Emulator Issues #2764
closed
Feature Request: Riivolution like game patcher (patch any file of any game on the fly without directly changing the ISO)
0%
Description
I apologize in advance if this was requested already in some shape or form.
But I was wondering if it were possible to have something like Riivolution
(see: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Riivolution) for Dolphin? Basically what this
does is patch any files that's loaded during game play (like music, video,
model, texture, configuration files etc) with a customized version of those
files. This can lead to custom levels, music, models, etc - just as long as
it's kept in the same exact format and can be identified and loaded by the
game. However, like Riivolution, I don't expect nor do I see the idea of
adding support for adding NEW files to a game - not yet anyway. But, you
can have each file be any size you want. So you don't have to make sure
each file is smaller or EXACTLY the same size as the file you're trying to
replace. This patcher should also work with anything that can be considered
a game (except for maybe WAD files, not sure if that's do-able since you
can't explore a WAD's file system for the moment within Dolphin)
However, Riivolution makes it easy to modify files without having to
manually replace each file within an ISO. Replacing files within an ISO can
also cause some nasty side effects. With this game patcher, you can
eliminate the need to create a second iso and scrub it/truncha it/etc.
Also, since this patcher never changes the ISO file itself - you never have
the risk of corrupting the ISO.
This patcher can be useful for me in several capacities. I enjoy messing
around with any configuration/script files to enable debugging features,
etc. For developers however, I don't see any use of having this. But the
dolphin-emu community can create patches that might eliminate certain bugs.
I know how unlikely it is to fix something with this, but it might work in
some situations.
The patcher could work like this:
1.) A folder under the "User" folder called "Patches" can be created to
hold Patch data.
2.) You can distinguish each game by using their Game IDs as folders (for
example, let's use SMNE01 - New Super Mario Bros Wii NTSC).
3.) For Wii games, or anything else with mutliple partitions on the ISO,
you can have another directory for each Partition (Partition 0, Partition
1, etc).
4.) In order to modify the files, my guess is that everything has to be
listed and categorized exactly as it is on the ISO. So if I wanted to
modify Stage 1-1 in NSMBW, I have to put my modified file of this stage
(01-01.arc) in Stage/01-01.arc. So it would be like:
/dolphin-emu-dir/User/Patches/SMNE01/Partition 1/Stages/01-01.arc). If
you want to have multiple versions of the same file modifications, you
could have distinct patch directories that help label what each patch does,
and you can enable which patch you would like under Game Properties. For
example, let's say I just wanted to have a patch that modified the layout
and another one to modify the object placement. You could set have the
directory set up like this
/dolphin-emu-dir/User/Patches/SMNE01/PATCHNAMEHERE/Partition
1/Stages/01-01.arc.
5.) After the game has files to replace, you can either have something for
the "Patches" tab of each game under Properties. Or, you can enable Patches
for all games under Options>Configure... like you would with enabling
Cheats for all games. And of course, you can have a ticker for enabling
patches for each game individually.
Of course, this is just an idea. I'm sure you can think of easier ways to
have something like this if you choose to include it.
I think it'd be interesting to have, and I know that people WILL use this
for things like translations, map modifications, etc. Just to make dolphin
more interesting, I guess. I hope this issue request was alright. If it
wasn't, please don't bash my head in. :P
Let me know what you think.
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