Marvel VS Capcom 1 Arcade Modding?

[Aeth-r]

Hey, fairly new, sorry if this is in the wrong place. I'm interested in editing some sprites for Marvel VS Capcom 1, particularly the arcade version. I'm seeking specifically to edit the Morrilith sprites to appear as Lillith. I've done some Neo Geo KoF sprite edits, so I understand that the game uses tiles and the sprites will need to be chopped up into 16x16 squares. My main question is accessing those sprites from the MAME/Arcade version of the game, extracting them, editing them, and then successfully injecting them. What tools do I need? Which files are the "important" ones in the rom?

I am also curious to know if anyone knows if the "alt" characters (Shadow Lady, Morrilith, Gold War Machine etc) are actually their own sprites, or if the game just calls on the existing sprites and modifies the palette. If that's the case, then this idea is kind of SOL.

Another thing I'm interested in is modifying the game to allow the "Bonus Characters" to be selectable without the inputs needed on the arcade mode. If possible, adding their actual portraits would be a wonderful bonus. Their slots already exist on the select screen, it's just a matter of doing specific inputs to select them. I'd like to remove that need for inputs.

[Jorpho]

Marvel vs Capcom s a CPS2 game, and CPS2 was quite infamous for its encryption.  The good news is that the details of the encryption are quite well-understood at this point, so one way or another you should be able to end up with decrypted ROMs.

On that note, I would be a little surprised if no one out there has ever tried to take a swing at changing the game.

[Aeth-r]

Yeah, I found this mod that someone is working on and attempted to contact the person on their Youtube page but I've yet to receive a reply. It appears he's modified a lot of palettes which is fairly simple, but the thing I'm interested in is the part where he's got Charlie as an assist character. Clearly it's a foreign sprite, no?


EDIT: I'm dumb. I forgot "Shadow" exists as an assist and it's just Charlie but palette edited.

[SCD]

The hidden characters share the same sprites of their default counterparts, they just gave them a different set of palettes and a couple exclusive sprites on some of their moves.

The one sprite that you should definitely edit is War Machine to make him look more like his ingame and art portraits instead of being a palette swap of Iron Man:

[Aeth-r]

The hidden characters share the same sprites of their default counterparts, they just gave them a couple exclusive sprites on some of their moves

Damn, are you 100% certain on that? Could you back that up with some evidence? Because if so, that's a major bummer   . I wouldn't mind tackling the War Machine sprite. I'm really primarily an artist who has an affinity for pixel art and fighting games in particular, so something like modifying Captain Commando's sprites with custom Crimson Viper sprites would be cool as their movesets are (somewhat) similar.

Is there any documentation on things like modifying movesets or even porting movesets from similar games on the CPS2 Hardware? Vampire Savior 2 comes to mind-- Doing something like Capcom VS Capcom would be right up my alley, assuming utilization of existing slots is possible. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.
April 19, 2017, 12:22:28 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
I managed to find decrypted versions of the rom. I'm still not exactly sure what to do with the files to gain access to the sprites, though. Here's a screenshot of the files contained in the decrypted version of the rom:



I'm assuming I need to somehow open up some of these files to find the sprites.

[thainferno305]

i hope you find success in doing this

[w1ck3d]

Another thing I'm interested in is modifying the game to allow the "Bonus Characters" to be selectable without the inputs needed on the arcade mode. If possible, adding their actual portraits would be a wonderful bonus. Their slots already exist on the select screen, it's just a matter of doing specific inputs to select them. I'd like to remove that need for inputs.

There's some arcade hacks that already do this for a number of 2D fighters, but for whatever reason they've never been submitted to the database. Try searching "Yumeji's boss back" or "arcade boss hack" and you'll run into some of them. From Street Fighter to King of Fighters and beyond, there's a lot of hacked boss versions. But most, if not all require specialized versions of mame to run, so they may not work on real hardware.

[Jorpho]

I managed to find decrypted versions of the rom. I'm still not exactly sure what to do with the files to gain access to the sprites, though. Here's a screenshot of the files contained in the decrypted version of the rom:

Like I said, I'd be very surprised if you were the first person to ever dig into these things.  Starting from scratch, I for one would try opening each file in Tile Molester and hope that something recognizable appears.

There's a FAQ if you haven't seen it already:

The Newbie Package of REQUIRED Material
---
ROMHacking.net FAQ: You ask, we answer!
ROMHacking.net Getting Started Section: Newbies Go HERE!
ROMHacking.net Documents Section!
How to ask questions the smart way.
On the Essence of ROM Hacking
Talk with experienced people in our IRC chat and ask specific questions there.

[Aeth-r]

I appreciate the influx of activity and level of interest!

There's some arcade hacks that already do this for a number of 2D fighters, but for whatever reason they've never been submitted to the database. Try searching "Yumeji's boss back" or "arcade boss hack" and you'll run into some of them. From Street Fighter to King of Fighters and beyond, there's a lot of hacked boss versions. But most, if not all require specialized versions of mame to run, so they may not work on real hardware.

Yeah, I've looked into those hacks in my travels. On a related note, I'm not really looking to run this on actual hardware. At most, I'd be really happy to get it to run on Fightcade, but I can settle for MAME if I must.

Like I said, I'd be very surprised if you were the first person to ever dig into these things.  Starting from scratch, I for one would try opening each file in Tile Molester and hope that something recognizable appears.

There's a FAQ if you haven't seen it already:

The Newbie Package of REQUIRED Material
---
ROMHacking.net FAQ: You ask, we answer!
ROMHacking.net Getting Started Section: Newbies Go HERE!
ROMHacking.net Documents Section!
How to ask questions the smart way.
On the Essence of ROM Hacking
Talk with experienced people in our IRC chat and ask specific questions there.

Thanks, I'll take a look at these and see where it takes me.

[RealGaea]

The hidden characters share the same sprites of their default counterparts, they just gave them a different set of palettes and a couple exclusive sprites on some of their moves.

The one sprite that you should definitely edit is War Machine to make him look more like his ingame and art portraits instead of being a palette swap of Iron Man:

THIS. This must be done.

[Aeth-r]

THIS. This must be done.

Great, I'll gladly get right on that as soon as I can extract and inject tiles. I'm still working on figuring that out.