This is basically going to be a tutorial on how to load many of the levels downlodable from this section like you can with the official levels. It's not necessarily easier to do, but not that hard either. It's neat, makes playing the levels feel more authentic, allows for ingame music, and you can save replays of them!
- First, you are going to need to download the Super Meat Boy Data Unpacker from
Here. Then extract to basically anywhere accessible.
- Second, you need to make a backup of your Super Meat Boy folder (your save file especially, since this tends to screw with your save file). If you don't know where it is, it's under commons in your steam/steamapps folder (assuming you got it from Steam).
- Third, copy gamedata.dat and gameaudio.dat files from the meat boy folder into the same folder as the data unpacker.
- Fourth, you'll need to unpack these data files. To do this, open a command window to this folder by holding down Shift and Pressing Right click without selecting a file, and then press "Open command window here" from the drop down box.
-To extract the data files, use the command in the command window "smb_unpck unpackDat gamedata.dat" (without the quotes). The files will be extracted into a folder called "data". To extract the audio files, do the command "smb_unpck unpackSnd gameaudio.dat". The files will be extracted into a folder called "audio". These will mainly be used to easily find the file names of the music you want to use with your level. You also have the entire soundtrack here, but I still recommend buying it from
Bandcamp. You get nice shiny CD's and even an autograph from Danny, the composer, if you pay a little extra.
- Fifth, copy the contents of the data folder that was created earlier from extracting the data files into the main Super Meat Boy folder. Then, download
this blank gamedata.dat file and save it to the meat boy folder. You can rename or replace the original gamedata.dat, but it shouldn't matter as long as you created a backup smb folder earlier. This will basically force Super Meat Boy to load the it's data files from the SMB folder instead of the gamedata.dat file, since it can't find any files in there, allowing us to easily edit the files without having to repack them.
- Now you can put any custom levels/chapters you want into the levels folder inside the super meat boy folder. I'll use
Code92's chapter Remnants as an example.
- Now for the last part, putting them into a chapter file. In the levels folder, there are several files such as forest.chapter (Which is chapter 1, obviously) and Hospital.chapter (Chapter 2). These are just text files which tell the game things such as what spaces on the chapter go to what level, the names of the level, and what music to load. You can open the up in notepad by simply opening notepad and dragging the file in.
The way the chapter files work is like this, using Hospital as an example:
The first part looks like this:
name = "Hospital";
music = "ch2track.wav";
altmusic = "ch2trackalt.wav";
warpmusic = "ch2retro.wav";
menunormalmusic = "hmenuloop.wav";
menuretromusic = "hevilmenuloop.wav";
warptrans = "warp.am";
intro = "ch2intro.am";
bossintro = "boss2intro.am";
bossoutro = "boss2outro.am";
bossmusic = "boss2.wav";
It's pretty self explanatory what these values control. Music values control music, intro, warptrans etc. control what video is loaded. You can edit the intro value to internetsintro.am to make it play the "Teh Internets" intro you'd normally only see on the Xbox version. Music controls the normal music, altmusic controls dark world music. Menunormalmusic controls the music used the menu. menuretromusic controls the dark world menu music. To find filename of the tracks, just look in the audio folder in the unpacker's folder that should've been made when you extracted the audio files earlier. I decided to change the level music into Chapter 5's original dark world music and make the menu music the teh internets menu music and the intro the teh internets intro. After making these small changes looked like this:
name = "Remnants";
music = "ch5alt.wav";
altmusic = "ch2trackalt.wav";
warpmusic = "ch2retro.wav";
menunormalmusic = "internetsmenu.wav";
menuretromusic = "hevilmenuloop.wav";
warptrans = "warp.am";
intro = "ch2intro.am";
bossintro = "boss2intro.am";
bossoutro = "boss2outro.am";
bossmusic = "boss2.wav";
.
An additional value you can add below this is "overridechar = ID;", without the quotes, replacing ID with a character number from
this list. This will force you to play as the specified character on this chapter. IE, if you have overridechar = 23; it will force you to play as the kid on this chapter.
The next part looks like this:
normlevel
{
file = "2-1";
name = "Biohazard";
par = 11.0;
id = 52;
}
normlevel
{
file = "2-2";
name = "One Down";
par = 10.5;
id = 53;
}
File controls what level file to load, name is, well, the name, I believe par is the time in seconds required to get an A+ on the level, and I believe ID is a number used to identify what level it is, every level in the game seems to have a unique number. You don't need to change the ID, but you're welcome to mess with it. Name can be changed, but does not need to be changed, to what the name of the level is meant to be if the author has given it one. File should be the name of the file. For example, with remnants I made it look like this.
normlevel
{
file = "rem1";
name = "Route 1";
par = 11.0;
id = 52;
}
normlevel
{
file = "rem2";
name = "Ground Switch";
par = 10.5;
id = 53;
}
Just make these changes for every one after. There are other fields such as altlevel, which is dark worlds, and warp1/2/3level. The syntax is the same for these, so no explanation is really needed.
- Now all you have to do is save it, and go to the appropriate chapter and play like normal.
That's about it. It probably looks lengthy and complicated, but it's really not. I don't really like to make tutorials like this, but I really wanted to share this, so if you need help or if something I said didn't make sense, feel free to ask.
I'll try to add helpful screen-shots and perhaps make a video tutorial later. For now,
have a video of a replay I made by using this from RockLeeSmile's chapter "The Lime Key"
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