Metroid Prime hacking research

Edit history:

Aruki: 2015-10-06 04:18:18 am

Aruki: 2015-10-06 03:45:54 am

2015-10-06 03:37:19 am

So I know there's a lot of people who read this thread who are interested in updates on PWE, and I feel like I should probably give you all a heads up. About that "end of the year" target...

As a result of the work I've been doing on PWE, I was recently approached by an indie developer with a job offer to work on a game with them as a programmer, and I took it. I don't know if this is a permanent position yet, so I don't want to go into too much detail on the game/developer yet.

Unfortunately that does kinda leave me with a lot less free time to work on PWE for at least the next month or so, and possibly longer. That "end of the year" target might not really be realistic anymore. I've put about a year and a half of work into PWE so far, and I have no intention of seeing all that work go to waste, but I think understandably my new job needs to take priority, especially right now as it's new and I'm still trying to learn the ropes. Once I get past that part, I can try figuring out how to continue work on the editor. If it ends up getting to the point that I just simply can't work on it anymore, I will probably open source it so others can contribute. Either way, I still fully intend to release something, so don't worry too much.

So I know there's a lot of people who read this thread who are interested in updates on PWE, and I feel like I should probably give you all a heads up. About that "end of the year" target...

As a result of the work I've been doing on PWE, I was recently approached by an indie developer with a job offer to work on a game with them as a programmer, and I took it. I don't know if this is a permanent position yet, so I don't want to go into too much detail on the game/developer yet.

Unfortunately that does kinda leave me with a lot less free time to work on PWE for at least the next month or so, and possibly longer. That "end of the year" target might not really be realistic anymore. I've put about a year and a half of work into PWE so far, and I have no intention of seeing all that work go to waste, but I think understandably my new job needs to take priority, especially right now as it's new and I'm still trying to learn the ropes. Once I get past that part, I can try figuring out how to continue work on the editor. If it ends up getting to the point that I just simply can't work on it anymore, I will probably open source it so others can contribute. Either way, I still fully intend to release something, so don't worry too much.

BioSpark

Edit history:

BioSpark: 2015-10-06 06:46:55 am

2015-10-06 06:02:13 am

wow, congrats! take your time on the editor. it's worth the wait.

now if only that could happen to me as a result of my gba metroid editor ... :P

MrSpEeDrUn

2015-10-06 11:41:06 am

MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning

That sounds good for you, you can earn a crapton of money, better focus on that. I wish you the best of luck working on your games.

jackoalan

2015-10-07 04:06:41 pm

ooo, exciting news Parax!

those devs are lucky to have found someone with your expertise and dedication (with a year and a half of posts to prove it)

UchihaSasuke

2015-10-08 01:04:42 am

my umbrella goes directly to Bankai

whoa. that's pretty good.

even if the editor isn't finished, it's already done a really big thing for you parax. eventually you might get to make an editor for a brand new game made by the studio you work with.

The Many Faces of Space Pirate Morphology (Non-Log).txt

Edit history:

Odylg: 2015-10-19 12:48:59 am

2015-10-19 12:46:11 am

I run this here hotel of an evening

How does spacejump work? Is it a memory address that increments by 1 when you collect sjb? Mainly I'm wondering if it'd be possible to hack in an extra jump. Could that be done with a hex edit or would it require ASM?

On another matter, Ive gotten started organizing the STRGs. Finished sorting by pak, now to do by type.
2 of the 3 txt files ive included show what i mean when i say 'organize'. The 3rd is just a table of duplicates and which paks they're in. Speaking of which, did retro really need 55 duplicate STRGs (if I counted right/didn't miss any)? Or ones with different names but the same text?

Also, Spank Weed lmao (aa54eb36.STRG metroid5.pak)

attachments:

Dupes.txt

Metroid1 STRGs.txt

Edit history:

Antidote: 2015-10-20 02:10:20 am

Antidote: 2015-10-20 02:09:40 am

2015-10-20 02:07:35 am

@Odlyg, I'm not entirely sure, that's definitely something worth looking into.

On another note, I found the locations for the world pak limit in both NTSC(0-00) and PAL binaries.

NTSC-U (0-00): 0x1B8C
PAL : 0x204C

At both locations you should see 0x2C1D0009, that is machine code for "cmpwi r29, 9"
If you change 0x0009 you can change the number of paks the game can load, but you have to be careful, since Retro used a hard coded literal, and not a constant it's a signed 16bit integer, so that limits the number of paks you can load, but it's still ridiculously high (32,767 paks max)

2015-10-20 04:29:50 am

Quote from Odylg:

How does spacejump work? Is it a memory address that increments by 1 when you collect sjb? Mainly I'm wondering if it'd be possible to hack in an extra jump. Could that be done with a hex edit or would it require ASM?

Basically whenever you get a new upgrade it increments two numbers - your total capacity for that inventory slot and your current ammo count for that slot. For instance, when you get a missile expansion, it increments your missile capacity + ammo count by 5. It works the same way for other upgrade types - when you get Space Jump it increments your Space Jump capacity by 1 and increments your Space Jump ammo count by 1. The limit for each slot is hardcoded. Missiles are obviously capped at 250, whereas other upgrades are usually capped at 1.

As far as how Space Jump itself works I believe there's a variable somewhere that Miles found that tracks Samus's current jump state. I think the different states are "on the ground"/"in the air and can space jump"/"in the air and can't space jump"/"in the air and has space jumped". Don't quote me on that, I'm not totally sure. In any case, you would have to modify the code that handles that to add a third jump.

[quote="Odylg"]How does spacejump work? Is it a memory address that increments by 1 when you collect sjb? Mainly I'm wondering if it'd be possible to hack in an extra jump. Could that be done with a hex edit or would it require ASM?[/quote]

Basically whenever you get a new upgrade it increments two numbers - your total capacity for that inventory slot and your current ammo count for that slot. For instance, when you get a missile expansion, it increments your missile capacity + ammo count by 5. It works the same way for other upgrade types - when you get Space Jump it increments your Space Jump capacity by 1 and increments your Space Jump ammo count by 1. The limit for each slot is hardcoded. Missiles are obviously capped at 250, whereas other upgrades are usually capped at 1.

As far as how Space Jump itself works I believe there's a variable somewhere that Miles found that tracks Samus's current jump state. I think the different states are "on the ground"/"in the air and can space jump"/"in the air and can't space jump"/"in the air and has space jumped". Don't quote me on that, I'm not totally sure. In any case, you would have to modify the code that handles that to add a third jump.

2015-10-20 07:37:33 am

I run this here hotel of an evening

So, on Echoes if I use IS to get seekers (no reason to, it was just a random experiment) I end up with the seeker function but NOT the +5 missiles that're supposed to come with it. Are seekers part of a seeker/missile tank combo or something?

32,767? That's not nearly enough! I need at least 50k paks loaded

2015-10-20 09:56:53 am

Yeah. Seekers are not the same inventory slot as missiles, so the +5 doesn't come from the Seekers pickup itself. There's a SpecialFunction that triggers when you collect them that's supposed to give you 5 missiles. I guess IS avoids triggering it somehow.

2015-10-20 11:16:24 am

Also Spank Weed is the internal name for Reaper Vine. The STRG file you mentioned is assigned as the scan text for Omega Pirate's Phazon healing nodules for some reason.

Bearborg

2015-10-20 01:59:00 pm

@Odylg, the duplicate STRGs in world paks are due to the fact that the game only ever has one world pak open at a time. If you're in the Phazon Mines (metroid5), it can't read data from the Chozo Ruins (Metroid2). As a result, STRGs are duplicated in world paks as necessary, as are other files like models and animations. Retro did that deliberately to make loading quicker, at the cost of disc space.

What gets REALLY crazy is the fact that they also duplicate files within paks. If a resource's location on disc is too far away from something that depends on it, they just duplicate that resource on disc. There can be dozens of duplicate resources in a single pak. Paktool doesn't bother extracting those duplicates, though.

2015-10-20 05:27:55 pm

I run this here hotel of an evening

Ah, I didn't know about the "only one world pak at a time" thing. Makes sense

Edit history:

Antidote: 2015-10-20 06:01:08 pm

Antidote: 2015-10-20 06:00:42 pm

2015-10-20 05:57:51 pm

Yeah, the way the game handles transitioning between worlds is via an object called a "WorldTransporter", and there are actually 2 (0x52, and 0x62), both virtually identical. When that object is triggered it cues CWorldTransManager with the target MLVL and MREA ids as well as a few other settings. CWorldTransManager then informs the engine that it needs to load those IDs and that causes it to unload the current world pak, and load the pak that contains the target MLVL.

Also, while MP doesn't do this, you can technically have more than one world in a single pak, they started doing this with MP3 due to how progression works.

2015-10-20 06:34:58 pm

yeah, I stuck Chozo and Magmoor in the same pak a while ago as a test. Worked out fine.

2015-10-20 07:27:22 pm

Good to know my observations were right in practice as well as theory, I saw that the code allowed it, but I hadn't gotten around to actually testing it.

2015-10-24 06:13:49 am

I run this here hotel of an evening

This may not be the best place to ask a corruption question. Then again maybe it is. Credits and Vouchers the player collects would be in the save file right? So if one wanted to:

Give themselves a bunch of friend credits, or exchange their vouchers w/o needing another Wii or internet. I already have the "fresh" save with the 15 friend credits and no other progress. I'm sure ASM can do it but i was hoping for something simpler like a hex edit. Something I could do without my brain melting.

2015-10-24 06:41:51 am

If you already have a fresh save with 15 friend vouchers then what do you need a hack for?

2015-10-24 10:36:25 am

I run this here hotel of an evening

For not having to start over all over. Plus I like the idea of hacking the prime games

Edit history:

Antidote: 2015-10-25 09:15:09 pm

2015-10-25 09:11:38 pm

Alright, we've been planning on doing this for a while but Jack, bear and I have setup a set of spreadsheets to manage UniqueID -> Filename relations that can be used to replace IDs with human readable names.

MP1: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aUVW0zsi6-ERElP8yYOrObUT9-HCOi0ykY0BOFw0fDs
MP2: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nsl-MKe0odng6sUxo9xXT4kfiypLTaMQwOScQGwUL7g
MP3: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vxtJ7lix8B3RxxLeOCiSA_I0yfyPgDSjbJivVXKIEak

If you wish to have write access, send me a PM with your email and I'll add you. (Parax that definitely includes you)

EDIT: I forgot to mention that we have specific criteria for filenames:
Names must contain
1) alpha numeric
2) no spaces
3) no special chars except for '_', '.', and '-'

jackoalan

2015-10-26 12:11:00 am

Yea, eventually these spreadsheets will enable filename substitution for any tools that work with the individual resources.

Having this info crowd-sourced is essential, since the first game has around 20K unique resource files!

2015-10-26 12:33:12 am

Have you given any thought to consistent naming conventions? eg having common terms for textures to denote diffuse map, light map, etc?

Edit history:

Antidote: 2015-10-26 12:48:08 am

2015-10-26 12:47:18 am

sort of, it's definitely a WIP and will need some refining.

Since lightmaps are generally unique, I think we can safely name them automatically with a generic naming scheme.