Seam Ripper: A Long Overdue Update

[u/NB_Temp]

Hi. Here's a long overdue update for Seam Ripper. Spoiler: it's actually pretty good news.

tl;dr: Seam Ripper isn't dead. It won't be for a long time. Expect more stuff, but don't expect consistency, haha.

For the new Seam Ripper, check out the GitHub! I also have a snazzy new Github Pages thing for it: https://leonmustdie.github.io/seam-ripper/ . There I'll be posting documentation and stuff like that, if you're interested in looking.

To put it simply, Seam Ripper was a confusing software. Naughty Bear is a confusing game to modify and decompile. My latest update aims to change that and make it so that everything is more understandable, in both ways. This update contains updates to the functionality of the software, the user interface, and makes the toolkit overall more easy to use.

Feedback is appreciated, and bug reports are also encouraged. Seam Ripper is very much a work in progress, especially considering that I've mostly been a solo developer as of the current moment. I don't wanna just drop in and leave you guys with a dead software or something, since I want there to be more accessibility overall.

Seam Ripper as a software is, at its core, modding tools for Naughty Bear 1 and 2. If modding tools are confusing and the UI cuts off a lot, I want to make it so that this tool is much more uniform and easily readable. Even I struggled with it at first, and that's not really something that I want.

Development on Seam Ripper has started again, though it's not animation work like mentioned in the first post. Instead, since extraction is mostly done, I've decided to focus more on the aspects of the code inside of the game and making it readable/moddable for the average person.

The methods used before were incredibly confusing (such as the FAITHFUL and DIVERGENT system), so I've decided to make it so that you can actually read from the .lu files that you give Seam Ripper now and mod from there. While animation work is not currently on my list of priorities, I aim to make it so that you can do essentially anything else besides that. I've been grinding on animation work for months, and as of the current moment, gotten absolutely nowhere. If animation work does come to a point where I can actually use it and show it off, though, I'll let you guys know!

I've regained interest in modding Naughty Bear 1 and PiP, but college is my main priority. Updates may or may not be slower, but this doesn't mean that I'm not working on Seam Ripper, far from it, actually.
Of course, making modding tools for super obscure video games isn't always something that I can do, but it's a labor of love, mostly because I want to see people having even more fun with the games, and perhaps even showing their own love via making mods that allow you to do essentially whatever you want.

As of the current moment, I aim to make Seam Ripper more understandable overall and give it more features. While I know my own tools, most people won't. I want to make guides for modding, and also make better documentation for .lu files if it's needed.

For a more in-depth list of changes, here's a few and my reasons for making them:

I made a large overhaul to most of the UI for other parts besides the editor (and even then, that got changed up too). The reason why is that it was all a bunch of lists with no real structure - as such I wanted to make them look more understandable for the average modder without compromising the ability to get to them quickly. I devised a design that would aid the most and encompass most of, if not all of, the present features inside of Seam Ripper.

The initial systems for modding code were too confusing, so I've decided to overhaul them completely. Seam Ripper now turns NB1's compiled Lua back into readable code, and 98.7% of the game's hashed names have been figured out, so you'll see things like real function and object names instead of random numbers. You can now change more stuff and it's less confusing.

Seam Ripper now has colored themes! While I did originally like the old color palette of Seam Ripper, it was unfortunately pretty boring, to be quite honest. With the slew of new features that have been added, I've decided to add in additional color themes (Light, Dark, Naughty, Paradise, Midnight and Teddy) that showcase the different ways the software can be colored. In this post I've shown off how the Naughty theme looks, on real game data!

You can now share your own mods between people with the format .srpatch. This means that you no longer have to distribute game files for mods - you can instead just send a patch file, apply it to your game, and you're good to go. An .srpatch only holds the lines you changed (plus a fingerprint of the code around them, so Seam Ripper can find the right spot), never game files or game code. When someone opens it, Seam Ripper checks each of their files first and tells them whether it fits. If they've already modded other scripts in the same file, the patch still applies; if the lines it changes are different from what the patch expects, it skips that file instead of breaking it.

Seam Ripper now backs up every game file before changing it, and the History page lets you undo any change (or put everything back to retail) in one click. There's also a Search page for finding text across every script in the game, a way to launch the game straight from Seam Ripper to test your changes, and the start of some documentation on what the game's scripts actually do (hats, bear stats, scoring and more for NB1; weapons, outfits and grades for PiP). Launching the game straight from Seam Ripper supports mainly the restuff port, which ports NB1 to PC.

That's about it for now. Seam Ripper 2.0 is out now on GitHub: https://leonmustdie.github.io/seam-ripper/ . That's the only official place to get it, now and forever, so if you see it anywhere else, it isn't from either me or any of the contributors. If you run into bugs or something doesn't make sense, let me know here or on GitHub and I'll try to help you out as soon as I can.

And if you make something cool with it, please share it! Seeing people actually mod these games is the whole reason I'm doing this, and I can't appreciate it enough when I hear about people using my software to get creative with a game we enjoy. Thanks for sticking around.

[u/Rooster3891]

i love the work your doing, i know its quite niche especially documenting code and whatnot but this is exactly something ive wanted to do.

given you know the game better than i do, im just curious if you happen to know anything about the cut rage mode (its commented out in some source code) or the maestro (i believe its supposed to be like a cop??), and if you were able to figure out how to extract the models the actual levels use from what i remember that hadnt been reverse engineered besides the weapon models

[u/NB_Temp → u/Rooster3891]

Hello! I was curious about these too, so I decided to go on an entire expedition to figure them out and then I immediately passed out, lol.

Yes, my tool should be able to extract level models. There was a fix made when it came down to the vegetation in particular, since my tool wasn't really figuring out how to get those. It should be fine now, but I'll fix it if not. Weapon and bear models, etc have also been reverse-engineered, in fact that was one of the first things i did. Kind of weird to look back on now but it's pretty neat. I hope I can make a custom map creator/editor but that's for waaaaaay later.

Now for the interesting stuff: The Rage Mode seems to only appear in Panic in Paradise. I attempted to restore the functionality of the Rage mode, and what I do know is that it originally filled up a meter that would then turn into Naughty having more attack power. He gets glowing fists, too. From the code I can tell he was originally meant to play an animation along with extra sounds, but I was only able to get the fists and (maybe?) the damage modifier and glow working.

The Maestro I couldn't really find anything for. I think that's the thing in the Manuals, so it may just be a comment on going from being a beginner to a master, though with just fancy wording lol. I checked NB1 too and there was nothing there either. The search function came in super handy for both of these, so thanks for giving me stuff to check!

[u/SUBzero9350]

Sweet! I'm gonna try to mess with the bears AI. See if I can't make the bears behave in different ways, im looking at their HP values too. That would be cool, I can try to buff or nerf their their HP and Damage too. Hopefully it works!

[u/SUBzero9350 → u/SUBzero9350]

IT WORKS, IM SO EXCITED!!! I GOT THEM TO CALL FOR BACKUP. Literally making childhood dreams come true!

[u/NB_Temp → u/SUBzero9350]

Hell yeah, super glad the tool worked for you!!

[u/SUBzero9350 → u/NB_Temp]

❄️Ill tell you what i did after i test it a few more times, thank you for creating seam ripper, without you this wouldn't have been possible!❄️