Editing a Stage: The Fundamentals

[WarioManX]

The purpose of this tutorial is to teach you how to modify the data of already-existing stages. No making or importing here, you're just fixing it! ("fixing" subject to opinion) Even someone completely new to the concept of Stage hacking can follow along and get into the game! If you completely understand everything here then you can put the finishing touches on any stage. But more importantly, the techniques demonstrated below are fundamental to making or importing a stage; if you want to go far in Stage hacking you must know this.

Everything explained here I learned on my own just by poking around Stage PAC files. If I can figure it out without any help or tutorials, it can't be that hard!

Thanks to Mewtwo2000 for letting me use the stage in this tutorial! A single stage that fits all 4 things I wanted to cover? HELL YES! They also deserve your download because the stage is just that awesome! Seriously, you can't beat the classics, especially when they get makeovers!

What you need to follow this tutorial:
BrawlBox
BrawlWall (installation required)
A photo-editing program (MS Paint works)
The stage used for this tutorial

All four parts of this tutorial are meant to be followed in succession. You can skip past a part if you feel you already know enough but some information does carry from part to part that may cause you to feel lost, I don't recommend it.

At the end of each part I'll have a video of me playing the stage on Brawl+ so you can see what it should be like at that time. It'd be a good idea to test yours out as well so you can see if they match.

Part 0: Getting Started

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Part 1: Static Collisions

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Onto the next Collision Object. Here the only boxes are directly above the stage.



These outline the bumper from Super Smash Bros. 64. However, it wasn't imported, with no plans to do so. Thus, we don't need these boxes. There are two ways to get rid of them! The first is to select them and press "Delete" to remove them. You can delete them all at once this way by highlighting them all and hitting Delete once like in the example below.



A good thing to note: Vertices shouldn't be deleted separately. Delete the Collision boxes instead. When a box is deleted the vertices will remain IF still connected to another box. If you delete a single vertex in between two others, the boxes will merge together, you don't want this unless they're already in a straight line. Also, you cannot delete a single selected vertex if there's only one connected vertex that isn't connected to anything others.

Look at the picture above, I've highlighted all but the top vertex. When I hit delete all but that one AND the one connected to it. Understand? A vertex cannot be stand-alone, it MUST be connected to another vertex.

Back to removing the bumber Collisions boxes. We could delete the boxes by highlighting and deleting them all way ~OR~ since these are the only Collisions in this Object, we can delete the Object itself!



Technically we're done here, but we're going to look at the other Collision Objects to see what's in them. DON'T DO ANYTHING TO THEM!

The next two objects each have Collision boxes for one of the ramps in the air.
After that is the set of Floors on the top fall-through platform.
Finally we have two triangles within the the stage.

The two triangles within the final Collision Object are animated with ledges; they give ledges to the middle floor, and only when the moving bottom platform is completely on the opposite side. When you're done looking at them close the preview box.

For the last bit of Part 1 you're going to go go into the other two COLL files and repeat everything we've done in this one. There are two differences between the first COLL file and the other two. First is the absence of the last Collision Object, the one with the triangles. The other difference can be seen in the image below.



Notice the difference? Here, let's compare them.



You'll need to create an additional Collision box on each side to cover the lower corners like in the first COLL file. This will prevent players from getting stuck while trying to recover. Don't forget to properly identify them as walls with "No Walljump". This may seem pointless since these particular corners only exist when covered by the bottom moving platform, but you're learning so buck up and get it done! Practice makes perfect!


This part on Static Collisions is complete!
(in case you're wondering, this is by far the longest of the four parts of this tutorial)

Post-Collisions Video

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Part 2: Model Textures

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Don't worry about any of the information about the textures, they only thing we're modifying is the texture itself. Right-Click a texture file and you'll see the options "Export" and "Replace" at the top. We're going to export the ramp's textures. The recommended format to export to is PNG; they are relatively small and support transparency, which is a must for Brawl textures.



You should now close the Preview and the other copy of BrawlBox; you can't do any saving while this second copy is open and we don't need it anymore.

Now lets load our textures into our image-editing program! I'm using Photoshop but you can use whatever you want, the purpose is to make a significant modification that is easy to see. I'll include what I do so you can see every step I perform.



For the first image we're going to take an image of Peach and using the Magic Eraser Tool...



We'll fast-render her!



A couple things to note about the Magic Eraser Tool:

• It deletes every connected pixel of a single color, varying a slight shade difference
• If you look closely at Peach's right hand part of it is now missing; there wasn't enough shadowy shade between her hand and the background to distinguish a difference
• • To avoid this I could've removed a small outline around those fingers using the Lasso Tool and "Delete"; a lack of pixels will also count as a different color for the Magic Eraser Tool

Now we'll just use the Move Tool to pull Peach onto the texture. With the difference in sizes we can center her face!



For the next texture we'll change the texture completely. Let's use the Gradent Tool to create a colored shading effect. Just Left-Click Drag from the lower left corner to the opposite corner to get a result similar to below:



If you're dealing with symmetrical textures you probably won't know which side of a texture start where on a model. To figure out which side is which it's a good idea to make a texture that ISN'T symmetrical, like the two above.

We're done modifying them, so let's get them into the stage! Save new modified textures then replace the original textures in BrawlBox.



Whenever you replace textures you should make sure they're the same size as the original. There's a risk that a file that's too large will cause a Wii to freeze. When it comes to character textures make sure to leave any transparency in place. You may get some... interesting... results otherwise.

The last thing to do is make sure it worked. Select "Preview All Models" at the core of the stage file and look at the ramps. You should find it worked, though mine look silly.



One more piece of information about Exporting and Replacing: if you play a different version of Brawl (like Vanilla Brawl, Balanced Brawl, Project M, and Brawl +/-) and you see a cool stage texture on a stage for a different version, you can make your version look just as good very easily! Simply right-click the TextureData Resource Files in the stage you're taking textures from and select "Export", then Replace the same files in the stage you want them in!

For example: I Exported "TextureData[0]" from THIS stage, creating "TextureData[0].brres", then used it to Replace "TextureData[0]" on THIS stage. Doing so I created HD Green Hill Zone 2.5!


This part on Model Textures is complete!

Post-Textures Video

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Part 3: Model Removal

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Click the "+" sign to open the Resource File and you'll find two folders, "3DModels(NW4R)" and "AnmChr(NW4R)". AnmChr is Animation data for the models in the Resource File, which is beyond this tutorial. (get the feeling I've said that a lot?) 3DModels is just what it says, it's holds the models themselves. Open it up and you'll see some MDL0 files; each hold a separate model.



Remember the name of the textures for the ramps? "Side1" and "Side2". Well here there are only 7 MDL0s, Static, 4 Sides, and 2 MShadows; it's pretty obvious which ones we want. However, there's only 2 ramps and 4 files... let's rinse and repeat our last process! Preview each model so we can find out know exactly what's in them.

You should find that Sides 1 & 3 have the backside of the each ramp while 2 & 4 have the flat sides, but the other 3 models seem to have nothing.











Now that we've found exactly what we were looking for the next step is the delete the Side models!



This isn't the end of it; there's two more things we must do before this tutorial is complete. If we were to enter this stage in game right now the essence of the ramps will still be there. What I mean is that there's still Collision Data for the ramps so players could be effected by ramps they can't see. Or partially; shadows of players will still appear on top of the nonexistent ramps. We still need to remove these before the ramps are completely gone.

The shadows are the reason we went to delete models instead of textures. They're generated using the "MShadow" models. Same procedure as before, delete them! With those gone only "Static" should remain. Leave it, it's really doing nothing now but it's important to keep. I'll explain why later.



Note: Shadows can be generated different ways; that was the easiest of them. You can trust most if not all stages done or modified by Mewtwo2000 to have shadows like that.

Now let's go back to the Collision Data. You'll need to go into all the COLL files and remove the Collision boxes for both ramps. You can either delete the boxes themselves or their Collision Objects, it's up to you.




This part on Model Removal is complete!

Post-Removal Video

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Part 4: Boundaries

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And we're finished! That wasn't so hard now was it? If you followed everything correctly, your Stage PAC should be very similar to the "small" version of THIS!

There's also one more thing that you can do that's simple and can make stages prettier; casting shadows! Making shadows cast from fighters is actually pretty easy, but rather then add it to this long-ass tutorial I'll just refer you to God's Mewtwo2000's Tutorial on it. Check it out then try modifying the shadows on the center platform, see what different types of shadows you can come up with, you may find a form you really like.

Don't stop here, feel free to experiment with the stage and see what else you can come up with. Try out new textures, different boundary settings, strange collisions! Grab some more stages and do what you can to them too! Practice makes perfect!

Again, don't stop here! Once you've gotten comfortable with these small-time hacks, move on to the next level! Check out LegacyWolf's Tutorial on OBJ importing and you'll be on your way towards high-level importing! Check out Chuy's Tutorial too, it has a lot of good information about the files we saw in BrawlBox, as well as a walkthrough for swapping backgrounds between stages!

And remember, if you find something you don't know about and can't find a tutorial on, ask around! There are plenty of people here that have a black belt are masters in stage hacking, if you post in the Stage Help section you're bound to get the answer you're looking for. Just be clear and specific with as much detail as you can give; the less you tell your helpers the less they'll tell you.

If any experienced stage hackers see any incorrect information within the tutorial, please let me know so I can fix it ASAP. I hope for this to be the go-to for any beginning stage hacker.

[Shinobu Nyan!]

You say MDW a lot, I think you mean MDL0. Like Here "First open "ModelData[100]", then open "3DModel(NW4R)", the MDW file "StgPosition""
STGPosition is a MDL0 file. All model files are MDL0's, I never heard of a MDW file.

[WarioManX]

You say MDW a lot, I think you mean MDL0. Like Here "First open "ModelData[100]", then open "3DModel(NW4R)", the MDW file "StgPosition""
STGPosition is a MDL0 file. All model files are MDL0's, I never heard of a MDW file.

Thanks for the catch. The "MDL0" is so condensed in there that I couldn't see the separation, and Gray-on-Gray + bad eyes isn't a good combination. Fixed!

[Shinobu Nyan!]

Thanks for the catch. The "MDL0" is so condensed in there that I couldn't see the separation, and Gray-on-Gray + bad eyes isn't a good combination. Fixed!

No problem, good to see a tutorial that also uses brawl wall. I don't think they're any out there.

[LegacyWolf]

Holy fak, this tut is quite detailed.

Very nice.

[kmeyers323]

This was great help. I have a specific question. First to explain, do you know those types of stages that there seems to be too much of the stage blocking the view of the left and right edge? Is there a good way of remedying that issue without deleting/ severely altering the stage model?

[WarioManX]

This was great help. I have a specific question. First to explain, do you know those types of stages that there seems to be too much of the stage blocking the view of the left and right edge? Is there a good way of remedying that issue without deleting/ severely altering the stage model?

In order to answer that question I'm going to need an example of exactly what you're talking about. (I can come up with maybe 3 different ways to interpret your question) Can you post an image of a stage that has what you're talking about, or even better, a download link to a stage in the vault so I can look at the files?

[Sturmgeist13]

Hey WarioManX this is a great tutorial but I'm looking to recreate the death boundaries in the Budokai Tenkaichi Grass=Death stage. Please reply if you can help.

[Nezha B. Rose]

Love it, using the lesson you thought me about collision editting, I can convert most osteges into proyect m fair stages. Thanks Warioman X