Menace of Axis V Character Mod Tutorial

1. Open up PPSSPP go to settings, tools, developer tools and enable save new textures, and replace textures. New textures from the game will now show up in Users\Username\Documents\PPSSPP\PSP\TEXTURES\ULJS00178\new

2. Find the character you want to replace the texture of, take into account that with the battle portraits your replacement will have to fit the silhouette of the original character or it will be missing chunks of your replacment.

3. Open the game and get the image of the character you picked to show up in game, the texture file for that character will then show up in the new folder, it will begin with 041a4000 for the info portrait and 09cd6b30 for the battle portrait. Take note of the original file name of these images.

4. Open up the texture file in a image editor, I'm using GIMP for this guide.

5. The picture will probably show up blank to get it to show up in GIMP, right click, Colors, Components, Decompose (select RBGA) you should then see a black and white version of the image with 4 layers with the alpha layer selected right click, Colors, Invert, then Colors, Components, Compose and you should now see the image, remove the black background with the magic wand tool.

6. Edit the image in whatever way you want, if you are doing the info profile image take note that the bottom right corner of the image should be cut out to match the rest of the games images.

7. If you are editing a battle portrait the texture will have the image split into different pieces, what I do is take a completed edited or completely new image and cut it into pieces to fit the split up image, if you want the mouth flaps to match you have to make sure the character's mouth is in around the same spot as the original. You should check the replaced image in game while you do this to make sure everything lines up right check the next steps to see how.

8. When done with your edited texture or if you just want to see it in game to help edit it export it as a .png file in the Users\Username\Documents\PPSSPP\PSP\TEXTURES\ULJS00178 folder make sure save the colors of transparent pixels is not selected.

9. Open up Textures.ini and paste the name of the original info portrait or batlle portrait file replace the last 8 characters with zeroes then ' = filename.png' example 041a4000986889ee00000000 = Mallet.png .
	With with the info portrait images copy paste that first line you made 3 more times, but replace the first 8 characters with the
    following for each  0411c000, 04192000, 0412e000.

	With the battle portraits copy paste the first line you made 2 more times, but replace the first 8 characters with the following
    09c8c080, 09cac090.

10. Restart the game and the images should now be replaced, as mentioned before you should use the ingame images to see how well everything looks and lines up. I usually create save states make a change in the files, save then load the state to see the change. I usually do this over and over for each small change to make sure everything looks right.

Tip: When using an image from outside the game for creating a texture I trace every line in the image in black paintbrush or pencil, then blur the inside lines while keeping the lines for the character's silhouette unblurred this usually gets the image much closer to the look of the other game images while also making details easier to see.

Tip: When editing a battle portrait I usually make it by overlaying the whole edited image with each section, mess with opactiy settings to see where over the original im putting it, then when its in the proper place I cut out the parts that aren't being used for that section

Tip: For the animated mouths you can remove the skin around them in the texture so you only have the mouth image placed ontop of the image instead of the entire area around the mouth. Then I usually try editing the original mouth to fit the new character.

Tip: If using traditional methods to recolor an image isn't working you can try my insane method, create a layer for each color you will be replacing, then draw in each color on those individual layers over the image. I usually keep a line outline layer at the very top over everything else, then when done, blur the lines and the area between colors to make it look like it blends together.