So I wanted to try my hand at a very minor RF4 mod (nothing special, just a few images) and found a bit of a brick wall. While the .bctex format seems to be rather well known for the most part and about as close to a "standard" as you get in custom console SDKs or whatever, it's surprisingly hard to find anything that will actually modify the files. A number of things (including, interestingly, Switch Toolbox) can read them to extract, but almost nothing can actually import or save any changes. I searched quite a bit and the only thing I could find was Every File Explorer (which really was intended to extract only, but now seems to have a save for this format.) Unfortunately it presents two problems. First, when I import a replacement image the quality is horrible. I'm aware that the image compression is already lossy and it's going from lossy to lossy, but the import function is far worse than this would produce. Second, the output files crash the game (actually, the whole system) on my real 3DS or don't show up at all in Citra3DS. When I was searching for a tool to do this I ran across the BCTex Recreate tool and the implication there is Every File Explorer may not be rewriting the files correctly, so I tried using it, but it didn't change anything -- still crash on the real 3DS and empty in Citra3DS.
I know that fans have done a few mods on the game in the past including the undub which did include texture changes, so I know it is possible to modify game textures, but I just seem to either be doing something wrong or using the wrong tools. Does anyone know what I'm missing?
EDIT: So I managed to get one test image to work, but so far nothing else has. I guess that does confirm that the process is possible at least, though it also sort of makes it even more confusing that it seems to not work any other time. I think maybe it may have something to do with needing to save the PNG a certain way before importing. I had removed all metadata when saving one test image and it seemed to work, but then I did that with the others and they didn't, so it must have been something more than just that.
I know that fans have done a few mods on the game in the past including the undub which did include texture changes, so I know it is possible to modify game textures, but I just seem to either be doing something wrong or using the wrong tools. Does anyone know what I'm missing?
EDIT: So I managed to get one test image to work, but so far nothing else has. I guess that does confirm that the process is possible at least, though it also sort of makes it even more confusing that it seems to not work any other time. I think maybe it may have something to do with needing to save the PNG a certain way before importing. I had removed all metadata when saving one test image and it seemed to work, but then I did that with the others and they didn't, so it must have been something more than just that.
Last edited by Nazosan,
