Will this work with Metal Gear Arcade (MGAC)?

[Zoft123]

Hello, came across this repo and wanted to see if Metal Gear Arcade would possibly be able to utilize it? I will provide some example files below of the .afp files they use, as well as the AVS .dll so that compatibility could be checked.

The path the game uses for these files is: \cdrom.img\afp\filenamehere.afp

inside that same directory is both .afp & .xml files.

MGAC.zip

In the attached .zip I included the following items:

1. A matching pair of .afp and .xml files.
2. An .afp file that doesn't have a .xml counterpart.
3. A copy of MGAC's libavs-win32.dll.

If there is anything else I could upload/provide to either confirm compatibility with this game or help with it becoming compatible feel free to let me know. Thanks for your time.

[Zoft123]

Got an update to post after initial attempts to get it working with Metal Gear Arcade:

I have the current folder set-up:

• /MGA/data_mods/cdrom.img/afp/afp_file_name/texture_name.png
• I also copied the same textures and put them into a /tex/ folder in the above afp_file_name folder as well (just to make sure)
• The actual folder structure for the .afp files is: /MGA/cdrom.img/afp/afp_file_name.afp

Now for some excerpts from the tool and Spices's log file:

Not working as of yet, but I will continue some more tomorrow. Just thought I'd notate anything I've tried thus far.

Of note, I did make the folder structure this way: /MGA/data_mods/cdrom.img/afp/afp_file_name/texture_name.png Even though the output of layeredfs shows this: opening cdrom.img/stage/mga_entry/../../afp/afp_mgp_chage.afp mode 0 flags 420

Because ultimately doesn't the /../../ just return it to the cdrom.img folder and then into the afp folder? Would that cause issues?

Spice Reports: I:afp-sys: AFP ver2.8.2

[mon]

That's kinda new, to have the data not living inside a data folder.

I think the data2 handling should be able to find it. Instead of: /MGA/data_mods/cdrom.img/afp/afp_file_name/texture_name.png

Go one folder deeper and see if it works: /MGA/data_mods/test_mod/cdrom.img/afp/afp_file_name/texture_name.png

[Zoft123]

That's kinda new, to have the data not living inside a data folder.

I think the data2 handling should be able to find it. Instead of: /MGA/data_mods/cdrom.img/afp/afp_file_name/texture_name.png

Go one folder deeper and see if it works: /MGA/data_mods/test_mod/cdrom.img/afp/afp_file_name/texture_name.png

Just went ahead and tried this and sadly still no luck, is there a message that will be logged whenever it were to successfully display the new texture that I could keep an eye out for when continuing to troubleshoot this?

Edit: will add some screenshots.

Startup:

Example of one of the .afp files being loaded in MGAC that I have replaced the textures for but not working (just to show the path reported by layeredfs):

[mon]

Yes, you would see "Using {filename}" in the logs on success.

Oh wait, I just noticed as well that you're trying to mod the extracted PNGs in the .afp file - that is absolutely not supported. Only .ifs and .bin (from jubeat/gitadora) support unpacked modding. You'll need to repack the .afp files and mod them that way.

I would consider adding support if the format is trivial.

[Zoft123]

Ahh, my bad, for some additional info, I was able to dump the .afp files for this game using BemaniUtils which would result in me obtaining individual .afp files, .bsi, .code, .geo, .xml, and finally the textures in .png form. I'll add an example image, but the issue with this is while it would unpack the .afp files successfully it doesn't currently support packing new ones into said .afp files, at least for Metal Gear Arcade. So if that tool doesn't work and this one doesn't (or at least yet) then I don't think there is a way to repack my .afp files. Thanks for all the replies though!

From: afp_setting.afp:

I would consider adding support if the format is trivial.

If this were to be the case, though I'm sure being that you made a tool like this you already have access to resources that have all this game's files, if needed I can provide a clean copy of said files. Just let me know.

[mon]

I had a quick look and it seems... quite tedious, I don't have the energy to write a re-encoder for a single game ._.

bemaniutils seems to have repacking support for TXP2 (the format of the .afp file), but there are situations that will make the file be "read only" and unable to be repacked. You could give it a try.