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 commands, etc. See obtaining a game's files if you are unsure on how to do so.

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 saving changes in general instructions.

To do: Instructions for how to edit music.

Tools and files

Here are some prominent files that come up when modding.

.SZS: Archive files similar to .ZIP or .RAR archive files. SZS files are RARC archives compressed with Yaz0 compression.
.ARC: Archive files similar to .ZIP or .RAR archive files. ARC files are RARC archives not compressed with Yaz0 compression.
.TXT: Generic plaintext files. Use Notepad++ to preserve the Shift-JIS encoding.
.BMD: Proprietary 3D model files.
.BMS: Sequenced audio files, similar to MIDI but more advanced. List
.CND: Files that control how various sequences in a BMD file are randomly chained together in a complex system. Used for cave music. 
List
.AST: Streamed audio files. List
.AW: Soundbank files.
.BMG: Used to store in-game text strings.
.BLO: UI screen data.
.BTI: Textures.
.BTK: Animated textures.
.STB: Cutscene data.
.THP: Prerendered videos (GC/Wii)
.WEBM: Prerendered videos (Switch)
.JPC: Particle effect container. List
.JPA: Particle effect.
.BCA: Full animation data.
.BCK: Keyframed animation data.

Here are some prominent tools:

Lunaboy's RARC Tools- Used for extracting and converting RARC archives. For szs files, simply rename the converted file from file.arc to file.szs.
Notepad++ - Used for editing text files, many of which need to preserve Shift-JIS encoding.
Gen & Route Editor  - Used for editing overworld generation and pikmin carrying routes.
Drought's Cave Creator - Used for creating and modifiying cave files, cave lighting, and cave unit definition files.
Pikmin 2 Sound Modding Toolkit - Used for modyfing sounds in the game.
JAIMaker - Used for creating custom sequenced music as BMS files. Interactive music and cave music require additional hex editing.
JATAST - Used for converting .wav files into .ast files for streamed music.
pikminBMG - Used for editing text in the game.
pyblo2-gui - Used for modyfing blo files.
FinModelUtility - Used for converting BMD files to formats that can be imported into any 3D modeling software. Batch scripts can be found in Hocotate Hacker for simple conversion of single models.
SuperBMD - Used for converting FBX and DAE files back to BMD.
RiiStudio - Used for BMD materials editing. (Pish don't kill me GUI is just easier for now)
obj2grid - Used for converting between .OBJ 3D files and pikmin 2's collision formats.
GameCube File Tools - Used for modification of many GameCube/early Wii era formats, notably BTI files. It can also compress .arc archives to szs.
Hex editor - needed for additional editing of other files such as .BIN binary files. An editor of choice is HxD: (https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/)

More tools can be found in Hocotate Hacker if needed. Compiled builds for many of these tools are for Windows, but macOS and Linux users can compile many from source.

Cave generation

You can make custom caves with Drought's Cave Creator. When adding more sublevels to any cave, you must remember to add more cave songs to the BgmList text file, located in user/Totaka. You will edit BgmList_(area).txt for areas, and ChallengeBgmList.txt for challenge mode.

Running your modified game

See General instructions#Running a modified game.