ROM Hack Discussion Creating Mods From Unity Based Switch Games From Source code

[DaRockLobsta]

There are Several Games made with unity, as you know it is very easy to view the source code of a unity game and mod it, in my research i have learned, that it uses il2cpp, i have managed to decompile a game "Farm Together". unlike older unity games that exposed the dll files for easy access you have to parse the "global_metadata.dat" file, after that all code is exposed.

https://github.com/Perfare/Il2CppDumper

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

@DaRockLobsta did you get that global_metadata.dat parsing to work?
I've xtracted all the files of "Final Fantasy IX" (Nintendo Switch), which was also made with Unity.
There's no DLL but a global_metadata.dat.

How can I use this file now to get the Source code?

 

[Falo]

All Switch Unity games use il2cpp.

il2cpp converts unity (.net) games to native code, or in other words C/C++, you cannot recover the source code from that.
You can restore some framework, like function names and offsets from global_metadata.dat, but thats it, what you want is simple not possible.

The only way is a combination of IDA Pro, an il2cpp parser (no one made one for switch yet) and a loooooooot of work.

 

[DaRockLobsta]

All Switch Unity games use il2cpp.

il2cpp converts unity (.net) games to native code, or in other words C/C++, you cannot recover the source code from that.
You can restore some framework, like function names and offsets from global_metadata.dat, but thats it, what you want is simple not possible.

The only way is a combination of IDA Pro, an il2cpp parser (no one made one for switch yet) and a loooooooot of work.

@Falo

there is a program called devxunity using the demo version, it parses the metadata file.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------
@xXDungeon_CrawlerXx

@DaRockLobsta did you get that global_metadata.dat parsing to work?
I've xtracted all the files of "Final Fantasy IX" (Nintendo Switch), which was also made with Unity.
There's no DLL but a global_metadata.dat.

How can I use this file now to get the Source code?

there is a program called devxunity using the demo version, it parses the metadata file. load up the metadata file in the program.
there is also a metadata loader for IDA that does work for The switchs metadata file google github nevermoe unity_metadata_loader use that inconjection with github pgarba SwitchIDAProLoader

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

@Falo
@xXDungeon_CrawlerXx


there is a program called devxunity using the demo version, it parses the metadata file. load up the metadata file in the program.
there is also a metadata loader for IDA that does work for The switchs metadata file google github nevermoe unity_metadata_loader use that inconjection with github pgarba SwitchIDAProLoader

GREAT!
Gonna test this out tomorrow!
Thank you very much mate

EDIT:
@DaRockLobsta I'm currently at Step 6, getting this error:

Do you have an Idea how to fix that?
I'm not THAT familiar with python and IDA

 

[Falo]

These tools are designed for android and ios, not Switch.

Switch uses compressed binaries -> unity_decoder.exe will fail unless you manually decompresss it first.
unity_loader.py will also fail, because it expects an android/ios elf, but it gets a nintendo nso and certain stuff is missing for it to work.

Also none of these tool will recover the source code needed to install mods.

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

These tools are designed for android and ios, not Switch.

Switch uses compressed binaries -> unity_decoder.exe will fail unless you manually decompresss it first.
unity_loader.py will also fail, because it expects an android/ios elf, but it gets a nintendo nso and certain stuff is missing for it to work.

Also none of these tool will recover the source code needed to install mods.

If @DaRockLobsta stated that this method will work, I believe he tried it out already.
So if it work, it's enough to change variables. Probably not ADDING stuff, but changing stuff more easily.

 

[DaRockLobsta]

If @DaRockLobsta stated that this method will work, I believe he tried it out already.
So if it work, it's enough to change variables. Probably not ADDING stuff, but changing stuff more easily.

@xXDungeon_CrawlerXx

it now supports NSO files and dumping the meta data!

https://github.com/Perfare/Il2CppDumper

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

@xXDungeon_CrawlerXx

it now supports NSO files and dumping the meta data!

https://github.com/Perfare/Il2CppDumper

thank you!

 

[DaRockLobsta]

@xXDungeon_CrawlerXx to get theh scripts.py to populate in IDA use nx2elf.exe to decompress the nso and load the .elf file it generates
in ida https://github.com/Mila432/switch_rom_hacking#uncompressing-main-recommended