ROM Hack Fates Hacking Tools/Utilities

[thane98]

I put together a couple different tools for hacking and changing things around for Fire Emblem Fates. I thought it was about time that I put together a unified place for the tools and any future updates, so here we are!

I'll be the first to say that these tools might be a little clunky to use; however, they do work, and can save a pretty decent chunk of time. I'm always up for adding expanding functionality or making things easier to use, so feel free to leave feedback and suggestions and I'll do what I can. I hope that these tools can be of some use to others.

Fates Conversation Maker

Spoiler

Without a program, writing conversations can be a tedious process - for each piece of dialogue in a support conversation you have to include the Japanese names, Japanese characters to indicate the emotion of a character, and some additional formatting whenever you're changing who's speaking. Typically, building these dialogues requires constant copy/pasting for all of the Japanese characters and line formatting, which gets annoying pretty quickly. Additionally, newlines have to be added into the text manually in order for the text to fit inside the textbox in game. This can also be a rather tedious and time consuming process.

So, I went ahead and put Fates Conversation Maker together to try and make creating conversations less annoying. This program can handle all of the formatting concerns, so you shouldn't have to enter any Japanese characters or anything of the sort to build a conversation. Instead, for each level of support you'll simply enter in the two people in the conversation, the emotions, and the dialogue. You can also choose music for each conversation if you'd like some. Afterwards, just hit the button and the program will output a text file with the conversations in the proper format for use in game. Once you've got that file, all you have to do is run it through a compression program like FEAT and throw it in a patch, and you're good to go!

As a quick warning though, I'm a bit of a novice programmer and I've really only tested the program in ideal situations, so I'd expect the program to be very finnicky. At the moment, if you input text in the wrong format, there's a good chance that you'll lose it. However, the input format is pretty straightforward, so hopefully that won't be too much of an issue.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/attrqrv02nnfjkn/Fates_Conversation_Maker.zip

I've included an example support conversation in the input format, as well as a readme with formatting instructions in case I don't cover anything here. Anyways, here's all you need to know for formatting your conversations:

The first line should read:

(First character to talk)+(Second character to talk)

Every line after should read:

(Character talking)+(Emotion)+(Optional emotion. Don't include this if no optional is used.)+Text

Here's what can go in the (Emotion) or (Optional Emotion) section:

Sweat
Blush
General
Surprised
Sad
Angry
Happy
Great
Desperate
Possessed

Fates Music Changer

Spoiler

This tool can change both the overhead/battle music and preparation music for a map. It's fairly simplistic at the moment, and likely could have the music options expanded, but it does allow for music to be changed without much hassle.

The usage is pretty simple - first, you'll need to open the map config file that you want to edit. This can be found be found inside romfs > map > config. Just select the map that you want from there, select the music you'd like in the drop downs, and hit save. I've also included a check box for a couple special cases - I haven't tested this thoroughly, but you'll generally want to check this if the music you are using does not change between the overhead view and battles, but my observations have been inconsistent. You must check this box if you want to set the battle music to End of All.

That's all there really is to it at the moment. This tool is still very barebones though, so I'll be adding to it as time goes on. At the moment, the drop down menus all use the music IDs rather than the official names, but I'll get around to changing that soon. Additionally, while I've tested a good portion of the music without running into issues, the preparation screen seems to be a little picky. With all of that said, feel free to report any issues you run into with the tool (silent battle screens and the like), and I'll see what I can do.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/jgcuwa71l4im27i/Fates_Music_Changer.zip

Additionally, I'm working on a tool for adding in new talk events to maps, but it's not quite there yet. It's got basic functionality, but it lacks some additional features that I think most people would want for talk events, so it'll be awhile before I release it.

 

[MsMidnight]

I put together a couple different tools for hacking and changing things around for Fire Emblem Fates. I thought it was about time that I put together a unified place for the tools and any future updates, so here we are!

I'll be the first to say that these tools might be a little clunky to use; however, they do work, and can save a pretty decent chunk of time. I'm always up for adding expanding functionality or making things easier to use, so feel free to leave feedback and suggestions and I'll do what I can. I hope that these tools can be of some use to others.

Fates Conversation Maker

Spoiler

Without a program, writing conversations can be a tedious process - for each piece of dialogue in a support conversation you have to include the Japanese names, Japanese characters to indicate the emotion of a character, and some additional formatting whenever you're changing who's speaking. Typically, building these dialogues requires constant copy/pasting for all of the Japanese characters and line formatting, which gets annoying pretty quickly. Additionally, newlines have to be added into the text manually in order for the text to fit inside the textbox in game. This can also be a rather tedious and time consuming process.

So, I went ahead and put Fates Conversation Maker together to try and make creating conversations less annoying. This program can handle all of the formatting concerns, so you shouldn't have to enter any Japanese characters or anything of the sort to build a conversation. Instead, for each level of support you'll simply enter in the two people in the conversation, the emotions, and the dialogue. You can also choose music for each conversation if you'd like some. Afterwards, just hit the button and the program will output a text file with the conversations in the proper format for use in game. Once you've got that file, all you have to do is run it through a compression program like FEAT and throw it in a patch, and you're good to go!

As a quick warning though, I'm a bit of a novice programmer and I've really only tested the program in ideal situations, so I'd expect the program to be very finnicky. At the moment, if you input text in the wrong format, there's a good chance that you'll lose it. However, the input format is pretty straightforward, so hopefully that won't be too much of an issue.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/attrqrv02nnfjkn/Fates_Conversation_Maker.zip

I've included an example support conversation in the input format, as well as a readme with formatting instructions in case I don't cover anything here. Anyways, here's all you need to know for formatting your conversations:

The first line should read:

(First character to talk)+(Second character to talk)

Every line after should read:

(Character talking)+(Emotion)+(Optional emotion. Don't include this if no optional is used.)+Text

Here's what can go in the (Emotion) or (Optional Emotion) section:

Sweat
Blush
General
Surprised
Sad
Angry
Happy
Great
Desperate
Possessed

Fates Music Changer

Spoiler

This tool can change both the overhead/battle music and preparation music for a map. It's fairly simplistic at the moment, and likely could have the music options expanded, but it does allow for music to be changed without much hassle.

The usage is pretty simple - first, you'll need to open the map config file that you want to edit. This can be found be found inside romfs > map > config. Just select the map that you want from there, select the music you'd like in the drop downs, and hit save. I've also included a check box for a couple special cases - I haven't tested this thoroughly, but you'll generally want to check this if the music you are using does not change between the overhead view and battles, but my observations have been inconsistent. You must check this box if you want to set the battle music to End of All.

That's all there really is to it at the moment. This tool is still very barebones though, so I'll be adding to it as time goes on. At the moment, the drop down menus all use the music IDs rather than the official names, but I'll get around to changing that soon. Additionally, while I've tested a good portion of the music without running into issues, the preparation screen seems to be a little picky. With all of that said, feel free to report any issues you run into with the tool (silent battle screens and the like), and I'll see what I can do.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/jgcuwa71l4im27i/Fates_Music_Changer.zip

Additionally, I'm working on a tool for adding in new talk events to maps, but it's not quite there yet. It's got basic functionality, but it lacks some additional features that I think most people would want for talk events, so it'll be awhile before I release it.

i have a web based conversation maker for Fates based off of my awakening one, but the FE:Fates boxes keep on fucking me up. so its the awakening boxes for now

 

[Verack]

Is it possible to make a program (or modify your current one) to work backwards? As in, give the application a .txt file and have it spit out in plain English (without all the wonky code and formatting)? It would make editing the game's current files considerably easier.

 

[FlappyFalco]

Would you perhaps consider making a tool that can replace character voices in the BCSAR? @Gericom was supposed to add a BCSAR rebuilder to Every File Explorer, but he doesn't seem to be working on it anymore.

 

[thane98]

Hey, sorry for not getting back on the questions.

Is it possible to make a program (or modify your current one) to work backwards? As in, give the application a .txt file and have it spit out in plain English (without all the wonky code and formatting)? It would make editing the game's current files considerably easier.

That could likely be done, though it would require a completely different program - with the way I have things set up currently, I would have to build something like that from the ground up.

Would you perhaps consider making a tool that can replace character voices in the BCSAR? @Gericom was supposed to add a BCSAR rebuilder to Every File Explorer, but he doesn't seem to be working on it anymore.

I'm currently working on some stuff with regards to GameData.bin, which will likely take awhile. But I might take a look at changing things in the BCSAR file afterwards. I seriously doubt that I could write something to rebuild the entire BCSAR, but to my knowledge editing existing entries in the BCSAR should be possible.

 

[FlappyFalco]

I'm currently working on some stuff with regards to GameData.bin, which will likely take awhile. But I might take a look at changing things in the BCSAR file afterwards. I seriously doubt that I could write something to rebuild the entire BCSAR, but to my knowledge editing existing entries in the BCSAR should be possible.

Yeah, that has been done with a hex editor before (in MK7, I believe), the sound file would have to be the same size as the original. However, if the file was smaller, you could just fill it up with zeroes until it's the same size, but if it's bigger than the original you're SOL.

You probably already know this, but the BCSAR is a sound archive, containing CWAVs, the 3DS sound format.

The reason for this is because of the STRG partition at the top of the file, it assigns names to each CWAV file, and when the game wants to call upon a sound effect/song it looks for this name. Either the STRG or the INFO blocks also tell the game where the CWAV actually is in the BCSAR, it lists the address or offset in the file where the CWAV can be found.

If you were to put in a different sized CWAV, the addresses would be wrong for every file after the file you replaced, and the game would be unable to find the SFX or music. So, if you wanted to replace a CWAV with a bigger sound, I'd have to change the addresses listed in STRG or INFO (i.e, the pointers) to the new ones for every file after the file I replaced.

Another thing is the 2 male and 2 female voices for Kamui/Corrin that were cut from the American and PAL games. If you were to replace the IRON15_sound.bcsar in the American/PAL game with the one from the JP game, and then save edit or use a Japanese save where Kamui has voice 4 or 5, they'll be heard in game, proving that to add them back in, all you would need to edit would be the BCSAR.

In fact, if you go into the English BCSAR and check either male or female Kamui's "block" (called a CWAR in the file), you'll find the two "stumps" where the block of CWAVs used to be.

My only problem is that I cannot actually find these pointers to the CWARs (or indeed the first CWAV in the block) anywhere in the BCSAR. And yes, I tried it in reverse byte order. If I knew where they were, I could technically change them to match the new location of the files and replace a small file with a bigger one. However, depending on how high up the file is in the BCSAR, it could take a while.

@soneek seems to have a much better understanding of the structure of the BCSAR file, as he made a tool to dump individual CWAVs from them. It even organizes all the sounds from one CWAR block into the same folder, so for example in Fates it would dump all the voices from one character into one folder. @Thelostrune also seems to have an interest.


Soneek's tool:

https://mega.nz/#!Atk33BaS!1FyllP6Qngg-xqMEX5I2Nu4EDxFdQ2_WNnCMGwd5ZEc