Even if you guys don't like me for not knowing immediately who is stealing patches from other sites or enforcing our zero tolerance piracy policy to your friends/mentors you should recognize that I do everything I can to help anyone patch NBA PC games to their liking. If you don't believe me go look in the Patching Help or Tutorials sections or even the REDitor thread.
My biggest pet peeve with this community is when someone figures something out, and instead of sharing what they did, they just whore it out and create a monopoly on that specfic patch. For the people who haven't been around for more than 3 years, imagine if Pat didn't come and save the day here. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone else to figure out how to edit the lighting files of the PC NBA Live games. The hundreds of released lighting files are the reason why we have the best graphics possible for the Live PC games...now someone tell me a "shadowmod" for 2K that wasn't released through Johndoe22/terrybgood/larrylicker.
Imagine what we as a community could have been able to do with hundreds of global files released not with different accessory textures but with different lighting. Look at any default screenshot of Live 06 and then one with a custom lighting file. Look at the default 2K global and then one of the shadowmod files.
The positive effect of openly sharing hex editing techniques can already been seen. Look at how many court patchers are able to customize paint colors now after I redid johndoe22's half-assed tutorial. But he's banned here, that isn't going to change (again). Talent won't protect you when you harass other patchers, post cocks when you're unhappy, or distribute cracked exe files.
This thread exists to try and figure out, as a community, how to do advanced hex editing in NBA 2K11. I respect johndoe22 & michaelvlutz49 for their talent and contributions, but not sharing their findings with the community makes them the worst type of patcher. michaelvlutz49 is not banned here, and I would fully accept offsets/tutorials from him to share with the rest of the community if he so chooses, but I'm not expecting any help from him.
This thread is for advanced editing, I can't hold hands like I do with Mod Tool or REDitor issues. Wrapping your head around hex editing is difficult, but I'm going to do the best I can to help teach it.
- You're going to need a Hex Editor, I use Hex Workshop but any with a find/replace command will work fine.
Take a look at some of the Hex Editing tutorials in the Tutorials Section, going through those will help you understand how to edit files through hex and give you something to see visually at the end.
Always keep backups, Hex Workshop offers to create a backup file everytime you save which is why I continue to use it. You can easily fuck something up in hex editing causing a corrupted file, and remember, we do not allow distribution of original files here.
Hex uses 0-F instead of 0-9. Meaning that in a given byte 0 is the lowest value and F is the highest. A Byte is made up of 2 characters in that range. From lowest to highest it goes; 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F. The "lowest" value byte is 00 and the highest is FF.
I don't know how they work exactly but there are Signed and Unsigned Bytes, Short, and Long values. There is also the Float value which is touched on in the Court Colors tutorial. These are values added up from multiple bytes. A common one is 0000803F which equals 1.
Offsets are just a simple way to tell you where information is in the file. They are usually listed on the left side of the hex editor and can be jumped to.
The #1 rule with Hex Editing is that you DO NOT change the filesize of the file you are editing. You can only replace values, NEVER add or delete information in a file.
After looking at the tutorial on how to extract names from the iff files, you want to decompress the file and search for the name of the thing you want to edit.
For example, if I want to find the "fat" shorts in the cloth_shorts.iff file I need to do the following.
- "fat" in hex is 66 61 74
names in the iff files have 00's in between them
66 00 61 00 74 00 which in text form looks like f.a.t.
So doing a search for 660061007400 will find all the "fat" jersey parts in the hex.
After finding what you want to edit, I've found that you usually want to look "up" in the file for values to edit. Figuring out what byte controls what in the game though is the hard thing to figure out.
- Changing Cloth Movement Properties (Net/Uniforms)
- Finding Label Names in iff files
- Camera Editing
- Hex Editing Rosters & Checksums
- Court Colors
Additional 360 Hex Roster Stuff from OS that won't directly help PC users but could be applied to PC rosters to test. Be sure to follow the Checksum tutorial above if hex editing PC rosters
These were created after looking at michaelvlutz49's net mod's gamedata.iff. You can find out how to do these edits in this tutorial.
The Flowy jerseys do just that, they move a lot more. Kinda like how they used to move in NBA 2K6 & 2K7. The Stiffer jerseys move less, and the shorts will actually "tear" into the player's legs when they run.
If you want a preview, my latest mix was created using the "Flowy" jerseys. Look for slow-mo parts to see the subtle differences. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n71z7ILi8vo
I've only been "researching" this hex crap for the past two weeks. I'm working, starting school, and got a family to take care of, so I'm going to need help with deciphering the shadow mods on both the jersey and global iff files. Feel free to post anything you know, ask for help, or give support (but not through monetary donations!)
- Lighting changes in Global.iff
- Lighting changes in Stadium files
- Applying "Shadow Mod" to any Jersey file
- Animation changes with Gamedata.iff
I would recommend that everyone give the opening remarks a look however, as the sentiment is essential for any modding community to grow and thrive.
