ROM Hack Animal Crossing: New Leaf ROM Hacking

[deishido]

I'm pretty excited to finally see some real animal crossing romhacking happening. Currently running braindump and I have a few questions about the possible limitations of model swapping (since that seems to be the simplest thing we're able to do at the moment)

Would any model swaps be possible, theoretically? Could it be used on a more broad range for different purposes?

Here's a few things I'd like to either test or see tested:
Using model swaps to change villager birthday/personality/etc until a better method is avaliable.
Do all models swap? Isabelle is a very fleshed out character, would lesser utilized characters, like kicks for instance, be usable a a villager? Or would he lack certain things (like being able to fish or emotions he wouldn't normally display in a standard game.
Pikachu -> Hamster Villagers??
Would we be able to edit/replace the player's models? Darker skin tones, Playing as Isabelle or your favorite animal, Humans as villagers?
((Would making a human a villager mean we would have to change the models to include pants, as villagers don't wear them? Oh god, some kid is going to ask for nude mods, I just know it))

 

[Cilerba]

When you say "Pikachu -> Hamster Villagers" do you mean just create a texture for one? If so, then yeah it's possible. I made a Pikachu texture for Bunnie (it looked absolutely terrifying) but it works.

I can't seem to access any of the player models so I'm not so sure about messing with that, but I'll be sure to replace some villagers with special villagers (Kicks, Rover, Gulliver, etc.) and report back with some screenshots. I'm sure it'll work.

 

[Reserved]

I may be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure every character in the game has the same rigging/skeleton/whatever, aside maybe Mr. Resetti. Including the player's model. Otherwise, swaps like Isabelle with regular Villagers wouldn't work.

 

[probablygay]

When you say "Pikachu -> Hamster Villagers" do you mean just create a texture for one? If so, then yeah it's possible. I made a Pikachu texture for Bunnie (it looked absolutely terrifying) but it works.

I can't seem to access any of the player models so I'm not so sure about messing with that, but I'll be sure to replace some villagers with special villagers (Kicks, Rover, Gulliver, etc.) and report back with some screenshots. I'm sure it'll work.

I may be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure every character in the game has the same rigging/skeleton/whatever, aside maybe Mr. Resetti. Including the player's model. Otherwise, swaps like Isabelle with regular Villagers wouldn't work.

Skeleton aside, they probably have unique meshes. We could probably replace those with a Pikachu model. I believe this is a bit of proof of concept: https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69iWDNr0hKFmt8T (not my image)

 

[deishido]

When you say "Pikachu -> Hamster Villagers" do you mean just create a texture for one? If so, then yeah it's possible. I made a Pikachu texture for Bunnie (it looked absolutely terrifying) but it works.

I can't seem to access any of the player models so I'm not so sure about messing with that, but I'll be sure to replace some villagers with special villagers (Kicks, Rover, Gulliver, etc.) and report back with some screenshots. I'm sure it'll work.

Thanks, I'm currently on an OSX environment, so running all of this through wineskin is working, but it's slow. I'll have to dig out the old laptop if I'm going to do anything serious. I was thinking more like taking a model from another game and inserting it, or just modifying existing models since I'm sure rigging could be difficult to work with.

I'm actually kinda curious to how terrifying that texture was...


As far as player data, it looks like you've hit the same roadblock I'm at. I see player data scattered all over, maybe that one won't be a simple swap after all.

I may be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure every character in the game has the same rigging/skeleton/whatever, aside maybe Mr. Resetti. Including the player's model. Otherwise, swaps like Isabelle with regular Villagers wouldn't work.

As for Resetti, I don't know about New Leaf, but he and his brother both have full bodies with changable clothes in HHD, maybe we can use that?

EDIT: Fixed incorrect quote

 

[Blazingflare]

Skeleton aside, they probably have unique meshes. We could probably replace those with a Pikachu model. I believe this is a bit of proof of concept: https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69iWDNr0hKFmt8T (not my image)

"how-to-make-animal-crossing-run-at-10-fps.png"
That's pretty cool though, and I would love to see a Pokemon Crossing hack. But the models would really have to be optimized first since they are probably around 3x higher poly than New Leaf's models.

 

[Fredabill]

"Oh god, some kid is going to ask for nude mods, I just know it"
wtf, what kind of weirdo would ask for naked low poly cartoon animals???
...
I should think about something else now...

 

[MasterLel]

A list of things to try:

-Change the running speed of the character

-Make a walkthrough walls hack (just for fun)

-Change the size of the character (when you eat a special mushroom, your character is temporary giant, maybe we can exploit it and stay big longer and even move the character... it would be funny

-Enabling the save function while playing online

-Change the region islands to access foreign region islands

-5 people and more in the same town/island (dunno if possible)

-Add hundreds of tarentula in your town/island, day and night

-Swap the npc scripts

-etc...

 

[Shrinefox]

While you can swap just about any model and still have the rigging match up, some special NPCs lack the "cloth" texture that is replaced with clothing textures.
It seems that in this case the game selects the first available texture to replace, which results in some... abominations.

KK's glasses and hat share a texture so they get screwed up.

The guitar in his other model suffers the same fate.
Isabelle is exempt from this problem for unknown reasons. Maybe at one point she was intended to be playable?

Anyway, the only way to fix this would be to add a cloth texture to each custom villager (even if it goes unused on the model). But ohana3ds doesn't allow you to do that... Anyone know a way?

Bonus:

I turned Toriel from Undertale into a custom villager for fun

 

[Fredabill]

While you can swap just about any model and still have the rigging match up, some special NPCs lack the "cloth" texture that is replaced with clothing textures.
It seems that in this case the game selects the first available texture to replace, which results in some... abominations.

KK's glasses and hat share a texture so they get screwed up.

The guitar in his other model suffers the same fate.
Isabelle is exempt from this problem for unknown reasons. Maybe at one point she was intended to be playable?

Anyway, the only way to fix this would be to add a cloth texture to each custom villager (even if it goes unused on the model). But ohana3ds doesn't allow you to do that... Anyone know a way?

Bonus:

I turned Toriel from Undertale into a custom villager for fun

Cool! Nice job
But wait... Is that Isabelle in the background wearing a normal ingame shirt?
I want her and Rover in my town.

 

[DesuIsSparta]

A list of things to try:

-Change the running speed of the character

-Make a walkthrough walls hack (just for fun)

-Change the size of the character (when you eat a special mushroom, your character is temporary giant, maybe we can exploit it and stay big longer and even move the character... it would be funny

-Enabling the save function while playing online

-Change the region islands to access foreign region islands

-5 people and more in the same town/island (dunno if possible)

-Add hundreds of tarentula in your town/island, day and night

-Swap the npc scripts

-etc...

can you even edit the game's code? I thought BrainDump didn't dump scripts, only textures/models/animations/audio

 

[Reserved]

can you even edit the game's code? I thought BrainDump didn't dump scripts, only textures/models/animations/audio

It also dumps the exefs.bin which allows players to edit the code.bin.

 

[DesuIsSparta]

It also dumps the exefs.bin which allows players to edit the code.bin.

Well, then I guess it's time to dump my game and go on a journey.
But I can't do it with an eShop version, can I? :\

 

[Manito]

Well, then I guess it's time to dump my game and go on a journey.
But I can't do it with an eShop version, can I? :\

You can, I did.

 

[Reserved]

@DesuIsSparta
You can! HANS/Braindump works with all titles that appear on the actual 3DS menu, so things like the camera app 'n stuff are included, too.

Also, I think I found out why the ocean sound effects play on edited acres. Tagging @froggestspirit so he can possibly test it. When the boundary acres auto-generate with the program, they don't properly set the "end points", if that makes any sense. I'll use screenshots to properly explain it.

Here, you can see what the in-game generated ocean and train track boundaries look like:

Train Tracks:
http://i.imgur.com/qpyq10H.png

Ocean:
http://i.imgur.com/xjEZfKu.png


However, here are the hacked acre boundaries:

Train Tracks:
http://i.imgur.com/JdrpK79.png
http://i.imgur.com/BTr2H7S.png
http://i.imgur.com/s7rhd1m.png

Ocean:
http://i.imgur.com/JcOxsit.png (this image broke, but it was just showing where the boundaries should be)
http://i.imgur.com/DWtZmtO.png

As you can see, the camera doesn't lock at the Train Tunnel and the bottom right acre has an ocean portion, expanding the boundaries right there. However, with the in-game generated ocean boundary, it cuts off right at the end of the land acres. I think that the game is detecting an extra ocean acre in the corner and applying the sound effect to the entire portion where the beach would usually be. A quick test to fix this is changing the bottom left/right acres to properly match the other side, then checking if that removes the glitched sounds.

 

[EpicInki]

So Exefs contain the code.bin? Hmm well after some research I now extracted it and have the bin file :3 Now how would one find out how to do stuff such as MasterLel stated? Just searching through the Hex code?

 

[DesuIsSparta]

@Reserved @Manito

thank you very much!

 

[probablygay]

"how-to-make-animal-crossing-run-at-10-fps.png"
That's pretty cool though, and I would love to see a Pokemon Crossing hack. But the models would really have to be optimized first since they are probably around 3x higher poly than New Leaf's models.

Yes, I'm planning on doing up some custom models that are lower poly, but I can't seem to find a clear tutorial for importing models for Acnl lol

 

[Reserved]

question~

has any research gone into getting rid of those annoying permanent deteriorated grass spots? i don't care about patching up the grass under pavement and stuff, but there's an annoyingly large amount of permanent mud spots in my testing town.

 

[DesuIsSparta]

Since Animal Crossing does not have any title updates, as long as nothing significant is changed, is it still possible to play the game online? Meaning just client-side changes.