ROM Hack Fire Emblem Fates: ROM Hacking General Thread

[Koko-Kun]

And that should do it, although the DLC will show up as "?" and will say it takes 0 blocks of Space in System Settings, I think it might have to do with needing NCHH encryption, not really sure.

Yup yup, that is part of the NCCH encryption. Rebuilding each NCCH container with an icon.bin solves this. ALL contents/NCCH of the cia must be built with an icon.bin for the icon and how much blocks it takes in the System Settings to show.

makerom -f ncch -target t -rsf DLC.rsf -romfs romfs.bin -icon icon.bin -o c.0020.0000bb00

Basically just add "-icon icon.bin". You can grab the Fire emblem fates's icon.bin from the exefs folder of contents.0000.XXXX.

 

[thane98]

snip

snip

Thank you - the process doesn't look too bad. I'm still trying to figure out the actual blocks inside the BCSAR, but I think that I've figured out the general file structure. If I can figure out what the parameters inside the STRG blocks are for, I might be able to add a new reference to a sound located outside of the archive.

 

[DeathChaos]

Yup yup, that is part of the NCCH encryption. Rebuilding each NCCH container with an icon.bin solves this. ALL contents/NCCH of the cia must be built with an icon.bin for the icon and how much blocks it takes in the System Settings to show.

makerom -f ncch -target t -rsf DLC.rsf -romfs romfs.bin -icon icon.bin -o c.0020.0000bb00

Basically just add "-icon icon.bin". You can grab the Fire emblem fates's icon.bin from the exefs folder of contents.0000.XXXX.

Could you perhaps post your icon.bin?

Because I seriously doubt that the DLC icon.bin is 3GB in size...

Thank you - the process doesn't look too bad. I'm still trying to figure out the actual blocks inside the BCSAR, but I think that I've figured out the general file structure. If I can figure out what the parameters inside the STRG blocks are for, I might be able to add a new reference to a sound located outside of the archive.

So I noticed that the nw4c package of tools from the nintendo dev has a bcsar builder (soundmaker), so I tried poking around a bit.

I took one of the HoF bcsars, which had no internal files, just a bcsar with a bunch of stream folder references, so I converted all bcstm files to wav, used soundmaker to recreate the bcsar and tried to use that, and to my surprise, it actually wouldn't work, even though I even copied the old bcstm files over the newly made ones, so it seems that even though they're bcsar files, Fates' bcsar in itself is different it seems.
I'll leave a download for you, both the original bcsar sound folder and the recreated one, the recreated one has some other files in the output folder that may or may not be helpful;
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iqyxvrebx8dqxj7/sound test.zip?dl=1


A good file to study would be any of the 3 bcsar files for Chrom/Lissa/Frederick from Before Awakening, since those seem to be self contained for the most part.

 

[Koko-Kun]

LOL, gotta wonder what's inside that icon.bin o3o. You could use the icon.bin from the exefs of Fire Emblem Fates romfs too fyi. Here: https://mega.nz/#!opxRlRiS!cO5o98inPeAwZsDehf4Zpajffg9BBekxhSDmHFoQEBI

 

[thane98]

So I noticed that the nw4c package of tools from the nintendo dev has a bcsar builder (soundmaker), so I tried poking around a bit.

I took one of the HoF bcsars, which had no internal files, just a bcsar with a bunch of stream folder references, so I converted all bcstm files to wav, used soundmaker to recreate the bcsar and tried to use that, and to my surprise, it actually wouldn't work, even though I even copied the old bcstm files over the newly made ones, so it seems that even though they're bcsar files, Fates' bcsar in itself is different it seems.
I'll leave a download for you, both the original bcsar sound folder and the recreated one, the recreated one has some other files in the output folder that may or may not be helpful;
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iqyxvrebx8dqxj7/sound test.zip?dl=1
A good file to study would be any of the 3 bcsar files for Chrom/Lissa/Frederick from Before Awakening, since those seem to be self contained for the most part.

Yeah, that's a little odd. I haven't looked at the BCSAR builder myself, so I don't really know what would cause an error like that. I'll take a look at the files though and see what I can find.

At the moment, I'm using the Vanguard Dawn BCSAR as a base and the archives in BCSAR when I need to compare things. However, the Vanguard Dawn file has some oddities - there are STRG entries for 4 sounds, but there's only one actual sound file. I haven't managed figure out why that is.

I started documenting what I've figured here, though as you can tell from looking at it, there's a lot to work through still. I've got the structure of the file down, but until the STRG and INFO entry blocks are figured out, we can't really do anything in terms of music insertion.

This is the portion of the STRG partition that I still don't understand. There are 4 different entries in that section, from what I can tell the first is of size 0x1C and the rest are of size 0x28, though those sizes might be wrong. While identifying the file ID in the blocks is pretty easy, I've yet to find any sort of pattern for everything else. I'm still looking into some stuff for the INFO subsections as well, but I haven't really found any sort of consistent sizing for those blocks yet.

 

[DeathChaos]

Yeah, that's a little odd. I haven't looked at the BCSAR builder myself, so I don't really know what would cause an error like that. I'll take a look at the files though and see what I can find.

At the moment, I'm using the Vanguard Dawn BCSAR as a base and the archives in BCSAR when I need to compare things. However, the Vanguard Dawn file has some oddities - there are STRG entries for 4 sounds, but there's only one actual sound file. I haven't managed figure out why that is.

I started documenting what I've figured here, though as you can tell from looking at it, there's a lot to work through still. I've got the structure of the file down, but until the STRG and INFO entry blocks are figured out, we can't really do anything in terms of music insertion.

This is the portion of the STRG partition that I still don't understand. There are 4 different entries in that section, from what I can tell the first is of size 0x1C and the rest are of size 0x28, though those sizes might be wrong. While identifying the file ID in the blocks is pretty easy, I've yet to find any sort of pattern for everything else. I'm still looking into some stuff for the INFO subsections as well, but I haven't really found any sort of consistent sizing for those blocks yet.

Yeah, the BCSAR builder generated a binary map for the build bcsar but this is something you probably already know;

It also has some other tidbits of info that's probably not useful but should be still noted.

 

[thane98]

snip

Yeah, that doesn't do much on its own. What else does it mention?

 

[DeathChaos]

Yeah, that doesn't do much on its own. What else does it mention?

The only files with any info really are these two;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0rPMDhb3gbhbjZmVW90WUJqOWc/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0rPMDhb3gbhV1duWTJZWjJJOG8/view

But they don't have any particularly useful info on them from what I gather.

 

[thane98]

The only files with any info really are these two;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0rPMDhb3gbhbjZmVW90WUJqOWc/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0rPMDhb3gbhV1duWTJZWjJJOG8/view

But they don't have any particularly useful info on them from what I gather.

From a quick glance, those could be a little useful. The use of different IDs for different file types could explain a lot, but I'll need to try and identify these inside the files in order to put the information to use.

Edit: As it turns out, those files just helped me figure out another portion of the STRG blocks!

 

[DeathChaos]

Well, the icon.bin seems to have worked nicely.

 

[Omegablu]

Yeah, the BCSAR builder generated a binary map for the build bcsar but this is something you probably already know;

It also has some other tidbits of info that's probably not useful but should be still noted.

Out of curiosity, is it illegal to use info and release/share anything made with the official SDK's tools? Ex: Portraits, sound archives, etc. I know the tutorial on making full quality portraits in Fates uses an SDK tool.

 

[DeathChaos]

Out of curiosity, is it illegal to use info and release/share anything made with the official SDK's tools? Ex: Portraits, sound archives, etc. I know the tutorial on making full quality portraits in Fates uses an SDK tool.

Well, the tool linked in that tutorial was a leaked tool from another source, so there's nothing to be done about that.

Also, when it comes to making these files, it's a very grey area, while I don't think there are any tools to make bcsar files, something like say, bch files, can be made using Ohana3DS, there are also multiple lz11 compressors out there, and if you compare an lz11 compressed file with, say, Batchlz77 or DSDecmp4, there's literally 0 differences between the compressed file with the free tools vs the compressed files with the official tools.

However, it IS illegal to officially release any games made with the tools, yes, but we're not releasing any games here now are we, I'm sure Xander of Nohr wouldn't want to get into too much trouble with Ninty

 

[Omegablu]

Well, the tool linked in that tutorial was a leaked tool from another source, so there's nothing to be done about that.

Also, when it comes to making these files, it's a very grey area, while I don't think there are any tools to make bcsar files, something like say, bch files, can be made using Ohana3DS, there are also multiple lz11 compressors out there, and if you compare an lz11 compressed file with, say, Batchlz77 or DSDecmp4, there's literally 0 differences between the compressed file with the free tools vs the compressed files with the official tools.

However, it IS illegal to officially release any games made with the tools, yes, but we're not releasing any games here now are we, I'm sure Xander of Nohr wouldn't want to get into too much trouble with Ninty

Cool. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

 

[thane98]

Okay, so I think that I've found the connection between the INFO and STRG partitions, or at least part of it. The first ID in STRG is simply a file ID, while the second is a subsection ID. The first subsection in INFO is likely holds information for actually playing the file itself - at the very least, the first part of the subsection block indicates what type of sound player to use. These blocks also appear to use the file IDs from the STRG partition. There's a lot of variation inside these blocks that I don't understand, but I think that I've got all of the information I need from them right now. I don't think the subsection ID is actually mentioned anywhere in the BCSAR, but I'm assuming it just indicates the order of songs within a subsection.

I've gotten my DLC to build correctly now, so I'm going to start trying to add a new external file reference to the BCSAR. Hopefully copying over information from other blocks is enough for the sections that still aren't fully understood.

Edit: Alright, I haven't tested playing the new music in game yet, but I got a modified BCSAR to load in game without issues!

 

[DeferredGalaxy]

someone should make Lyn and Eirika playable xD

Sorry I'm a bit late on this, but here, I'm cooking something up for you, at the moment. (It's not quite finished, yet, sorry, but I'll work more on it sometime between now and over the weekend, with more expressions and such.)

Spoiler: Eirika WIP

I'm not really used to this artstyle, and I kiiiiind of referenced her GBA portrait for at least the upper half. =w= That face isn't looking right, IMO, and my take some retries to look right, and get a good cross between Sacred Stone's and Fates's artsyles. (I'm also looking back at it as I'm typing, and realizing I forgot some lines around her shoulder/neck area. WHOOPS.) <.<;

Spoiler: Also something else

Also I decided to have a little fun and do one of the girl in my profile pic as a shrine maiden, not a thing I'll especially prioritize, but something I thought would be nice to share.

I would do one for Lyn, for you, but it looks like someone's already got you covered. Also... I think I might just do one her anyway for the heck of it, Florina and Lute are also two on my... um... wanttodo list.

 

[whitewolf8]

well um... not sure how appropriate this is-- but I was able to make the Kitsune hood an accessory, as well as trying to piece a new class together
http://imgur.com/a/Z6Ggl
Kitsune Hood replaces Lucina Amiibo's Bear Hat accessory. Now if only I could find the Wolfskin hood...
New class is basically Kitsune-Swordmaster thing, mostly as a test, though i seem to be too stupid trying to figure how to get the model to work properly, along with getting voices to work again, AND trying to find how to bind Swordmaster+Kitsune animations to this new class. ack. any help'd be appreciated.
Meanwhile i'll be poking it with a stick.

 

[RainThunder]

Could you perhaps post your icon.bin?

Because I seriously doubt that the DLC icon.bin is 3GB in size...

That's because DLC's ExeFS doesn't contain .code section. If you are using ctrtool, just remove --decompresscode argument when extracting ExeFS.

 

[thane98]

I'm not going to be able to work on this for the next few days, so I'm posting my BCSAR edits here in case anyone wants to try and do something with them.

I've edited the BCSAR in Vanguard Dawn to include a new external file reference. For testing purposes, I also changed the preparation screen music for the map to use the newly inserted music. The edits appear to have been performed correctly from a structural standpoint - the music that existed before the edits plays correctly, at the least. Unfortunately, the newly inserted sound still does not play when called. I've tried to fix this in a couple different ways, though nothing's worked so far. I can tell you that it most likely does not have anything to do with the INFO portion, as I can use those blocks with existing sounds without causing issues. I think the new STRG block is not being read correctly, but I have yet to verify that. If you want to try and figure this out, I would start by experimenting with the STRG section.

Here's the files if you're interested.

 

[DeathChaos]

So, with some more script editing, I managed to add more entries to the Branch of Fate, sadly, for whatever reason, it's not actually displaying the text I assigned to the entries, oh well, at least I got SOME of it to work.

 

[Dylos]

So, with some more script editing, I managed to add more entries to the Branch of Fate, sadly, for whatever reason, it's not actually displaying the text I assigned to the entries, oh well, at least I got SOME of it to work.

Very nice, but do they do anything? Does it seem possible to add an entire new path?