Spyro: A Hero's Tail - Character Changer Mod

This mod provides a custom menu to the game which lets you change character at any time, as well as giving you access to a few basic cheats.

Use with caution. While some crashes that are caused by using unintended characters have been fixed, crashes or softlocks may still occur.

Created using Composer's code injection utility.

Compatibility

Currently only compatible with the GameCube US version (G5SE7D).

Usage

Double-press Z to open the menu. Double-press Z again or press B to close the menu.

While in the menu, you can flip between the Characters page and Cheats page by pressing left/right. Press up/down to select different options, and press A to select them.

In the Characters page you can select a character to switch to. The game may have to spend a bit of time loading assets before the change happens.

In the Cheats page, you can enable several cheats which might help with experimenting with the different characters.

While in the menu, press the X button to enable/disable the Scanmode feature. This will let you toggle a sort of "noclip" mode that lets you fly freely through the map. When Scanmode is enabled, hold any direction on the d-pad and press Z to toggle it.

Installation

Three methods are provided for installing the mod. See the assets in the latest release.

Action Replay Code

The entire mod can be run from an Action Replay Code in Dolphin. Note that this will only work on emulator due to hardware constraints.

The code can be found in AR_Code.txt. Right-click on the game in Dolphin's game list and go to Properties. Go to the AR Codes tab and add a new code with the contents of the .txt file.

ISO XDelta Patch

Use xdelta and the patch file ISO_patch.xdelta to patch your game's iso. This is not guaranteed to work since it'll need to match the ISO used to create the mod. The ISO I used has the SHA-1 checksum 718bd74c1345f23ebfeeff2f527d7dfb007fc531.

Start.dol XDelta Patch

Use xdelta and the patch file Start_DOL_patch.xdelta to patch your game's Start.dol executable.

The executable can be exported and then overwritten with GCRebuilder. Load the ISO in the tool, export Start.dol from the &&SystemData folder of the ISO, apply the xdelta patch to it, then in the tool import the patched Start.dol overtop of the original.

Known Crashes

These are crashes happening not due to the mod itself, but some system in the game breaking when using characters not intended for some scenario.

• The game will crash if a player that is not the Ball Gadget enters a Ball Gadget hole.
• The game will crash if Hunter attacks the special Crocovile enemy near the start of Crocovile Swamp that opens the gate with the three critters.

Building

1. Download the code injection utility by Composer.
2. Clone this repository into the tool's projects folder.
3. In the GUI or by editing the .modproj folder itself, edit the paths for the extracted game folder to your own.
4. Build the project using the GUI, or alternatively the CLI: mod_utility build CharacterChanger --build=GAMECUBE_NTSC. The resulting modded ISO should be in the project's build folder.