ROM Hack Fire Emblem Fates: ROM Hacking General Thread

[thane98]

Well, this is a little aggravating. I actually managed to create a .bch from an Awakening character model capable of playing animations in Ohana, but now its causing a crash in game when I try to view it. I have no idea what's causing the crash, but it might be the last hurdle to get through before we've got a working character model port.

 

[DeathChaos]

Well, this is a little aggravating. I actually managed to create a .bch from an Awakening character model capable of playing animations in Ohana, but now its causing a crash in game when I try to view it. I have no idea what's causing the crash, but it might be the last hurdle to get through before we've got a working character model port.

Hmm, I assume it is properly compressed and everything?

 

[thane98]

Hmm, I assume it is properly compressed and everything?

Yep, compressed it and made sure that textures had the correct names. I guess that I didn't rename the model itself before adding it to the .bch, so that might have caused the issue. The only other significant difference that I noticed was that the default pose when loading the model in Ohana wasn't at the same rotation as it was when I originally exported it, but that shouldn't be enough to cause a crash. I'll probably try making sure the internal name for the model is identical to the one I'm replacing, but if that doesn't fix it the issue might be a bit tougher to find.

Edit: Well, uh... progress?

 

[KunoichiZ]

Edit: Well, uh... progress?

What

 

[DeathChaos]

In other news I managed to make Robin not spawn inside Lucina;

Edit: Well, uh... progress?

That seems like a texture problem, but at least the model actually works.

Do the textures show up correctly in Ohana?

 

[DeathChaos]

I think I'm starting to understand BEVs better.

 

[thane98]

I think I'm starting to understand BEVs better.

That looks pretty good! What fixed the issues you were having with the model spawns earlier? Was it just spawn coordinates, or something else?

Also you were right about the texture issue - I loaded the model up in Ohana, but I couldn't get the textures to show up. I redid the conversion with the correct names and got the texture to show up in game. There's still some odd stretching though.

I'm wondering if removing the model used for Ryoma's armor would fix the stretching. If that's the case, then the model is completely functional. Textures show up, the head and hair models attach to the body, and all Fates animations work with the model. I'll create an AID block without the uDres portion to see if it fixes the stretching. Though if someone has a block like that on hand that I can use it would definitely save some time. I'll also go ahead and leave a download for the model in its current form in case anybody else wants to try and mess with it.

 

[DeathChaos]

That looks pretty good! What fixed the issues you were having with the model spawns earlier? Was it just spawn coordinates, or something else?

Yes, I had to manually create my own spawn coordinate, obviously I just copy/pasted one of the existing ones at first, which caused the issue, after mathing it out and editing the coordinates it seems I managed to land the correct ones.

Also you were right about the texture issue - I loaded the model up in Ohana, but I couldn't get the textures to show up. I redid the conversion with the correct names and got the texture to show up in game. There's still some odd stretching though.

I'm wondering if removing the model used for Ryoma's armor would fix the stretching. If that's the case, then the model is completely functional. Textures show up, the head and hair models attach to the body, and all Fates animations work with the model. I'll create an AID block without the uDres portion to see if it fixes the stretching. Though if someone has a block like that on hand that I could use it would definitely save some time. I'll also go ahead and leave a download for the model in its current form in case anybody else wants to try and mess with it.

The stretching is unrelated to the model itself, this happens when capes are incompatible with models, I remember trying this some time back trying to put Ike's cape on the generic Outlaw model and it would do the exact same thing.

Also, I'd like to know the new process, I would very much like to port over Gaius, Tharja and Cordelia's models.

 

[thane98]

Also, I'd like to know the new process, I would very much like to port over Gaius, Tharja and Cordelia's models.

The new process isn't too different from the old one, you just need to export the model to SMD before converting to everything else. Use this version of Ohana to open Awakening character models without crashing. If you want to convert models, you'll need:

• Blender as well as the source plugin for importing/exporting SMD files.
• The version of Ohana linked above.
• Softimage/3DS Max/Maya for converting to intermediate files.
• Development tools (you know which ones I'm talking about).

And here's how you actually convert the model:

1. Open your model in Ohana and export it as an SMD. Open the textures and export them to the same directory as PNG files.
2. Open the exported model in Blender using the source plugin. Export it as a DAE file.
3. Open your model in your 3D modeling program (Softimage/3DS Max/Maya).
4. Apply the exported texture to the model. If you're using a damaged texture as well I'd go ahead and apply both. Your applied texture should show up on the model inside the editor.
5. Depending on the software you're using, you may have to correct some things before you can export (you'll need to turn off hierarchical scaling in Softimage).
6. Export both the model and textures. You should receive a .cmdl and folder with your textures.
7. Use your .bch conversion tool to build a .bch with your model. Then create another one with your texture files.
8. Your character model should be ready to go!

You could probably use this for editing Fates models as well, though I haven't tried it.

 

[thane98]

Just wondering, has anyone added a new AID to the base game? If so, could I possibly see the modified version? I managed to do this at one point, but I don't have the file on hand anymore. I tried setting one up to test models today, but nothing I've tried so far has worked.

 

[DeathChaos]

Just wondering, has anyone added a new AID to the base game? If so, could I possibly see the modified version? I managed to do this at one point, but I don't have the file on hand anymore. I tried setting one up to test models today, but nothing I've tried so far has worked.

Most of my ventures have resulted in a crash sadly, I've only had success in DLC format for whatever reason (which is weird considering the Chrom/Lissa/Frederick AID file was made from scratch).

 

[KunoichiZ]

Most of my ventures have resulted in a crash sadly, I've only had success in DLC format for whatever reason (which is weird considering the Chrom/Lissa/Frederick AID file was made from scratch).

I wonder why it works for the DLC format, but not for the base game.

 

[thane98]

What's annoying me is that I actually had this working at some point - I just don't have the file anymore. I set up a version with the new data that doesn't crash, but when I go to view a unit with the custom AID, I just get a generic model. I can't even tell if it's an issue with the AID I've set up or if the game isn't detecting the block at all.

Edit: Well, nevermind... I repeated the process again and the AID worked perfectly. Funny thing is I'm fairly certain that this file is identical to the one I made previously. Odd.

 

[king_frost93]

So one of the changes I want to make is add new army IDs and the like. I added some to the text file, but in the GameData.bin itself, I'm not sure where I can find the army IDs and even if I did, I'm not sure how to add new ones without breaking something. Anybody poked around with that?

 

[AreoMaxxx]

Hey, does anyone know where the 'critical quote' voicelines are located?
I'm trying to give Candace a critical quote, Since she's silent during it.
But I have no idea where to implement it. The voiceline itself is already in the game. It's named: VOICE_DRAGEE_EVT_00

Does someone know?

 

[FlappyFalco]

@AreoMaxxx

They're all in IRON15_sound.bcsar in the the sound folder, but we still have no practical way of editing it. BCSARs are the most common audio format for 3DS games, which is why music and SFX hacks are so few and far between. If only Sm4sh used it, then some real headway would have been made in deciphering it.

 

[AreoMaxxx]

@AreoMaxxx

They're all in IRON15_sound.bcsar in the the sound folder, but we still have no practical way of editing it. BCSARs are the most common audio format for 3DS games, which is why music and SFX hacks are so few and far between. If only Sm4sh used it, then some real headway would have been made in deciphering it.

So I can assume that the reference for the critical quotes are within that file? Because I don't need to change the file itself. I just want the game to play a certain sound when she activates a crit.
I guess there's no way, like how it's handled with voicelines in chapters/my castle with the 'common' folder?

 

[thane98]

So I can assume that the reference for the critical quotes are within that file? Because I don't need to change the file itself. I just want the game to play a certain sound when she activates a crit.
I guess there's no way, like how it's handled with voicelines in chapters/my castle with the 'common' folder?

The game simply looks for a voice line with a critical prefix in the BCSAR when its figuring out which voice line to play, so there's no way to add it in by simply modifying a text file.

You could theoretically add the line in by changing the name of the sound inside the archive, but changing the name of a sound inside a BCSAR file is surprisingly complicated. The sound names are stored in a Patricia tree, so just changing the name itself wouldn't give you a working sound - in fact, it would likely break other sounds. If you wanted to change a sound name, you would have to rebuild the entire tree to match with the new names.

Modifying the sound names is possible, but doing it through hex editing would be impractical.

 

[AreoMaxxx]

Hmm yeah, I already tried renaming it and yeah, it didnt work. If I changed the voicefile to VOICE_DRAGEE_CUT_IN nothing happened and the game ran fine and nothing else was affected. But when I renamed it VOICE_DRAGEE_CUT_IN_00 the game keeps crashing.

Sigh, Maybe one day.

 

[thane98]

For anyone interested, @RainThunder added a tool for editing the castle_join file to his toolset. If you need to make a character join your army through My Castle, his tool makes adding it in very simple.