Stage Hacking: NEW Research + Documentation

[Achilles1515]

Perpendicular ledges would fix this quick and easy but it brings some problems, especially Falcon's instant walljump is kind of annoying.

@ Achilles1515 I fixed the stage on the upper left corner of the mace.

Here's a picture from the debug menu:

Spoiler

And here's a gif of fox:

Spoiler

Could you (or anyone else) please test the stage a bit if it's good enough.
If it's fine I'll fix the other 5 in the next days.

Here's the file: https://www.mediafire.com/?v6c0tby2glw3nnp

And no I haven't made any new hacks sadly, I don't have any good ideas lately.

Danke fuer die Aenderung!!! Ganz perfekt! Diese Stufen wird fantastisch.

 

[zankyou]

Wow! That looks perfect. You're awesome. I can't test right now, but I'll give more feedback ASAP.

As for more ideas, a couple come to mind.

- omega battlefield
- omega frozen stadium
- take everything off battlefield except for one platform that is elongated to the length of the original stage. Make the platform grabbable but not able to be dropped through (but you can still go up through it). So it's like a static Mute City.

At work today I was thinking about this one:

Luigi's target stage - have spawn points at the very top and have that be the "stage". Take out all the objects except for the gamecube. Make the gamecube super big so it is as wide as the green walls normally were, and move it up to use the original ground links that were at the top of the outer green structure. So basically, players are fighting on top of a gamecube!
As I messed with this on my break at work today, I realized that the left and right (or at least just the left) green walls can be passed through from the outside-in. So I guess this means that, for the left side for example, it is only a "right wall" and no "left wall" links/spots or whatever exist. So these might need to be swapped.

I feel like there is a TON of untapped potential with Target stages and the awesome textures/ interesting objects they hold. But those top three things at least I was eventually going to try to work on for the next 20XX.

I have a lot of plans for target stages but never figured out how to get around the 1 spawn point. Does jorgasms neutral spawn points code fix this.

 

[Ohsm]

Danke fuer die Aenderung!!! Ganz perfekt! Diese Stufen wird fantastisch.

lol, google translator?
I'm happy that you like it.

Here's the whole fix: https://www.mediafire.com/?y6xjpq8abl36uub

It took forever but I think the 6 stages should now be playable, at least I hope so. Some testing would be awesome.
Looking forward to the new 20XX release.

 

[Achilles1515]

I have a lot of plans for target stages but never figured out how to get around the 1 spawn point. Does jorgasms neutral spawn points code fix this.

The same thing is the case for the Hyrule Maze stage. This is where ASM comes in handy. I just wrote a custom code that gets executed whenever a character spawns to move them accordingly. I'll post it later today when I get a chance so you can modify/add more checks for stages.


So I have a question regarding Luigi's Target Stage and the respawn platform coordinates. When you die on the vanilla stage, your respawn portal appears at the very top, outside of the green square walls, and then quickly moves down to...idk exactly what coordinates it's trying to go to. But your character will not be able to go through the wall, so you end up leaving the respawn platform and stand on top of the green wall.

If I am reading things right, camera/spawn data is in the form:

Camera Limits
Blastzones
Spawn Points
Respawn Points

For GrTLg.dat, right bottom corner blastzone is at 0x38dec. Underneath this, there are only two “segments” (highlighted in blue in the picture below), which I assume means there is only one spawn point, and one respawn point.

This would give the respawn coordinates as:
X: 80000000 (??)
Y: 40A0000 (=decimal 5, which makes sense as a Y value of where the respawn platform would be taking you à right on top of the Gamecube)

So I tried changing the Y value to something higher than 80 (the Y value of standing on the top wall), but got nothing different.

Do you know what I am doing wrong?

 

[Achilles1515]

lol, google translator?
I'm happy that you like it.
Here's the whole fix: https://www.mediafire.com/?y6xjpq8abl36uub
It took forever but I think the 6 stages should now be playable, at least I hope so. Some testing would be awesome.
Looking forward to the new 20XX release.

My girlfriend took German in high school, so I had her type out the first two sentences. Then I google translated the last one about stages lol.

I really appreciate the work, and many others will as well. Thank you very much. I’ll test further tonight.

So I have to ask….How the hell do you go about finding these random spot coordinates? I mean it’s easier to find platforms, but how did you go about figuring these ones out?

-Community Project-
Next up for a 20XX stage hack is the Mushroom Kingdom Adventure Yoshi Stage. After extending the blastzones to normal dimensions, those side platforms jutting out the left of the island still act as platforms. To the right of the Yoshi island is the green pipe that you continue to walk on to the end of the stage. That pipe is visible, but thankfully does not act as a platform. Ideally, this object would be removed from view or put in the background.


No Single Player Link/Yoshi Spawns (may have other multiman effects)
0416a4c8 4e800020


Icicle Mountain is Mush Adventure
28480686 FF000019
00480687 0000003b
E2000001 00000000

 

[Ohsm]

My girlfriend took German in high school, so I had her type out the first two sentences. Then I google translated the last one about stages lol.

I really appreciate the work, and many others will as well. Thank you very much. I’ll test further tonight.

So I have to ask….How the hell do you go about finding these random spot coordinates? I mean it’s easier to find platforms, but how did you go about figuring these ones out?

-Community Project-
Next up for a 20XX stage hack is the Mushroom Kingdom Adventure Yoshi Stage. After extending the blastzones to normal dimensions, those side platforms jutting out the left of the island still act as platforms. To the right of the Yoshi island is the green pipe that you continue to walk on to the end of the stage. That pipe is visible, but thankfully does not act as a platform. Ideally, this object would be removed from view or put in the background.


No Single Player Link/Yoshi Spawns (may have other multiman effects)
0416a4c8 4e800020


Icicle Mountain is Mush Adventure
28480686 FF000019
00480687 0000003b
E2000001 00000000

Well the first two sentences were correct

Luckily these coordinates aren't completly random.

First I searched for the collision in the GrNSr file with the help of Miluns awesome website.
By the way the collision begins at around 0x6bef0 and ends around 0x6cde0.

After I found the data I replaced the first 10 or so lines with zeros and load the stage in the develop mode and toggle the collision to see what happend.
After I did this a couple of times I found out that the developers began at the top and went counterclockwise with the collision programming and I found out that they left the collision of the 6 stages out.
I concluded that they must put them behind the collision data of the mace, so I scrolled at the end of the collision and again replaced the bottom lines with zeros and boom, found the collision of the first stage.
Because there is no Z-Axis in the collision it was easy to spot the coordinates for the edges, cause the Y Axes must always be the same.
After that I changed the first stage and went a bit upwards in the code and quickly found the next stage.
Rinse and repeat.

I hope that makes any sense, sorry for my bad english.

 

[Achilles1515]

Well the first two sentences were correct

Luckily these coordinates aren't completly random.

First I searched for the collision in the GrNSr file with the help of Miluns awesome website.
By the way the collision begins at around 0x6bef0 and ends around 0x6cde0.

After I found the data I replaced the first 10 or so lines with zeros and load the stage in the develop mode and toggle the collision to see what happend.
After I did this a couple of times I found out that the developers began at the top and went counterclockwise with the collision programming and I found out that they left the collision of the 6 stages out.
I concluded that they must put them behind the collision data of the mace, so I scrolled at the end of the collision and again replaced the bottom lines with zeros and boom, found the collision of the first stage.
Because there is no Z-Axis in the collision it was easy to spot the coordinates for the edges, cause the Y Axes must always be the same.
After that I changed the first stage and went a bit upwards in the code and quickly found the next stage.
Rinse and repeat.

I hope that makes any sense, sorry for my bad english.

The brute force method...very nice. Thanks for the info and thank god for Develop Mode. I'm super excited to test all the stages tonight.

Your English is superb btw. I'm incredibly jealous of people who speak multiple languages. It makes me feel like such a dud that I cannot....

(Oh and it's "maze" not "mace", btw)

Thanks again.

 

[Ohsm]

The brute force method...very nice. Thanks for the info and thank god for Develop Mode. I'm super excited to test all the stages tonight.

Your English is superb btw. I'm incredibly jealous of people who speak multiple languages. It makes me feel like such a dud that I cannot....

(Oh and it's "maze" not "mace", btw)

Thanks again.

Thanks, that's really nice to hear.
English is the only language that matters, imo

Btw here's your Mushroom Kingdom Stage:
https://www.mediafire.com/?sgv8qkgt7g7v0i3

Spoiler

I just removed the pipe on the right, are there any other visual objects to remove?
I ask, cause I don't know your camera view with the new blast- and cameralines.

 

[Achilles1515]

Thanks, that's really nice to hear.
English is the only language that matters, imo

Btw here's your Mushroom Kingdom Stage:
https://www.mediafire.com/?sgv8qkgt7g7v0i3

Spoiler

I just removed the pipe on the right, are there any other visual objects to remove?
I ask, cause I don't know your camera view with the new blast- and cameralines.

SO AWESOME! I feel like I owe you money or something. I have my work cut out for me now…but man, am I excited.

When I was experimenting with new camera limits for this stage (RAM hacking), I think I could *briefly* see the breakable blocks on the right hand side that were above the pipe. But idk, it might not be that big of a deal, and when I fix the zoom they might not be visible.

Do you readily have the addresses in the dat file for the camera limits/blastzones for this stage? If not, DON’T spend your time looking for them, I can do that later.

Woohoo! More competitive stages in Melee makes me so happy inside.


So, if it wasn’t obvious from one of my previous posts today, I was experimenting with Luigi’s Target Stage yesterday.

If you’d like, commit these changes to the file and then check it out. It moves the Gamecube’s spots coordinates to the dimensions around the green outside walls. So it makes the top of the stage playable!

Also,

[COLLAPSE=”GrTLg.dat Notes”]

STAGE DIMENSIONS
Very top left = -80,80
Very top right = 80,80


0x87 - change byte from 0x0D to 0x00 to remove targets and spinners

GROUNDPARAM
37f4c

OBJECT VISUAL DATA (?)
2fdb4 - Global object datum


BACKGROUND OBJECTS
37214 - Global background datum


SPOT TABLE
375f0


LINK TABLE
378e0


CAMERA LIMITS
38d2c - top left
38d6c - bottom right


SPAWN POINT (untested)
38e2c

RESPAWN POINT??
38e6c

[/COLLAPSE]
Respawning is a messed up though, see my earlier post.

One other weird thing I’m trying to fight with this stage is separately moving the gamecube or other green wall objects. If you go the offset for “OBJECT VISUAL DATA” and start putting in floats for X,Y, then it will move the datum for all the objects on the stage (not including the background). I was hoping some of the object data underneath this offset (I think its object data…) would move some of the entities separately, but I couldn’t get it to happen. Maybe I should try changing all of them and see what happens…

But idk, if you want to mess with that, be my guest. If I could move the bottom horizontal walls separately, I was going to use them as platforms up top!

And if you/anyone hasn't already figured out, you can change the stage ID in the "Icicle Mountain to ___" for any stage.

 

[Ohsm]

I'm glad I could help you making progress with your aweseome 20XX pack. Let's push melee the limit!
Just let me know if both hacks are good enough.

No sadly I don't have the camera adresses.

I'll take a look at Luigi's target stage in the next days.

 

[Cyjorg]

I feel like some of the target test stages would be more appropriate for Smashville than Fourside.

 

[zankyou]

I feel like some of the target test stages would be more appropriate for Smashville than Fourside.

When I get back into stage hacking Ill try to do something about the target stages. I didnt before because of the limits I experienced but if combined with miluns ideas I might be able to overcome them.

 

[Achilles1515]

***************************
* Doraki Edge Angle Limit *
***************************
(-94.09, -54.4985)
(-89.9821,-100)
Testing coords that are on the limit of not Doraki'ing (changed the second Y value to -105 and Doraki did happen, but not with -100).
Gives angle of 84.84 degrees.

Basically,

--------------------
\ x)
 \
  \
   \
    \

if x > 85 degrees then Doraki will take effect.

 

[Achilles1515]

@ Z zankyou , any way to remove the white controller port face? (removing meshes?)
Removing the black handle on the back of the Gamecube might also be okay, and then I could rotate the gamecube by pi/2 radians and adjust spots. The handle is currently closer to the camera than players.

These are the only changes necessary to make this happen. Changes the overall X/Y/Z stage stretch and takes spot coordinates with it.

 

[Cyjorg]

@ Z zankyou , any way to remove the white controller port face? (removing meshes?)
Removing the black handle on the back of the Gamecube might also be okay, and then I could rotate the gamecube by pi/2 radians and adjust spots. The handle is currently closer to the camera than players.

View attachment 39493

These are the only changes necessary to make this happen. Changes the overall X/Y/Z stage stretch and takes spot coordinates with it.

View attachment 39495

Excuse my possible (and probable) ignorance but couldn't you just apply a transparent texture hack or change the collision data to be a little higher?

 

[Myougi]

Excuse my possible (and probable) ignorance but couldn't you just apply a transparent texture hack or change the collision data to be a little higher?

I actually tried this on Fourside (I tried to remove the crane bit and make it look like the platform floated) and I hate to say it but no. Textured models (So not single polygons without a back or whatevs) will just turn white and look ugly.

 

[Achilles1515]

Excuse my possible (and probable) ignorance but couldn't you just apply a transparent texture hack or change the collision data to be a little higher?

Well it's raised from the rest of the face of the Gamecube so moving the collision data to be on top of the controller ports would be weird on the purple face near the edges (I'd like for it to just be flat). And I looked for a texture and didn't find one. I think there's some white rgb value specified to overlay the model somewhere in the DAT but I have no interest in searching for that at the moment.

 

[zankyou]

@ Z zankyou , any way to remove the white controller port face? (removing meshes?)
Removing the black handle on the back of the Gamecube might also be okay, and then I could rotate the gamecube by pi/2 radians and adjust spots. The handle is currently closer to the camera than players.

View attachment 39493

These are the only changes necessary to make this happen. Changes the overall X/Y/Z stage stretch and takes spot coordinates with it.

View attachment 39495

Good job. Is it safe to assume you basically copied over every branch from that trophy's object group or did you do something else. I could only probably help with the first.

 

[Achilles1515]

Good job. Is it safe to assume you basically copied over every branch from that trophy's object group or did you do something else. I could only probably help with the first.

Oh no. Hell no. This is just Luigi's Target stage (he spawns on a little Gamecube. I just made it big.). Sorry, I should have made that clear.

Luigi Target Stage, ID: 0x002C, GrTLg.dat

 

[zankyou]

Oh no. Hell no. This is just Luigi's Target stage (he spawns on a little Gamecube. I just made it big.). Sorry, I should have made that clear.

Luigi Target Stage, ID: 0x002C, GrTLg.dat

Oh wow, I completely forgot about that. I also planned on making a stage based around luigi's gc model so you saved me some time finding that. Not quite sure how exactly to explain this. Youre at the parent node or whatever you want to call it. 0x2fd90 points to the first child node. So 0x2fdc8 is the start of that node. And the pointer to the next node is at 0x2fdd4. One of the children nodes is responsible for that mesh. Youre going to have to find which one. At 0x2fdcc is the word for that flags of the group. Not quite sure how exactly it works but I think I found that the numbers were related to how many children until you reach the end of the branch. I don't really remember so don't quote me on it but the important part is that if you change that flag to 0x00000000 then your object group goes away. If youre lucky then the white port face is an object on its own. If its only part then you need to find the display list. Ill go into that if you need it but if the face isnt an object group then the handle will most likely be an object group on its own. I can't imagine it being groups with something else.

 

[Achilles1515]

Oh wow, I completely forgot about that. I also planned on making a stage based around luigi's gc model so you saved me some time finding that. Not quite sure how exactly to explain this. Youre at the parent node or whatever you want to call it. 0x2fd90 points to the first child node. So 0x2fdc8 is the start of that node. And the pointer to the next node is at 0x2fdd4. One of the children nodes is responsible for that mesh. Youre going to have to find which one. At 0x2fdcc is the word for that flags of the group. Not quite sure how exactly it works but I think I found that the numbers were related to how many children until you reach the end of the branch. I don't really remember so don't quote me on it but the important part is that if you change that flag to 0x00000000 then your object group goes away. If youre lucky then the white port face is an object on its own. If its only part then you need to find the display list. Ill go into that if you need it but if the face isnt an object group then the handle will most likely be an object group on its own. I can't imagine it being groups with something else.

The controller port face is not it's own object. I started messing with the display list (I think that's what it is) of the GC and managed to find the offset corresponding to the controller port face. Zeroing it out gave me this, which obviously creates another problem:

Any idea on how to move the coordinates of this display object down instead of removing it completely? Also, how did you duplicate objects/displays (like how you got two of those slanted platforms on Hyrule)? Can one of the pointers in this area be changed to accomplish this?

This is what I changed.

 

[Milun]

Hey guys, difficult question time:

We all know the cloud in Yoshi's Story animates. It does this by cycling through 3 textures. I've been trying to assign the cloud material to a different object (say, the leaves on the tree) to make IT animate with the cloud textures instead. So far this has resulted in horribly stretched garbage textures though.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[Anutim]

Hey guys, difficult question time:

We all know the cloud in Yoshi's Story animates. It does this by cycling through 3 textures. I've been trying to assign the cloud material to a different object (say, the leaves on the tree) to make IT animate with the cloud textures instead. So far this has resulted in horribly stretched garbage textures though.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I guess you'd have to transfer the uvw's or find an object with the same proportions texturewise?

EDIT: Edit the uvw's*

 

[Milun]

Hm... no I don't think that'd do it. Say I changed the UV's on the leaves; they'd still be using the same, non-animating leaves texture. I need some way to basically tell the object "instead of using the leaves material, use the cloud material".

EDIT: Also, I AM capable of changing which 3 textures the cloud uses to animate. 0x018760 in GrSt.dat has 3 texture offsets. What I basically need to find is how it decides which model to assign those 3 textures to.

 

[Milun]

Also, for the Gamecube thing you're doing. I got good news, and I got bad news. The good news is: after ripping the model, I saw that the Gamecube model is actually rotated differently to the final game. That bad news is, the way the target test model's vertices are stored (using floats), I don't have the proper converter to re-import back into the game and so this happened:

Speaking from experience, Target Tests are annoying. I spent so much time trying to get the moving platform on Bowser's one to behave different without any luck whatsoever.

 

[Achilles1515]

New stage hack! It's been a dream of mine since I started Melee hacking to make this. I think it's finally finished.

Greece: Mount Olympus

Quick overview of changes:
- Relative to stage edges, blastzones and camera limits closely mimic Battlefield.
- Ground "humps" near the edges have been removed and made flat.
- Edge lip no longer exists, and instant walljumping does not occur.
- Platforms are a little wider, closer to the stage edges, and are about Battlefield platform height.
- Pink ring platform w/ invisible walls has been removed.

Greece-Mount Olympus[GrNFg].dat

[COLLAPSE="Helpful codes for playing/testing"]
Disable Trophy Spawn on Snag the Trophies Stage (FigureGet) (1.02) [wparam]
042199FC 60000000

Icicle Mountain is Trophy Stage (1.02) [Achilles]
28480686 FF000019
00480687 00000053
E0000000 80008000

No code for spawn positions at the moment.
[/COLLAPSE]

 

[oksas]

looks awesome :D going in the next 20xx build I assume?

 

[Achilles1515]

looks awesome :D going in the next 20xx build I assume?

 

[zz_halim]

New stage hack! It's been a dream of mine since I started Melee hacking to make this. I think it's finally finished.

Greece: Mount Olympus

Quick overview of changes:
- Relative to stage edges, blastzones and camera limits closely mimic Battlefield.
- Ground "humps" near the edges have been removed and made flat.
- Edge lip no longer exists, and instant walljumping does not occur.
- Platforms are a little wider, closer to the stage edges, and are about Battlefield platform height.
- Pink ring platform w/ invisible walls has been removed.

Greece-Mount Olympus[GrNFg].dat

[COLLAPSE="Helpful codes for playing/testing"]
Disable Trophy Spawn on Snag the Trophies Stage (FigureGet) (1.02) [wparam]
042199FC 60000000

Icicle Mountain is Trophy Stage (1.02) [Achilles]
28480686 FF000019
00480687 00000053
E0000000 80008000

No code for spawn positions at the moment.
[/COLLAPSE]

masterpiece!

 

[Anutim]

New stage hack! It's been a dream of mine since I started Melee hacking to make this. I think it's finally finished.

Greece: Mount Olympus

Quick overview of changes:
- Relative to stage edges, blastzones and camera limits closely mimic Battlefield.
- Ground "humps" near the edges have been removed and made flat.
- Edge lip no longer exists, and instant walljumping does not occur.
- Platforms are a little wider, closer to the stage edges, and are about Battlefield platform height.
- Pink ring platform w/ invisible walls has been removed.

Greece-Mount Olympus[GrNFg].dat

[COLLAPSE="Helpful codes for playing/testing"]
Disable Trophy Spawn on Snag the Trophies Stage (FigureGet) (1.02) [wparam]
042199FC 60000000

Icicle Mountain is Trophy Stage (1.02) [Achilles]
28480686 FF000019
00480687 00000053
E0000000 80008000

No code for spawn positions at the moment.
[/COLLAPSE]

Achilles obviously needs his Greece mythology stage.
Looks ballin' apart from the slightly odd spawns and I feel the camera is up too close? (Not sure how you edit the camera tho)

 

[Milun]

I think you already know how to change the spawn points. I believe if you wanna change the camera's zoom, you change the Z values of the camera boundaries (I think...?). Regardless, that looks really rad man!

 

[Myougi]

New stage hack! It's been a dream of mine since I started Melee hacking to make this. I think it's finally finished.

Greece: Mount Olympus

I love you.

 

[likiji123]

Thanks, that's really nice to hear.
English is the only language that matters, imo

Btw here's your Mushroom Kingdom Stage:
https://www.mediafire.com/?sgv8qkgt7g7v0i3

Spoiler

I just removed the pipe on the right, are there any other visual objects to remove?
I ask, cause I don't know your camera view with the new blast- and cameralines.

What stage does this take over?

 

[CeLL]

What stage does this take over?

It's not replacing any stage, it's just the first stage used in adventure mode. You'd have to write a gecko code or change a byte in the dol to get it to load in vs (I'm not sure how well it does in vs mode).

 

[Achilles1515]

What stage does this take over?

GrNKr.dat
But yeah, it won't really mean anything to you at the moment.

 

[likiji123]

It's not replacing any stage, it's just the first stage used in adventure mode. You'd have to write a gecko code or change a byte in the dol to get it to load in vs (I'm not sure how well it does in vs mode).

GrNKr.dat
But yeah, it won't really mean anything to you at the moment.

Oh, thanks for the info

 

[Milun]

Not stage related in general, I just feel like updating ya'll on something I'm working on.

 

[Anutim]

Not stage related in general, I just feel like updating ya'll on something I'm working on.

OMG, LMAO.
Milun, u da bess hahaha

 

[Achilles1515]

Not stage related in general, I just feel like updating ya'll on something I'm working on.

I definitely just lol’ed in my cubicle at work.

 

[Cyjorg]

@ Achilles1515 flip the cube so that it's positioned like you would have it in real life by setting 0x30118 to 00000000 00000000 00000000.