Mary Skelter:Nightmares Modding guide

A guide to mod the game Mary Skelter: Nightmares. It will get updated as users find more and better ways to do things, please comment improvements on the comment section.

Tools Utilized

Tools utilized on this guide:

Ruby Script by u3shit (Best form to re-import files): https://gitgud.io/neptards/neptools/uploads/2f47456b9653ae9d4ab8fbaba521ef60/bra.rb

(To run the Ruby Script you will need to install ruby on your computer, which you can download here: https://rubyinstaller.org)

Quickbms with scripts (All provided here): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H7Z7NjL5vRWFJq7cJjDYAvgArwJVXxh2/view?usp=sharing

Paint.net which you can download freely: https://www.getpaint.net (I am unsure but other image edition softwares should work as well)

Neptools: https://www.dropbox.com/s/apybjsfaxf7k1hw/neptools.rar (note that it is falsely detected as a virus by windows, so you have to either turn the firewall off or allow it on the windows defender)

Extraction of .bra files (QuickBMS)

How to extact .bra files with QuickBMS

First go to your game folder and make a backup for all the .bra files (since modding here includes completely overwriting the existing files, you will need a backup in case something breaks)
Now that you are here, we will extract the .bra files that you want to mod (You might want to extract everything and browse around it to find what you want to change) In this case, we are going to modify an image in the TTM3 which is for the Thumbelina Blood Witch sprite on the class change window of the laboratory!

So first to extract we will run the quickbms.exe and select the coyote_console as the script
Then we select our input file(In this case TTM3)
And finally the folder where the files will be extracted
As result we have now a new folder in there with the name of our original archive, don't worry this extraction does not modify the original archive.

In this case what I will modify is in the file 03_job_char05.cl3 03 stands for thumbelina (The numerals are in order appearence according to developers intention) job stands for class, the 05 is the class order, which in this case is Blood Witch.

With all that said, all we need is that file, all the rest can be deleted because the program will only overwrite the files in the original .bra (which is why a backup is needed)

Extraction of .bra files (Ruby)

First go to your game folder and make a backup for all the .bra files (since modding here includes completely overwriting the existing files, you will need a backup in case something breaks)
Now that you are here, we will extract the .bra files that you want to mod (You might want to extract everything and browse around it to find what you want to change) In this case, we are going to modify an image in the TTM3 which is for the Thumbelina Blood Witch sprite on the class change window of the laboratory!

First you will go to the folder where you have extracted the Ruby Script.



Second, you will copy the .bra of your choice into the folder where ruby is, in this case we are talking about the TTM3 .bra.



Third, you will type cmd in the directory bar inside of the directory of Ruby, erase every word that was there before, type cmd and press enter, that will open the prompt of command.


(It is censored in red due having my real name there)


Then after that, you will procceed with the following command and press enter:

ruby ./bra.rb TTM3.bra out_dir

(Change the TTM3.bra to whatever .bra file you want to extract, and change out_dir to whatever you want to be the name of the directory, remember that you can't use spaces on the name)



And that's it! An extracted folder was created with the desired name.

Extraction of .cl3 files (Neptools) [Recommended]

This part is about the extraction of the .cl3 files with Neptools, it is the easiest way to extract and reimport .cl3 files.

First, extract the neptools.rar into a folder, and this will be how the folder will look like


Second you have to select the file that you will edit

Third select the file you want to edit and drag it and drop it on the application (Since it will create a new folder on the folder that the original file is in, I recommend to put it inside the neptools file for easier tracking)


There is chances you have some .dll problems, which is why the folder I uploaded already has 2 dlls, but in case nothing happens and it closes doing nothing this means you lack msvc, if there is any problems with the versions or things lacking I will give you the links.


https://www.dll-files.com/msvcp120.dll.html
https://www.dll-files.com/msvcr120.dll.html
msvc (c++)[www.microsoft.com]

Continuing

Fourth, after dragging the files on neptools it will create this folder, there this folder will be created wherever it is the directory of the .cl3 that you dragged into it, so pay attention to that.


And that's it, inside of it has all files of the .cl3 extracted, refer to the next sections to know what to do with these files.

Extraction of .cl3 files (quickbms only)

Extraction of .cl3 files without utilizing Neptools

Now we are going to the extraction of the CL3 files, to that we are going to use another quickbms script called CompileHeartCL3_PC, but the rest is the same as the original extraction, note that this section is best done on Neptools because the way to reimport files on quickbms later on is very rudimentary.

Editing dialogues

Credits to devilsomanda for coming up with the solution and u3shit for fixing the problems with lengthy edits.

To be able to edit dialogues you will have to use neptools, here is a link to download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/apybjsfaxf7k1hw/neptools.rar be aware that sometimes windows will detect the download as virus (like mine) so you will have to allow the threat manually.

You will have to extract the script .bra with the quickbms, see the start of the previous section to see how to extract it (The previous section about file extraction)

Then after you extract, you go on this section and go to the EVENT and the DATA folder inside of it.


There you will see lot of .gbin files, you can open them with notepad, notepad++ or any similar program to read files so you can have a preview on which file you will edit.


After you select which one you edit, isolate it, then extract the contents of the neptools.rar into a folder and put the .gbin you chose there.


After that drag the .gbin to the UTF8.bat and drop it there, it will generate a .txt file with the same name.


Open that .txt file with your program of choice, and edit the line there, be aware that the line breaks aren't automatic in game, so you will have to predict where the line breaks, a good measure is comparing to other phrases from other dialogues and tyring to not make lines that are longer than them.


To make the contents of the edit .gbin go back to the original .gbin drag the .txt to the stcm-editor.exe like you did before with the UTF8.


Then you get that .gbin file and put in a folder that has the main folders equal as the original files.


Then you just reimport the .bra following the other sections guidance.

And here it is! There used to be a limit on the characters that could be modified before it gets broken, but u3shit told me how to fix it by changing the text formatting to UTF8 (which is what the .bat is for).

Editing textures and images

How to edit textures and images

This guide will cover an edition that covers texture and images but it is possible to edit other things like audio as well by just changing the original files with an audio of the same format without many procedures, this guide may be updated in the future to cover those things as people start to discover how to edit them.

What we want to edit here is this TID file, it's the one that includes the image that we want To do that we need to edit the file type from tid to dds, which will require you to do the following steps:
Go into view and check this box
Then check this box after going into options

After changing the file extension we open it into paint.net to edit the file whatever we want

After doing our changes we save it in BC7 to keep most of our image quality

Note:Huge differences in image quality may bug in-game even if the resolutions are the same, which is why selecting the render as BC7 is very important

And then we rename the saved file back to .tid just like we did to change it to .dds

Editing OST and Voicelines.

This section will teach you how to modify the OST of the game and the Voicelines.

This section will need to use Ruby Script to Reimport the files.

To edit the files you will need to download Audacity, you can download it here: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/

How to find the OST and voicelines:

They are inside the Sound.bra, so thats the one you will have to extract following the previous sections on how to extract .bra files.



After extracting it, you will see these folders inside, BGM stands for the OST of the game, VOICE stands for the Voicelines of the game.



You will see the OST/Voicelines inside the respective folder, in this tutorial I plan to edit MD01, which is the title theme, I will change the original OST to the song "Memory" from the game lb.



Then to do that I will open my song of choice on audacity, I can do that by either opening it through the program, or just by dragging it to the program, which is what I will do.

The following is only necessary in case you are modifying an OST, which is the configurations of its loop, in case you don't configure it, the audio will stop playing once it finishes itself.

First, got to the counter on the bottom of Audacity and click the arrow that is pointing down and then click it in samples, this will change the display that it is showing to be samples instead of seconds, make sure the bar above the numbers is on "Start and End of selection".



Second, you will select the area of the song you want to start the loop and end the loop once the song ends it first play, if you don't know how to select an area in Audacity, it is pretty much to drag your mouse through the track, but if you still have doubts, there are many tutorials on that on the internet.



After selecting the area, you will notice two numbers for the samples there, a number where the sample start, and one where it ends, note these two numbers separately somewhere removing the commas between the numbers.

After taking note, the next step is to export it as .OGG, to do that on Audacity, you will need to go on File, hover through export, and click export as .OGG.



The first screen that will show as you export is the quality and name file screen, I recommend keeping it at quality 4 as it would feel too detached from the game and would make the file heavier than it needs if it was higher. On this section I already named the file as the file that we will change.



And then this screen will show up.



Erase everything on TXXX and make it blank, if you are just editing a voice line then you are good to go and you can click OK to export the .OGG already. But if you are editing an OST you should click on Add to add a new section, you can then click on the new section name to name them.

There will be a blank section by default, so by adding a new one you will have two, on these two sections you will have to name them as "LOOPDEFS" and "BUFFERSIZE" all in uppercase without quotation marks.

Then on LOOPDEFS you will put the following "StartOfSampleNumber, EndOfSampleNumber", which in our case is "38292, 6590136", put it without the quotation marks.

On BUFFERSIZE it is supposedly the time it takes between loops, it doesn't really matter, so I will put the default that is almost instant, which is "17946704" without quotation marks.

This is how it looks like with the example I am giving.



Then you just click Ok to export it as .OGG, and the rest it works exactly like a regular re-importion of the files but you must utilize the Ruby Script section, otherwise the file may be cut due the forced re-importion of QuickBMS.

Re-import of .cl3 files (Neptools) [Recommended]

Re-importion of .cl3 files utilizing Neptools

Now that is ridiculously easy, all you need to do is drag the folder you extracted earlier into the program.


And that's it! Thats all there is to it, the .cl3 that you originally dragged will be updated with the modifications of the folder.

Re-import of .cl3 files (quickbms only)

Re-importion of the .cl3 files without utilizing Neptools

Now here comes the part that is specially messy to do with only quickbms and quite buggy, we are going to reimport the files utilizing it, but as there was no built script that re-importation works naturally the process is quite odd

First select the files that were inside the original CL3 and click add to archive to a winrar

On this tab YOU HAVE TO select the .rar extension and keep the store compression, otherwise the files will be compressed and in-game they won't be recognized as it should


After doing that, like you did with the extension, rename the .rar into .CL3, and change the name into something that won't conflict with the original .CL3


Then you have to do the the following steps:

Select reimport on the quickbms folder

Select the cl3 script

Select the original cl3 that you extracted the files from

Select the fake cl3 that has the modified files

Remember to delete the files that weren't inside the folder originally

That should do it

Re-import of .bra files and Mod insertion (QuickBMS)

How to re-import .bra files and insert them into the game

Now with the CL3 done we will have to reimport the TTM3, gladly the .bra files have the reimportion feature worked out, so it will be simpler, open the quickbms reimport.bat again
Select the coyote script as last time
Select the file you extracted (You can use a copy of it if you want to keep a folder to your mod stuff)
Then select the folder of the file you extracted

Note that sometimes the file will be bigger even with the proper render, on these times the script will give you a prompt, which to proceed you have to type "force" without the quotation marks in the cmd and press enter, in some of these cases, the files will be compressed by the QuickBMS, which is why it is recommended to use the Ruby Script, see the other section to understand how to use it.

And that's it! I really hope to see mods of the game after I posted this, and if anyone makes a mod leave the link in the comment session as well!

Re-import of .bra files and Mod insertion (Ruby) [Recommended]

How to reimport utilizing Ruby

The advantage of reimporting utilizing Ruby is because QuickBMS crops your files forcefully to the size of the original ones in the game, by utilizing Ruby you will have your files uncropped, which will avoid multiple problems that would come by.

You will go to your folder where you have the Ruby script, and make a folder that has the exact subfolders of the .bra file until where your edited file is. (Since what we are editing is 03_job_char05.CL3 we need to replicate exactly the path of TEXTURE/job_char that will be inside the main folder as this is the path where the file is located in the original .bra .

(Here I named the main folder the same as the .bra which is TTM3, but you could name the main folder to whatever you wanted)




Now to reimport, you will again open cmd on the file explorer like you did with the extraction (typing cmd on the file explorer and pressing enter).



Now with the CMD open, you will write the following command and press enter:

 ruby ./bra.rb TTM3.bra TTM3 output_name.bra 

Where the TTM3.bra part of it will be whatever .bra you want to reimport, the TTM3 right after that will be the name of the main folder, and the output_name.bra can be any name of the .bra that you will create, but you can't utilize spaces.



It might seem like nothing is happening for a while, but the Ruby script is processing, wait for a while until the cmd emits a blank line and the file on the folder has a similar size to the original .bra, if the file is already on the folder but it has 0kb it is because it is still reimporting, so be patient.

This will be the result.



Now to utilize it on the main game, go to the main game folder, rename the resulting .bra (in this case output_name.bra) to the name of the .bra you wanted to change (In this case TTM3.bra), and substitute the files.

And that's it, you got that working!

[Gamorou]

@KuroUsa There is no single file with the name of all characters as there are many files that are just images with their names, iirc you can just change their names in the dialogue there as normal and it should still work

[Takumi_Ishihara]

Someone help me... Idk file that contain name of all character... I want to edit

[CaperucitaRoja]

Anyone knows how to edit dialogues without getting that horrible error?

[Gamorou]

@A Catacomb Kitten <3 I have no idea since I never got this crash bug, but maybe

[A Catacomb Kitten <3]

Would this allow to skip some lines entirely as well? I was wondering if I could mod the game so that it doesn't crash during the problematic parts (I'm looking at you, graveyard >:( ) by making the game skip the events that kill the application entirely

[delvisomanda]

I sent you a friend request.

[Gamorou]

@Delvisomanda Can you please share how exactly you did it so I can add it on the guide? I will credit this bit with your name

[delvisomanda]

https://i.imgur.com/vJQpxst.jpg

I found a way to edit the .gbin files and re-import them. The way I did it, you can extend the character limit, but every time I want to change the text encoding (uses Shift-JIS encoding), the file gets corrupted. So certain special characters cannot be used.

[Gamorou]

@Xion @Delvisonmanda I have been trying to access the .gbin files recently, but I've run into a problem, the files are extremely size sensitive, so every letter that is removed has to be replaced in a way otherwise the game skips the entire dialogue and animations associated with it, and that's why I can't find a solution to edit them yet

[Maki Harukawa]

can we mod the dialog text ? i want to translate those.....