NBA Showtime Hacking for N64

[glitchrichmond]

Hey everyone,

I'm not a really experienced hacker (edited some NES and Genesis games) but I've been messing with NBA Showtime for N64 for about the last month or so, with the intention of updating the rosters and adding some legends.

I Hit jaker3 up a little over a week ago about potentially getting some help/tips on my NBA Showtime hacking quest. He was very helpful and also suggested that I post a topic on this board so here it goes:

I've begun creating a file on google docs to keep track of my findings. I'm happy to share that info with anyone who is interested. I still have a ways to go as far as logging addresses for everything but I have a good chunk figured out. Basically, I can edit player names, most attributes, team names and abbreviations and player appearances (change in game models, not replace textures).

Using Texture64 v0.1.1 I've been able to edit and replace jersey textures. They are CI4 and I had to locate the palletes, but it worked. I've attached some pics of the Rockets uniforms.

The other textures in the game are compressed and with jaker3's help I was able to decompress and locate the face textures for players (these are also CI4) and court textures. To find these I used Universal N64 Compressor and Zoinkity's EDL decompressor tool. I still don't have a way of inserting edited ones back into the game though.

I still haven't located some player attributes. Each player has 3 hidden attributes (pass, rebound and clutch). Also, I haven't been able to figure out how to change a player's dominant hand. There are a few lefty's in the game and I'm not sure where that value is.

I'm pretty happy with where I'm at right now and if I'm never able to find more info then so be it. That said, if people are interested in having a look and possibly lending a hand that would be awesome!

Thanks everyone!

[jaker3]

Hey glitchrichmond!,

Glad you got the EDL compression all figured out. Do you know how the file table is laid out in this game? if its similar to NFL Blitz I'm sure I can help out with reinserting the file. What location does the start of the files occur?


Thanks,
Jake

[glitchrichmond]

So I honestly know nothing about file tables... When the EDL Decompressor spits out a series of files are those named after the location of that file? For example, I believe the first head file I have is CF076. It looks to be a secret player's head. Now I'm fairly positive that the heads are in alphabetical order based on initial. After 2 secret heads to start off I get: Alan Henderson (D4A0E) followed by Allan Houston (D5D26) followed by Anfernee Hardaway (D35BE). If I were to make a list of the filenames for these heads does that help??

Thanks so much for taking the time man!

[jaker3]

I'll take a look at this sometime this week. Do any of the programs your currently using support compressing the file with EDL or just decompressing?

Thanks,
Jake

[glitchrichmond]

That would be great, thank you!! So, I don't believe any of the programs I have now support compressing EDL files.

[jaker3]

I've reached out to Zoinkity who has helped a lot with the Blitz hacking project. If the file table works similar to NFL blitz I should be able to come up with something.

[jaker3]

Which files specifically are you trying to replace?

[glitchrichmond]

I know this is very overdue but, I've been trying to chip away at this lately. I've found almost all the values for editing a player that I can. I can also decompress the game with GEDecompressor. It gives me all of the files that the EDL decompressor did and allows me to compress and inject graphic files back into the game. The problem I'm running across now is that when I edit the .bin files that GEDecompressor spits out (in Texture64) and try injecting them back into the game, the game freezes when it tries to load the edited texture.

Honestly, I would love to be able to edit all the graphics files in the game but even just being able to edit player faces would be pretty cool. The player faces are all 6-7KB files that are spit out of GEDecompressor. I know I'm way late on this so I understand if the window is closed, so to speak. Thanks for all the help Jaker!

[jaker3]

Hey glitchrichmond,

Are the files the same size as the ones being replaced? When does it crash? on load or on the part that would load the newly inserted image?

[glitchrichmond]

Thanks for the reply Jaker!

So, that's where I'm running into an issue. Even with an unedited file (replacing a file with itself) in GEDecompressor, the program tells me the file I am injecting is too big. I've tried replacing a file with a significantly smaller head texture and I don't get the message but the game locks up. The game is only crashing when it tried to load the new image. So for these head files, I can select the players and it freezes on the transition window into gameplay.

[jaker3]

Hmm, could u give me a few example images and which ones your trying to replace? I'll see if I can get anything working. I wonder if there is any header on these images.