Hacking Game & Wario Pictionary (Sketch) Minigame - Modding possible?

[myuuji]

Hey there,
I've been enjoying the pictionary minigame of "Game & Wario" a lot with friends for 2 years.
Of course, after a while the words get repetitive so I wonder if there's somewhere (more or less) a simple text file in the game's data to change/add words?

 

[handy333]

I've never took a look at that mini game but I'll check and see what I can do.

 

[myuuji]

I've never took a look at that mini game but I'll check and see what I can do.

It's a simple yet amazing mini game. Lots of fun! Thank you

 

[handy333]

I want to guess that it's in one of those lyt files in folders draw1 or draw2. I can't find a way to extract them. I wish I could figure out a way to decompress packages like that by hand. I've been trying to do that for djmax for years.

 

[myuuji]

I want to guess that it's in one of those lyt files in folders draw1 or draw2. I can't find a way to extract them. I wish I could figure out a way to decompress packages like that by hand.

This sounds very close to the goal! The game has two drawing minigames. One is singleplayer pictionary tied with Miiverse and the other one is offline multiplayer only.
Is there anything we can do at this point?

 

[handy333]

I want to try to extract them using a bunch of WII tools. I doubt it'll work but you got me curious.

 

[brienj]

They are ZLIB compressed with SARC files inside. At least for the one file I tested in a Lyt folder. Not sure if they are all SARC inside the ZLIB files, but the fzip files are ZLIB files with a different header on them. I would share an extracted file, but it would be illegal to share.

Byte 0x00 - 0x04: is the FZIP Header
Byte 0x05 - 0x08: is the size of the decompressed file
Byte 0x08 - end of file: is the actual ZLIB compressed file

Edit 1: The file in the common/msg folder is a WARC file which looks like a SARC file when decompressed, but the contents can easily be read. Starting at offset 0x1A6B4, it looks like that might be the word list in Unicode format.



Even if that isn't a word list for that game, there are some other TXT2 files inside the WARC file that have random words in them too. One of them has to be the word list used.

If anyone needs more specific info, I'll be glad to help. I wish I had the motivation to create an editor for the game, it would be simple to do, but at this moment, I'm just not up to it. Sorry.

Edit 2: After some further research though, I discovered that the WARC file actually contained MSBT files in it, and there are some tools available to edit those. So if the WARC file header can be decoded to easily edit, then the MSBT files within it can easily be edited. Right now, you can easily copy/paste the MSBT section out, save as a MSBT file, open in a MSBT editor, change the words, save the file, copy/paste the code from that back into the WARC file, making sure the file size is smaller, since the header isn't quite figured out yet. Then you can recompress the file with zlib, add the header back on, and then replace the game file with it. This is fairly easy and basic modding, and hopefully I've given enough info for anyone that feels like making an editor, so they can make one, hopefully a well designed one with a GUI, and not some command line hack ...

Here is a MSBT file I extracted with a hex editor opened up in the MSBT Editor Reloaded which can be found here - https://github.com/IcySon55/3DLandMSBTeditor/releases/tag/v0.9.1
The release thread for it is here - https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-msbt-editor-reloaded.406208/

 

[myuuji]

@brienj That's worth a medal, Sir! I owe you one. This is fantastic research.
So this is possible without an editor, just takes more time to do as far as I understand?

I'd gladly donate if someone was willing to do a nice editor for this game.

 

[brienj]

@brienj That's worth a medal, Sir! I owe you one. This is fantastic research.
So this is possible without an editor, just takes more time to do as far as I understand?

I'd gladly donate if someone was willing to do a nice editor for this game.

You need a zlib tool to decompress the fzip files, but the header needs modified to have it recognized as a zlib file. Then you need a SARC tool to extract files from SARC file, or you have to manually extract MSBT files from any WARC file with a hex editor. Then edit the files with any available editor if any, the MSBT do have an editor for them. After editing, put the files back, SARC files have a tool for them, WARC files currently don't, or at least I couldn't find one. Then when it's put back together, just compress with ZLIB and change the header to a correct one for FZIP files, I posted the header info. Then just put the modified file back in the game folder. There isn't any editor that does all this right now, but I might make one, I can't promise it though.

 

[myuuji]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate your input!

 

[handy333]

for some reason I didn't see the notifications for the replies. Anyways I was came back to say that I had no luck but thanks for the info. I would like to know more about file structures and stuff like that. Where would I look?

 

[kavid]

this fzip extract script ，quickbms

# Game & Wario - File Decompression
# Written by Random Talking Bush

endian big
comtype COMP_UNZIP_DYNAMIC

idstring FZIP
get ZSIZE asize
math ZSIZE -= 8
get NAME filename
string NAME += .dec
clog NAME 8 ZSIZE ZSIZE

endfunction


warc files tools

http://gbatemp.net/threads/help-with-warc-files.402404/#post-7274231

 

[PutPasswordHere]

Found this thread a year or so ago, but was too lazy to attempt any of this.

Fairly new to modding. Anyone have any advice or updated help on how to do this?
I used the quickbms script that kavid gave. After that I used another one for WARC, which gave me a bunch of MSBT files. Tried opening it in the MSBT Editor that brienj mentioned, but an error comes up saying they're not valid MSBT files. Opening them with a hex editor, I can see the word list inside. Assuming I can just edit everything manually, how would I then get this all to work in the game? Re-compress it somehow, and use sdcaffiine?

 

[Chuardo]

Guys, you can just play PictoParty, it's an eShop release of the same game that allows you to add new words as you please and has a bigger amount of words, and more options like different colors too.

 

[GameFreakDude]

I've been playing modded Game & Wario: Sketch for a while now. Besides the word list, I've also edited a bunch of the game's textures, sound effects, and music.

The actual word list is stored in "content/Common/Msg/US_English/msbt.warc.fzip/Dr_theme.msbt". Some other text the game uses is stored in Dr.msbt and Dr_dlg.msbt. The FZIP format is very simple:

Big endian format
0x4 'FZIP' identifier
0x4 Deflate stream size in bytes
... Deflate stream

I've been using a tool called "warcPack" posted here for extracting and injecting into the warc format. The tool MSBT Editor Reloaded can edit the MSBT files inside. Be aware that it doesn't handle Game & Wario's strings with coloured text correctly, so if you edit any of those, you'll need to hex the edited file to fix it.

The label names in Dr_theme are actually meaningful to the game. They look something like this: "0841_09_08_1", where the first number is the label's index, and the other three numbers seem to be categories of some sort, with each being a subset of the former. If you remake the MSBT file using the same category identifiers for each label, the game will pick two words at random, pick the first word, and then crash. Presumably, the game tries not to give you too many similar words in succession, but has no fallbacks in place if there aren't enough categories to work with.

MSBT Editor Reloaded's "XMSBT" import and export feature is critical for editing this large word list in any reasonable fashion. I made my own Python scripts for managing my own custom dictionaries and assembling them into an XMSBT file, which I import into MSBT Editor Reloaded to save an MSBT file.

Textures and sounds are stored in a few places:

• "content/Common/Lyt/ExpDr.lytarc.fzip" includes tutorial textures.
• "content/Common/Tex/" includes photo filter textures.
  
• "content/Draw/Lyt/Draw.lytarc.fzip" includes UI textures and some backgrounds (specifically for the drawing area, the setup and results screens, and the slideshow).
• "content/Draw/Lyt/" includes all 15 backgrounds used during gameplay, as well as three other interesting files: "ErsShape0.gtx.fzip", "PenColor.gtx.fzip", and "PenShape0.gtx.fzip". Perhaps the game was originally meant to have coloured pens and an eraser tool, but I imagine they were scrapped in favour of simplicity. I've never actually tried editing the PenShape0 file to see if it changes the pen shape in-game, but there's little reason to do so beyond curiosity.
  
• "content/MainMenu/Lyt/MainMenu_ENG.lytarc.fzip" includes textures for the main menu's game icons.
• "content/MgTitle/Lyt/MgTitle.lytarc.fzip" includes the textures used by the "cartridges" in the minigame intro screen.
• "content/MgTitle/Tex/Dr_Titl_US.gtx.fzip" is the background texture for Sketch's title screen (which I of course replaced with some of omardogan1976's Wario artwork).
• "content/Sound/SLATE_Sound.bfsar" contains all sound effects. The sound effect for pressing "START" on the game's title screen is part of GROUP_COMMON.
  
• "content/Sound/stream/bgm_draw*" is the background music.

I can't remember all the tools I used for editing these, but you can find tools online for several of these formats. I do remember Game & Wario's specific versions of these formats aren't handled properly by some tools, so I had to do some manual hex injections. Wexos's Toolbox was one tool I remember using.

 

[PutPasswordHere]

Thanks for the replies Chuardo and GameFreakDude. I wish I had known about PictoParty years ago. I'll probably buy that, but also try again to mod G&W using the help that GameFreakDude mentioned.

 

[HomeStarRunnerTron]

PictoParty is no longer available on the eShop, but you can get a copy through JNUSTool still! : ) It's strange-- the files for the words in PictoParty seem FAR less encrypted. All they are are JSONs-- but editing even ONE letter in a different order on any of these words completely breaks the game. Super-strange! And since Miiverse is down forever, no more custom dictionaries to download. : ( AND since I can't just paste in text into a JSON from my computer (I tried e-mailing Retroid, here's hoping for a response), no chance of making it easier for me. The best solution for me was to install to my USB, then plug in a USB keyboard, hahaha.

@GameFreakDude -- absolutely amazing work. Game & Wario (& perhaps Act It Out)'s pen tool is still the most responsive of the pen tools for Pictionary games. And a great deal of the layout of Game & Wario just can't be beat. So there's still a great deal of use for what you've done, even in 2019!! Excited to try this out for myself-- I have an 180-word list of Disney characters I'm dying to try out...

 

[Kompot]

All they are are JSONs-- but editing even ONE letter in a different order on any of these words completely breaks the game

Just create custom dictionary, do a backup of your saves and edit them on PC without any problems.