones each? Their Final Smashes only appear in one spot each...

 

[Jack Kieser]

See, I was hoping that there was a file for each stage that was basically an array of points at which an item could spawn (which I know could never be the case since that makes WAY too much sense for a Brawl programmer ), but now I'm just more curious.