Wii Game file structure

[Jackhax]

I'm trying to datamine stats for mario super sluggers, and I've extracted files from the wbfs with wit, but now I'm lost. Is there an easier way to do this, or does anybody know the file structure? Any help would be appreciated!

 

[FAST6191]

Datamine? Curious choice of term there. Someone says datamine and I will assume they want to generate such things from play (usually people want to test how random is random).

Anyway games are often done in their own manner from the ground on up, the would be ROM hacker then gets to pull such things apart and figure it out. You can sometimes find stats via easier ways for big RPGs or something where stats can be modded or conform to some kind of pattern. For a sports game that does not have training or experience reflected in the stats that can be harder as most things are about modifying them and going from there. You might be able to find something by swapping out characters in play, or making a savestate before you start the game/character selection and then do the change/search/change/search/... method of finding cheats ( https://web.archive.org/web/20080309104350/http://etk.scener.org/?op=tutorial ).
I assume the file names have no particular indication as to what they are, or indeed are not (if you can eliminate files because they are the intro video, sound or something then don't look there). That said I would not be surprised to find such things in a game like this (15 or so max fixed characters) in the binary (code that the CPU runs) rather than some nice external table somewhere you can play with using a hex editor to do what you like.

The "proper" way to do it is tracing based upon some aspect that could more readily be found (I don't know what baseball, much less mario sports style, will have for stats). Jump height might speak literally to something on screen (3d or 2d makes a bit of a difference here) and if that is a stat you follow the calculations on jump height back through the code to see what generates the ultimate height (or gravity level or initial speed) and where it snatches the stat to go into that (this is also how people find stats that might be noted in the selection screen but are ultimately meaningless for the underlying game). The trouble comes in that this will involve you fiddling with assembly code which is a rather steep barrier to entry compared to a lot of other aspects of ROM hacking -- CPUs are not crazy complicated devices and instead perform big actions from a lot of very small steps, which you can read out and attempt to figure out what it is doing but among that will also be the housekeeping, other operations happening and whatever else that the nice programming languages handle for you. You will also struggle to go back to high level code from assembly (though it is possible with serious effort for usually older games -- the mario 64 decompilation being exactly this, though I doubt we will see anything for the Wii any time soon) so it will be necessary to play at such levels. A stats hack is probably not so bad on this front as you are literally operating within the game's own parameters.
You might get away with finding the one stat (see below for a bit more there) but you might also have to invent tests for each aspect of the setup and do it for all those. If the game has some kind of max stats cheat (or indeed min stats cheat) you might find something using that but also might not.

Stats themselves I tend to find use one of two approaches (plus derived -- you might not have max HP be a formal thing if such a thing is some kind of level multiplied by constitution multiplied by some perk plus a bit).
1) Every character has that particular stat in one table. Each stat usually then ends up one after the other in memory, also good if you have a rarely modified stat (say once every 5 levels) as you can probably find the others and realise that one is probably a short skip away.
2) Every character has their own list of stats, and usually in the same order as the game and each character then gets a separate list entry as it were. This is also the sort of thing you might be able to find with a so called relative search where you get some stats (presumably in whatever in game viewer of such things there is, but you might try saves), search for the relative numbers (searching for a list of specific numbers is doable enough, searching for a list of numbers with the same relative jump between them (3,5,7,8 and 4,6,8,9 have the same differences and thus the latter would pop out even if you did not know what the internal value it uses -- differences of one is quite possible too as many programming languages start to count at zero but as humans don't start counting at zero then yeah) is also doable and one of the primary ways people find text in games https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/513/ ) and have it pop out that way.
I have no particular notion of one being more common than the other in general or for a game like this. 2) is kind of more common these days where 1) was more popular back when but not by a lot and I can probably find many examples of each at all points in history of such things if necessary.

 

[Jackhax]

Wow, thanks! I think I'm going to experiment with wii scrubber, but I might resort to that

 

[FAST6191]

Wii scrubber will also pull apart the game into unencrypted versions of its component files but you are still going to be in the exact same position as you are now -- bunch of files with unknown data in them and you have to sort through names, extensions, sizes, directory names, headers and also play with file swaps, corruption, file analysis, region comparisons (stats might change between regions, see various hard mode vs international stuff in RPGs, but usually don't and thus what changes will usually be related to text, audio and relevant graphics and thus can eliminate some things there) or indeed go right for the good stuff and do tracing (other than some of the deep lore aspects of file analysis then again notable barrier to entry, though not insurmountable for a more contained idea like this -- start wanting to add new functionality or massively subvert existing and things get harder) to find the data in question.

Forgot to also say last time. If you can make custom players and set stats (or maybe have them assigned) you might be able to fish them out of saves and whatever is in the save is probably going to be broadly similar to whatever the game uses for the stock characters.

 

[Jackhax]

Thanks!