Smackdown! 2: Changing the select screen pics, version 1.0  by P.K

Stuff you need to do this:

A good HexEditor
TimRip Utility (included in this archive)
Tim-file Plugin for Photoshop or PaintShop Pro (included in this archive)
Adobe Photoshop 3.0+ OR Jasic PaintShop Pro 5.0+
CDMage 1.02b5
Smackdown! 2 CD

Save an image of your game using clone cd.

Use CdMage to extract the c2.pac file from the image.

Now we need to get the pictures formatted and saved right before they can be used. To do this we will need to be able to turn them into TIM files. Well, no program out there has native support for tims, but there is a plug in that works in PaintShop Pro and Photoshop that can read and write tims! (Which I have included in this archive, just extract it to the plugins directory of your photo editing software and the next time you run the program it should automatically be able to read and save tims!)

With your program, go find the pictures you saved earlier and open one of them. There are several ways you can clean up, edit and change the pics, but I won't go over that here. I'm just going to give the basic requirements for the select screen pictures and a few tips to make your images look better.

Inorder for the image to fit into the cd iso, it MUST be the following...

64 by 72 pixels
256 (8-bit) color

Now, when resizing your picture, I recommend changing the size before decreasing the color to 8bit. Why? Cause when your resizing, having more colors can help the image blend better and look less pixelated when its shrunk down. Also, try different kinds of resizing before saving the image. BiLinear gives a different look that something like SmartSample, which is different from Cubic, ect... find the one you like best, then decrease the color depth and get ready to save it as a tim...

You'll probably see a window popup asking for all kinds of info when you go to save your tim, don't panic! This is normal, but you have to get all these values right to match the picture you want to overwrite in the iso. If you don't, if your lucky it will just display wrong, if not you will trash the iso and have to start all over again, so pay attention.

In the TIM Format Output Options window, for Select screen pics, all the settings are the same no matter what pic you want to replace, they are as follows:

Image Data Modes
Select 8 bit CLUT

CLUT Section
Coordinate in VRAM
X: 0
Y: 0
Data size should automatically be
W: 256
H: 1

Pixel Data Section
Coordinate in VRAM
X: 0
Y: 0
Data Size should automatically be
W: 64
H: 72

If you don't want the image to look weird, DO NOT check either of the transparency options at the bottom

now click OK


Third Part:

Now you gotta get your tim file into the game itself. Since we can't recompile the game, what we have to do is manually insert the image into the iso. To make this process easier, the specific file we insert the pics into is C2.PAC. What we are going to do is use a hexeditor to open the file and manually put the data into it for the picture we want to replace. First though we need to check something.

Goto where you saved your new pictures and bring up the properties for each. Make sure they are all exactly 5,152 bytes long. Next we need to open C2.PAC with the hex editor. Once the file is open, goto the address for the pic you want to replace (some addresses will be put at the end of this doc) then select a block exactly 5,152bytes long. Now depending on your hex editor, you can either just import a file straight, or you will have to open it in another window and copy/paste it into that block as hex code.

Once you have done this for all the pictures you want to change, save the file (When you start doing this, it is highly recommended you backup your c2 file before trying this, then compare the size of both after you are done to make sure they are the same before importing it back into the iso using cdmage.) Save your changes and test it out in an emulator to see if it works.


How to get addresses of pics:

Use the TimRip program included in this archive to search through the C2.PAC file. Dump the tims to a directory then browse through there to find the pic you want to replace. Once you have done that, open the timrip.log file in notepad and search for the name of the file you want to change. This value is in Decimal, not Hex. Goto that address in your hex editor and follow the process above.

Any questions or comments? E-Mail Me!


