Imbored's poly modding guide

Overview 

This guide deals with modifying polygon shapes in WWF No Mercy. It is a powerful system, allowing now total customisation of ingame models, and coupled with graphic modifications, whole new items. This guide assumes you have a working knowledge of the Hex series (0-F) and that you are using an emulator. It is actually easier to do with a cart and GS, but this is the method I designed for emulation hacking. I recommend the following set up: 

Project 64 1.5
Nemu  

Using PJ64 for refining and making your code, and nemu for its powerful memory viewer inclusion. Youll need an adequate PC to run both emulators at the same time, unfortunately, or you can just use Nemu to dump the information, although I do not do this as Im used to reading the data from the memory viewer; but whatever works for you. 

Starting Point  

Ok, we're going to be modifying the ring mat polygon for this example, as it is a simple polygon, few points, and is where I myself started out. We're just going to be using it as a means for seeing what addresses do what.

You first need the following list of addresses (Download these)
Arena Addresses- Cawmaster 2000 
Weapon Modifiers- Kryogenix 
Weapon Poly mod Pointers- Im Bored
(See attachment at bottom) 

What we're interested in here, is in the Arena Addresses file, right at the bottom:  



See the address listed for Ring mat: 80079AF8. This is your starting point. Fire up nemu, go in to the match, in the arena that you want the mod to take place in (this isnt necessary for all mods, but do so to be sure. Its better to be safe than sorry.) Open up the memory editor, and go 80079AF8. Now you ideally want to subtract about 0x20 from this, so we should ideally have gone to 80079AD8. Here Ive gone to 80079AEC, but this is semantics. Just make sure you can see a set of values that read like 8029XXXX 8029XXXX 803XXXXX. See the following example: 



Now more often than not, you will see 802X addresses. Follow the first one, so here, we go to the address 80298180, as this was the first value. Make sense? 



This is what you should be faced with. If not, hit ctrl+Z, and follow the other value until you do. It wont be the exact same as this, it depends on the item your hacking, but youll know it after time by a feel for the game, and also there will be FF at the end of every line for a block (just a general rule.) 

So what is this area? THIS, is the polygon modifier for the ring mat. We have traced back from the objects movement map, where it is called in in-game, and traced to where the game stores the models data. Now, it may look a little intimidating, so lets break it down.
Each model is made up of "Points", which make the models shape. 
 Each point has a whole line assigned to it. These lines are made up of various values, each one edits something else.  

First four digits affect the X co ordinates of a point, the next four affect the Y, and the next four affect the Z co ordinates. 

Then theres often a series of four that I dont know what they do, but the remaining 8 deal with texture application (I havent dealt with this myself so I cant say what it does.) The final 8 are your colour addresses, and work in the same way as PNG32 files. You have RR, GG, BB, And AA- AA being alpha (alpha only tends to work on certain items, mostly ropes and menu components.) 

If that doesnt make sense, go back and reread it. It will, eventually. Just remember, its XYZ(Physical), XYZ (Texture), RRGGBBAA. Easy enough. 



So putting theory in to practice...This is where you open up PJ64, and get the game to the same place as you do in Nemu, which in this case is the ring area. This is going to teach you the basics of movements. 

So you know what they do, but you dont know which points its applied to? Easy enough. Look for groupings. Lets say on the ring mat, I wanted to move a whole edge over a bit. Well, we just write a code that affects every instance of a value. Lets say I want to move it on the X axis. Well, we can see that the value 0118 repeats 3 times, so lets try, in PJ64, rewriting 0118 every time it occurs on the X axis, and lets try a replacement value of 0200. Key in your code, and turn it on, and go back to PJ64. 



Bammo, we've moved the left hand side over to the left some more. You can also see, in this image, that we've edited the Y Axis of all the points that were 0118, to 007A. See how theres a slight elevation? 

Now, you need to do some thinking. If an increase moved it to the left, then surely a decrease moves it to the right. Logic says that 0000 is dead center. Therefore: 

0000 and upwards= Left movement.
 0000 and less= Right movement.

And of course, to get less than zero, you just subtract in hex, so 0000-0100, becomes FF00. If you look back a few images, you notice that as well as the 0118 value, there is also an FEE8 value: this is 0000-0118, which would mean its an exact mirror. Use the same principle for all axis. An increase on 0000 on the Z axis moves it away from the camera, and so on. 

 

Important note: Any item that has more polygons, ie, about 5, use the same process, and then manually go back in the mem editor, looking for model data. So, if you start at 8024F000, youd start to go back, so youd go back to 8024EF00, and so on and so forth. This is how arenas are listed. Polygon editors are listed in the same order as in CM's list of poly mods.

Colour Changing 



This is basic in comparison to what weve just done. This makes use of serial repeater codes- 50. 

The dissection of one of those codes is 5000XXYY ZZZZ  

XX- Amount of repeats
 YY- Difference between addresses
 ZZZZ- Difference in value.

Therefore our code says that it should write 9 lines, with a difference of 0x10, and no value differences, starting from the address 8129818C. 

Its basically
8129818C FF77 
8129819C FF77 
812981AC FF77 
812981BC FF77 
812981CC FF77 
812981DC FF77 
812981EC FF77 
812981FC FF77 
8129820C FF77 

In short hand. And as you can see, we now have an orange ring mat. 

 

Im tying up this version of the guide for now, it should be enough to get you started. Any questions, post in the thread at TNMZ. 

Final note: You must have ALL polygon changes (basic hacking) applied in Nemu before you go and edit them further, as the model data will get moved in the game.

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I found this as well as a few other guides on a back up DVD I made years ago. I'll post some more, but I remember someone looking for this guide. It helped me a lot when I was making the 6 sided ring back then. How time flies lol

Credits: ImBored.
(S.K. Stylez for the post)