.ARC and .BLD Files in Skylanders: Swap Force (3DS)

[1B51004]

Just for crits and giggles last night, i decided to dump the rom of Skylanders Swap Force for the 3DS. What I found was weird and intriguing at the same time

Two sets of files for every Skylander in the game. Some had more than two like our friend Eruptor here, one being the "Normal" Eruptor and the other set being Eruptor "2013". Taking a guess, I would assume this would be "Lava-Barf Eruptor" Since that figure release in 2013, alongside Swap Force.

It was like this for the characters. some were just normal, some had 2013 (Revisions) and some had Legendary next to their names

More importantly are the files themselves.

.ARC files are nothing basically. Looks like it anyways. Checking the properties, It says it has 0 bytes in its name.

Meanwhile, the .BLD files have all of the bytes stored within it.

So, I have a theory.

The .ARC file is a dummy file, and there's code in the game every time you place down a figure. When a figure is placed down, the game runs code to see if that .ARC file matches up with the .BLD file, to prevent figure piracy(???)*, meaning that in order to extract the model, you would need to place the figure down and intercept the communication (Can only be done natively, citra cannot communicate with the portal.)

*just now realized, the figures are saved to the save game, meaning that after the initial connect, the .ARC files are useless(?)

I'll try ripping the game using HackingToolkit3DS, but if there is a way to extract .BLD files, please let me know!

TLDR: this stupid game made for kids has some REALLY annoying anti-piracy practices (which is fair) and i want to get around those practices and get the character models. send help.

 

[Sypherone]

If you want the Skylanders, there exist save games including them for use with Checkpoint and saved in the beginning of the game. As the portal is only neccesarry in the beginning of the games.
Thread Skylander save bundle
Download Skylander save bundle

 

[1B51004]

If you want the Skylanders, there exist save games including them for use with Checkpoint and saved in the beginning of the game. As the portal is only neccesarry in the beginning of the games.
Thread Skylander save bundle
Download Skylander save bundle

Thanks for the reminder, but I'm looking to extract the models of the skylanders themselves. I would do this with a higher quality game (Switch Imaginators comes to mind) but it's way too expensive and I don't want to look through piracy sites and download a (at least) 8GB file.


Sorta update?: finally had the time to rip it using HackingToolkit3DS. Nothing that different from my initial extraction sadly, besides the extra stuff that gets ripped with HackingToolkit3DS.

Small oddity, ExtractedRomFS and my inital rip (which i didn't look at until now) has a random .xml file in it, "alchemy.xml". AFAIK, the 3DS can't normally read .xml files, but I'm not too well versed in that area, so I may be wrong. MAYBE it could be remnants of an old mechanic or an entire game entirely, but eh. Looking into it more.

(Small addition: Found out the file names of the characters use their internal names instead of their actual names. Don't fix what isn't broken, I guess?
Full list here
https://tcrf.net/Skylanders:_Giants_(Xbox_360))

 

[1B51004]

New breakthrough! (kinda sorta not really i just didnt want this to go necro or smtn)

Inside ExtractedRom/data, there exist ".IGX" files, which would be iGrafx files (I think? Have to look into it more)

Names are "global_cloneCount.igx" and "HudManagerData.igx". Both of them can be opened in Visual Studio (If you have the game, try it). The first file doesn't contain anything that special (I don't think) but the second one contain something super special to me (personally)

Dev Comments.

I don't think the comments are from the original source code (I hope ._.) but it's still super cool seeing something left over anyways.

Examples:
"Bottom Screen Fade Sprite (I changed the dimensions slightly so it would fail comparisons with tfbSpriteLite9)" (Unedited by me, despite how it sounds)
"!-- Ghost Health Meter -->" (Maybe for streetpass? like with mario kart? no mentions of streetpass ghosts in the game afaik but i could be wrong.)
"<!-- HUD Text Generator -->"
"<!-- Radiance Rush Sprite -->"/"<!-- Brightstone Icon Sprite -->" (NO MENTION of this in the game at all. Not in story, not in collectables, nada. Could be leftover/basis for games code? WHAT IS THIS USED FOR???)

Still looking through. This gives me hope however 'u'

 

[Blitzer1001]

Thanks for the reminder, but I'm looking to extract the models of the skylanders themselves. I would do this with a higher quality game (Switch Imaginators comes to mind) but it's way too expensive and I don't want to look through piracy sites and download a (at least) 8GB file.


Sorta update?: finally had the time to rip it using HackingToolkit3DS. Nothing that different from my initial extraction sadly, besides the extra stuff that gets ripped with HackingToolkit3DS.

Small oddity, ExtractedRomFS and my inital rip (which i didn't look at until now) has a random .xml file in it, "alchemy.xml". AFAIK, the 3DS can't normally read .xml files, but I'm not too well versed in that area, so I may be wrong. MAYBE it could be remnants of an old mechanic or an entire game entirely, but eh. Looking into it more.

(Small addition: Found out the file names of the characters use their internal names instead of their actual names. Don't fix what isn't broken, I guess?

Hey, did you succeed in turning the bld's into models? I am looking to hack peter griffin in as a joke but i need a way to turn the bld's into a common format like obj or fbx and then back into bld.