Super Robot Wars GC Rebuild Guide

Super Robot Wars GC Rebuild Guide
-----------------------------------

Here's a (hopefully) easy to follow guide on how to put edited files into the game.

First of all, you're gonna need a clean (unaltered) ISO of the game and the program GameCube Rebuilder. The latter can be found here:

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/619/

You'll have to extract all files from the ISO with GCR to a folder of your choice.


* Extracting files with GameCube Rebuilder
-------------------------------------------

1) In the program, go to "Image -> Open..." and browse for your clean ISO.

2) The contents of the ISO will be displayed on the right panel of the program. Right-click on "root" and select "Export...", then the folder where you want all the files dumped.

3) Done.


Once you have extracted the game's files, you'll have to replace some of those and then rebuild the game into a new ISO file. I'll tell you how to rebuild the game first, since we've brought up GCR already.


* Rebuilding an ISO with GameCube Rebuilder
--------------------------------------------

0) If you're still seeing the contents of the ISO from the previous step, go to "Image -> Close".

1) Go to "Root -> Open..." and browse for the folder where you extracted the content of the ISO (root). Again, the game files will be shown in the right panel.

2) Go to "Root -> Save..." and choose the path and name of the ISO you'll be rebuilding. This step doesn't create the ISO.

3) Go to "Root -> Rebuild". This does create the file where you specified in the previous step.

4) Wait for it to finish and you're done. If any of the files is open in another program, you'll get error warnings.



Now that we know how to use GCR, let's get to inserting edited stuff. First of all, go to http://mediafire.com/srwgc and locate the program SRW GC Bin Splitter under "Hacking Tools (For Staff)/General Purpose/".

The Bin Splitter is your friend. It's used with many of the files we'll be editing to either extract their contents (split them) or join those contents back together into the original file (merge them). Instructions for using the program are inside its readme file and are pretty easy, so I won't stop there.

If you're using Windows, I recommend creating BAT files with the necessary split / merge commands wherever you're meant to do those operations to save some time.

The files we'll be replacing in the ISO are the following:

- Start.dol
- add00dat.bin
- add01dat.bin
- add02dat.bin
- bpilot.pak
- pilotinfo.bin

All of these will be found, in one form or another, under "Edited Files" in the mediafire folder. Let's see what to do with each one of them.

* NOTE: Always keep a backup of these original files somewhere, just in case.


* Replacing Start.dol
----------------------

Simply replace the one in "root/&&SystemData" with the one in the mediafire folder.

Stard.dol contains the game's code and many strings of text. Whenever the VWF routine is implemented, it will be in this file.


* Replacing add00dat.bin
-------------------------

1) Download the latest ZIP (or 7-Zip) file(s) from "Edited Files/add00dat.bin files". It will (probably) contain BM6, BM9, SCR and SPR files.

2) Split the add00dat.bin file you extracted from your clean ISO.

3) Extract the files from the ZIP(s) you downloaded into the folder where you splitted add00dat.bin (typically, "add00dat_extract") and say yes when asked to overwrite files.

4) Merge the splitted (and overwritten files) into a new add00dat.bin (inside "add00dat_extract").

5) Replace the originally extracted add00dat.bin with the one you just created.

add00dat.bin contains most of the game's 2D graphics like the intro, the stage titles or many things from the menus.


* Replacing add01dat.bin
-------------------------

1) Download the latest ZIP (or 7-Zip) file(s) from "Edited Files/add01dat.bin files". It will contain a lot of BIN files.

2) Split the add01dat.bin file you extracted from your clean ISO.

3) Extract the files from the ZIP(s) you downloaded into the folder where you splitted add01dat.bin (typically, "add01dat_extract") and say yes when asked to overwrite files.

4) Merge the splitted (and overwritten files) into a new add01dat.bin (inside "add01dat_extract").

5) Replace the originally extracted add01dat.bin with the one you just created.

add01dat.bin contains the stage scripts, that is, the story segments of the game.


* Replacing add02dat.bin
-------------------------

Simply replace the add02dat.bin you extracted (in "root") with the one in the mediafire folder.

add02dat.bin contains many names and descriptions used in the game and has influence on the in-memory location of the custom font we're using in the game.

That means that if add02dat.bin is updated, you'll be told to update Start.dol as well and, if VWF isn't implemented yet, change some of the AR Codes you'll see later.


* Replacing bpilot.pak
-------------------------

1) Download the latest ZIP (or 7-Zip) file(s) from "Edited Files/bpilot.pak files". It will contain a lot of BIN and TXT files.

2) Split the bpilot.pak file you extracted from your clean ISO.

3) Extract the files from the ZIP(s) you downloaded into the folder where you splitted bpilot.pak (typically, "bpilot_extract") and say yes when asked to overwrite files.

4) Merge the splitted (and overwritten files) into a new bpilot.pak (inside "bpilot_extract").

5) Replace the originally extracted bpilot.pak with the one you just created.

bpilot.pak contains many files related to the pilots. The ones we'll be editing here will be their battle quotes. You can see the original and translated quotes in the TXT files (the ones that will be inserted are in the BIN files).


* Replacing pilotinfo.bin
--------------------------

Simply replace the pilotinfo.bin you extracted (in "root") with the one in the mediafire folder.

pilotinfo.bin originally contains data related to the pilots (probably their skills and stats), but we're using this file to piggyback other data into the game, namely a custom font and most of the strings of text that are originally inside Start.dol.

That means that if pilotinfo.bin is updated, you'll be told to update Start.dol as well.



Now that you've replaced all files properly, rebuild the game into a new ISO with GCR.

If we've already implemented VWF, you can run the game in Dolphin already. If that's not the case, you'll need to apply some AR Codes to the game for it to display the text *almost* as it's meant to be, so keep reading.


* Applying Action Replay Codes in Dolphin
------------------------------------------

If you're wondering how to apply an Action Replay (AR) code to a game in Dolphin, here's how:

1) Open Dolphin (duh)

2) Go to "Options -> Configure" and tick the "Enable Cheats" option in the "General" tab.

3) In the list of games, right-click on the game you want to apply an AR code to and select "Properties".

4) Go to the "AR Codes" tab and click on "Add...".

5) In the pop-up window, write a title for the code and the code itself, then click OK. Remember that a code is a set of pairs of 8 hexadecimal digits each (for example: 01234567 89abcdef).

6) Your code will be added to the list, checked. A checked code means it's active.

7) When you're done adding codes, click on close.

8) Play the game.

Remember that, if you have several versions of the same game in your game list in Dolphin, the codes will apply to all of them, not just the one you right-clicked on.

The codes you'll need to use are the following:

// Use custom font (add02dat(v5).bin)
004040EC 00000080
004040ED 0000009D
004040EE 00000071
004040EF 00000020

004040F0 00000080
004040F1 0000009D
004040F2 000000D5
004040F3 000000B4

004040F4 00000080
004040F5 0000009E
004040F6 00000054
004040F7 0000008C

00404100 00000080
00404101 0000009E
00404102 000000B1
00404103 00000070

0040413C 00000080
0040413D 0000009E
0040413E 000000E7
0040413F 000000E4

00404140 00000080
00404141 0000009F
00404142 00000036
00404143 000000B4

//Set font width to 9 (half)
00367C27 00000009

//Use 4 lines of text during mission dialogues
0004B83F 00000016

//Faster battle text
0022CF9B 00000001

With those active, you can start playing normally.

Don't forget to deactivate these codes when VWF gets implemented!