Pikmin 2 instructions

Helpful instructions for editing and handling Pikmin 2's files. This guide assumes you have some basic knowledge on navigating folders, opening files, using the command line, etc.

Obtaining the game's files

See General instructions#Obtaining a game's files.

Editing

You can view and edit a lot of the game's files. You can read them without any worry, but if you want to change them and have those changes apply in-game, see General instructions#Saving changes.

To do: Sound files.

Text files

To read and edit a plain text file (.txt), you can use any text editor, like Notepad, although Notepad++ is highly recommended. If the type of file you're editing has any comment (text written in English or Japanese that comes after a #), then it's safe to say that any text that comes after a # will be ignored.

SZS files

SZS files (.szs) are a bit like zip files. If you want to read a SZS file's contents, you need to unpack it, and if you want to make changes to the contents, you need to repack it after you're done. To note is that files inside a SZS package must be the same size as they were originally. So if you edit, for instance, a text file, make sure that for every character you remove, you add another.

To unpack and repack a SZS files, use Wiimms SZS Toolset. First, install it using the instructions on the website. Unpacking and repacking is done through the command line, but under Windows, there are scripts you can create to make it easier.

The command to unpack a file is wszst extract <SZS file path>. This will create a folder with the same name as the SZS file, but ending in ".d". Inside this folder will be the contents of the SZS file, plus an additional data file, which is used by Wiimms SZS Toolset, so that it knows how to repack. To repack, use wszst update <SZS file path>.

Scripts

Under Windows, you can create scripts to automatically unpack and repack a SZS file, so that you don't have to write commands all the time. Open a text editor, and type

wszst extract %1

Save it as SZS extract.bat on some folder you can remember. Create a new file with

wszst update %1

And save it as SZS update.bat.

After this, you can simply grab the SZS file you want and drag it onto the BAT file you need.

BMD files

BMD files (.bmd) are 3D model files. You can open these with BMDView2.

BMG files

BMG files (.bmg) contain the game's text strings. Any text editor can edit these, but once again, Notepad++ is highly recommended. You can find the strings after you scroll past the initial control data. If you want to edit the strings, remember to keep their length the same. i.e. You can replace "Floor" with "Level", but not with "Step" or "Sublevel".

BTI files

BTI files (.bti) are image files. You'll need Wiimms SZS Toolset to view these. As with SZS files, you convert a BTI to PNG with the command line, though you can make a script to skip the command line part. The command to convert a BTI file is wimgt DECODE <BTI file path>. To save the converted PNG files back into a BTI format use the command wimgt ENCODE <PNG file path>.

Scripts

As with SZS files, you can write a script so that you don't have to write commands all the time. Open up a text editor, write

wimgt DECODE %1

And save it somewhere you can remember, with the name BTI converter.bat. Then, when you want to convert a BTI file into PNG, simply drag the BTI file onto the BAT file you created.

Now open a new file in the text editor and write

wimgt ENCODE %1

And save it with the name BTI updater.bat Now when you want to convert one of your PNG files back into BTI format, just drag the png onto this new BAT.

Running your modified game

See General instructions#Running a modified game.