File replacement
File Replacement is a general term used to describe replacing various elements of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, including textures, music, and even movesets. Phantom Wings is credited to expanding its popularity, as he made file replacement available to users using SD cards, as initially music and textures required ISO hacking.
Textures
- For a catalog of many available texture hacks, please visit BrawlHacks Wiki.
A Texture Hack is a hack used through the Homebrew Channel that alters a character's palette swap colors into different designs. This process was pioneered by Pharrox, a user on Smash World Forums. The hack involves the individual coding of the characters being changed to fit the design wanted. There are several websites dedicated to texture hacking.
More often than not, textures are modified to make characters appear like other forms of themselves, or like different characters entirely, even ones who appear in games post-dating Brawl, such as making Meta Knight appear like Kirby Super Star Ultra's Galacta Knight. Some textures even exist in which a character is made to look like characters who are already playable. Among some of the more popular textures among fans are ones that "bring back" the characters from Super Smash Bros. Melee who did not return in Brawl, such as making Ike look like Roy or Lucario look like Mewtwo.
The project has eventually grown to incorporate stage textures, item textures, and even Final Smash textures (i.e., the artwork seen during Peach's Final Smash).
Initially blank DVDs were necessary in order to make or download texture hacks, but PhantomWings managed to make a hack that allowed for texture hacks to be stored on SD cards, making them much more popular and accessible. Now, the only thing required is an SD card, the Homebrew Channel and Gecko OS.
Primary Texture Hacking Teams
- Stack Smash
- Kitty Corp: Meow Mix.
- Elite Smash Hackers
- ]Syntax Error[, the first team as well as the ones who released a guide to the masses on how to do texture hacking, was unfortunately broken up by their host site for fear of a lawsuit from Nintendo (no lawsuit actually ever existed; it was only a safety precaution by the host site). Their textures, which had been released for a very short time prior to being broken up, were given to Stack Smash, who placed them in a completely separate file on their download directory.
Custom Music
Similar to Textures, music was initially limited to ISO users, although much later than textures. Custom music was popularized by GHNeko (One of the main developers of Brawl+), who made a video displaying various stages with custom music, although it was with ISO [1]. Eventually Phantom Wings continued his file replacement code used for textures to incorporate music (the first post about it can be seen here). Custom music was initially very confusing to make, as users had to make the music into a .brstm file, loop in an acceptable manner, and have the proper settings, although Bionic Sonic created a tool that only required simple editing to accommodate various personal settings, mostly volume, in a music editing program, such as Audicity. A newer version has been released by Dantarion and a video can be seen here.
Moveset Hacks (Project Smash Attacks\Plan Zero)
Created by Phantom Wings, Moveset Hacks (known as Project Smash Attacks) allow one to edit a character's moveset to create their own. Although understanding of scripts and floating values are necessary, it has been described as simple to those who do understand it, and several users on smashworld forums and various hacking sites have tried to make simple guides for those who don't. Many movesets have been made, although the most known one is the first one, made by Phantom Wings, known as Pheonix Mario, which was first unveiled at Brawlhacks Wiki under the name Plan Zero.
