EA's NHL Legacy Xbox 360, PS3
Tutorial for texture modding
Supported games:
XBOX 360
What you need for modding:
Part 1 How to rip Xbox 360 game disc:
Part 2 How to extract files from NHL game folder:
Spoiler
Example NHL Legacy Edition:
- There are .big files inside extracted game disc and first you have to extract it.
There are some bigs inside gamedata folder. Don’t extract it, leave gamedata folder as it is.
- Open quickbms.exe -> select fightnight.bms -> select .big -> select the game folder (the same folder where the big files are inside)
Backup your big files just make a new ”BIG BACKUP” folder and move extracted bigs inside it.
Part 3 How to mod rx2 textures:
Spoiler
Place tex_NHLLegacy_X360_rx2.py into Noesis plugins/python folder
Mod jerseys:
In game jerseys found in rendering/jersey/texlib_x_x_x.rx2
Update 2021/03/01
Option 1:
- Open rx2 file in NHL Legacy Texture Patcher
- Unbundle rx2 to tga (select output folder)
- Bundle tga to rx2 (select the same folder where you extracted the tga files)
Option 2:
- Open rx2 file in Noesis
- Extract rx2 to tga. To take care of texture names use -texnorepfn option in Advanced option.
Rx2toTga
Tga output folder
Output folder with modded files
- Open rx2 in Legacy Texture Patcher
- Push "Bundle RX2" -> select the TGA directory with modded files
https://app.box.com/s/uhhk38up7yk9ghzsxlbvroblukjdc0nz
- Check patched rx2 in Noesis that it looks right.
https://app.box.com/s/oztni4uk0xaml941jh5amix3c7iyw6nm
- If you use xkey or flashed xbox and you have to rebuild big, compress the file before rebuilding. NHL 11 - Legacy use chunklzx, 08-10 use refpack.
Part 4 Using modified files on Xbox 360:
Spoiler
Retail Xbox : unfotunately it isn’t possible to modify game files because of Microsoft Secure Transacted File System (STFS) signed packages (LIVE,PIRS)
https://www.arkem.org/xbox360-file-reference.pdf
RGH:
You can run the game with extracted .big archives. You don't need to rebuild .big and .iso.
xKey/Flashed dvd:
- Jersey files are stored in nocacherender.big. Open nocacherender.big in Big File Extractor and extract all if you haven't done it yet.
- IMPORTANT! Files must be chunklzx (NHL11-Legacy) or refpack (NHL08-10) compressed before rebuilding.
- If you have done extraction with quickbms and fightnight.bms just extract all files in other location using Big File Extractor. Pants, socks, icesurfaces and goaliehelmets etc. are in cacherender.big. Extract cacherender.big also. Move your modded files in right location in Big File Extractor extracted files, rebuild and save as new big-file.
- Open the game .iso in Xbox Image Browser and replace original .big to modded one.
- Note! For that reason if your modded rx2 files are bigger than the original ones, your .big file will be also bigger than the original .big file. You can’t replace .big in iso if the file size has increased. If your modded rx2 file sizes (compressed size) has increased there are many rx2 files in the archive that are not in use in game. For example jerseys/texlib_0_93_5.rx2 is ”extra file”. Open ”extra file” in hex editor, write placeholder string and delete all other data after it and save the file. Now you save about 2Mb.
- Note! Save the ”placeholder” file in to same place, don’t remove it totally because it will cause error when rebuilding big.
- Note! For Xk3y users disable game autostart on xbox settings. If you mod cacherender.big, reading game will cause disc read error-> you may need to start a game many times.
PS3
What you need for modding:
2021 Upcoming news
I will complete the tutorial with all the information which I know about modding these games.
NHL Legacy Rx2 Patcher: [
Done]
- App name change (NHL Legacy Texture Patcher)
- Interface update (a more usable interface for high-resolution displays + graphical icons)
- support for rx2 texture extract.
- more testing and possible bug fixes
EA BIG4/BIGF rebuilder:
- NHL 08-10 .big and .bh files
- NHL menu artasset .big files
File structure researching:
Converting 3D models from .mcd (PS4) to .rx2 (X360) and .rpsgl (PS3) to get new EA scanned faces available on last gen consoles.
I spend most of my time researching something new, so I haven’t been made downloadable mods available yet.
Feel free to use the tools and if you manage to do something interesting , share it with everyone else. Let's take care of the culture of modding NHL games.