Tekken 3 Customize - 2025 [EN]

[Mr_Editor]

New topic, because there are new possibilities, but new problems have also appeared.

After a dozen or so hours of casual testing on the latest version of Duckstation, I would like to proudly announce that the possibilities of modding T3 are much more accessible today, and the effects are amazing.

The emulator has a 'dump' function, which allows us to download textures to a folder on storage drive. The textures are captured during the game, so to download the entire set of textures, you have to play every character, every outfit, on every stage. The files are saved in the 'dump' folder, next to which there is a 'replacements' folder. We can copy the downloaded textures to this folder and edit them as we wish. This means that there are no restrictions on the size of the files, the color palette, or the size of the texture. Only the name of the file must match the name of the texture from the 'dump' folder.

A field of possibilities opens up before us, as wide as never before. With the development of AI upscalers, it will be possible to create truly interesting mods. It is worth mentioning that now we can edit not only outfits, but also interface elements, icons, fonts and character portraits.

Undoubtedly, this method has many advantages and a great advantage over the old method, but at the same time it brings with it several complications, which are discussed below:

1. Duplicates are created when dumping textures - one texture can appear several times under different names, but only one of them is the right one for replacing. This is not a big problem, but it is worth knowing that if some editing failed, it is probably that we edited the wrong file.

2. File names are long and complicated. According to the old method, textures had a fixed, four-digit number in the name and were arranged chronologically [e.g. from 6938 to 6969 are Jin P2 textures]. Duckstation names files differently. If we want the files to be relatively segregated, it is helpful to use sorting by creation date.

3. The version of Duckstation that Arkadyzja uses does not have this feature in as stable a form as the latest version of the emulator, so at the moment the mods only work offline on the current, official version of Duck.

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At the same time, it is worth remembering that there is a large group of people who use or would like to use the .ppf patches available on Customize-Arena, but the patches are not compatible with the SLUS-00402 [USA] version, which is supported by Arkadyzja. Manual conversion of existing mods is required. And here is where the problem arises. Rollback netplay complicates the issue of the freedom to 'mix' mods, so in order to play without problems, it is necessary to have EXACTLY the same ROM. In the old days, this was not a problem, because Netplay Kaillera P2P did not pay so much attention to the emulator's RAM content.

According to my cursory customization tests on Netplay, a message about desync is visible, although the game does not seem to be falling apart. Theoretically, Netplay could work this way, but it is quite risky.

The golden mean seems to be creating a single, collective patch for the Netplay version of the ROM. It can be a one-time patch, or [which I also think could be a good alternative] Rolling Release, allowing for updates.

Neither method is ideal at the moment, but these are the only options we have.

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It's a bit of a shame that the customization functionality has been severely limited in favor of a more efficient netplay, which is of course the most important priority. Especially since new tools have appeared that allow creating mods much easier and faster than before.

I have a collection of Tekken 3 3D models dumped into .OBJ format, along with correct textures and UV mapping. This allows you to preview the textures on the model in real time. Until now, it was necessary to import the textures into the game to see the effects. Not everything was visible 'in motion', which could cause many imperfections to be missed, and it was certainly very time-consuming process. Additionally, Blender reads PSD files, so you don't have to convert textures until the final export, which is very useful especially for 8-bit textures, which need to be treated with special care because they use a shared color palette.

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To sum up - for online games we currently have to make compromises. When it comes to modding the game 'for your own use', or for offline games, there are more possibilities, so you can expect an update in the future.

[Post translated in google]