VPW Studio – WWF WrestleMania 2000 Notes

Table of Contents

1. Supported Versions/ROMs
2. General Notes
3. Notable File Types
4. Global Text
5. Default Wrestler IDs
6. Wrestler Data
   1. Profile
   2. Moves and Parameters
   3. Default Costumes
7. Stable Data
8. Costume Data
9. Arena Data

WM2K docs archive: https://vpw.ajworld.net/wm2k/

Supported Versions/ROMs

All data is for Z64 format ROMs only.

The Japanese version of WrestleMania 2000 is slightly different from the NTSC-U and PAL releases. All wrestlers are unlocked at the start, and a few system messages have been translated into Japanese (using textures instead of adding proper Japanese text support). The NTSC-J release also appears to have been a test-bed for some internal code updates, though this is not really visible to players.

General Notes

WrestleMania 2000 is based on an earlier version of Virtual Pro-Wrestling 2. This is supported by GameShark codes that enable the use of a few VPW2 features: an incomplete version of the shootfighting style, and the Computer Intelligence menu in Edit Mode. Furthermore, older VPW2 graphics exist in the WM2K game data, including a set of numbers that match the graphical style seen in an old VPW2 preview video.

The FileTable database for the NTSC-J version of WrestleMania 2000 is not considered a priority at this time, as it is likely similar to the NTSC-U FileTable (minus some shifting for the additional Japanese messages).

This is the last game to use the special formatting for handling Short and Long Wrestler Names. Future games store wrestler names in an AkiText archive.

Notable File Types

todo

MenuBackground

In WrestleMania 2000, MenuBackground objects consist of multiple 320x24 slices of an image, making up 10 rows in total.

Global Text

While most of the strings are available in various AkiText archives, there are a few that are hardcoded in the ROM. freem calls this section "Global Text". Strings end with an 0x00 byte, though there may be extra padding for alignment purposes.

Global text strings are accessed via a pointer table found directly after the strings. (The truth is a bit more complicated than this; ignore it for now.) Making strings longer requires re-pointing the table, which is a very arduous task to take on manually. The recommended method is to use an assembler; information on this is beyond the scope of this manual.

In WrestleMania 2000, most of the global strings are ASCII encoded. There are a few unused Shift-JIS strings that you can safely ignore or re-purpose. Text control codes are supported, though some are of limited use.

Default Wrestler IDs

Entries with ID2 values from 43-4B are different from the other wrestlers. (todo: explain further)

"Dummy" is not normally playable, and represents the character used for move previews in Edit/Create-a-Wrestler Mode.

ID4 gaps can be partially explained through older text found in file ID 0097:

• 010A – Chyna (entry #502) appears between Mideon and Paul Bearer.
• 0403 – Goldust (entry #514) appears between Godfather and Mark Henry. This ID4 would be re-assigned to Chris Jericho.
• 0407? – "Excalibar" (entry #518) appears between Jarrett and Ali Singh. (See below discussion)
• 0501 – (Tiger) "Ali Singh" (entry #519) appears after "Excalibar", but before Steve Blackman.
• 0703 – Gillberg (entry #531) appears between Hardcore Holly and Blue Meanie.
• 0A01 – Sable (entry #542) appears between Jim Ross and Terri. This ID4 would be re-assigned to the Hos.
• 0A07 – Nicole Bass (entry #548) appears between Tori and Stephanie. This ID4 would be re-assigned to Chyna.
• 0A09 – "Ryan" (Shamrock) appears after Stephanie, and is the last in the list. This ID4 would be re-assigned to the Dummy.

The identity of "Excalibar" is unknown, but a few theories have been considered:

1. It could be a code name for Chris Jericho, who had yet to debut when the game was in development. It's not out of the question to use a codename to prevent leaks. However, Chris Jericho would be re-located to ID4 0403 in the final game, replacing Goldust.
2. It could represent Owen Hart, whose name also appears in file ID 0097, but not within the two lists of wrestlers the other possible ID4s were sourced from. An "Owen Hart 01" move (entry #674, likely representing a taunt) is found after "Val Venis 01" and before "Chyna 01", suggesting that Owen Hart was still in the game when Chyna was moved to the 0A00 region. (The same list has "Sable 01" (#679) and "Goldust 01" (#685) entries as well.)

Wrestler Data

Profile

Profile data is stored in the ROM. This includes wrestler names, height/weight, music, and theme song values.

• Long Name (max length 28 characters)
• Short Name (max length 10 characters)

VPW Studio does not currently allow you to edit wrestler names, since WrestleMania 2000 stores them in a way that is not easy to work with.

Moves and Parameters

Moves and Parameters are found in the FileTable, and are mapped to wrestlers via data in the ROM ("Moveset Index" and "Params Index" in the Wrestlers dialog). The data formats are not fully understood, but you can make a wrestler in Edit Mode and export the Moves and Parameters in the formats required.

Default Costumes

Default costume data exists in the ROM, and each wrestler's definition contains four pointers to their default costumes. Each default costume is 36 (decimal) bytes long, and all values are bytes.

Data Format

• Offset 0x00: Head Shape
• Offset 0x01: Hair Color
• Offset 0x02: Unknown 1
• Offset 0x03: Face Number
• Offset 0x04: Hair 1
• Offset 0x05: Hair 2
• Offset 0x06: Facial Hair
• Offset 0x07: Masks Etc
• Offset 0x08: Body Size
• Offset 0x09: Skin Color
• Offset 0x0A: Ring Attire
• Offset 0x0B: Ring Attire Color 1
• Offset 0x0C: Ring Attire Color 2
• Offset 0x0D: Upper Attire
• Offset 0x0E: Upper Attire Color 1
• Offset 0x0F: Upper Attire Color 2
• Offset 0x10: Gloves
• Offset 0x11: Gloves Color 1
• Offset 0x12: Gloves Color 2
• Offset 0x13: Tattoo
• Offset 0x14: Unknown 2
• Offset 0x15: Wristband
• Offset 0x16: Wristband Color
• Offset 0x17: Left Elbow Pad
• Offset 0x18: Left Elbow Pad Color
• Offset 0x19: Right Elbow Pad
• Offset 0x1A: Right Elbow Pad Color
• Offset 0x1B: Left Knee Pad
• Offset 0x1C: Left Knee Pad Color
• Offset 0x1D: Right Knee Pad
• Offset 0x1E: Right Knee Pad Color
• Offset 0x1F: Boots
• Offset 0x20: Boots Color 1
• Offset 0x21: Boots Color 2
• Offset 0x22: Entrance Attire
• Offset 0x23: Entrance Weapon

Stable Data

Stables in WWF WrestleMania 2000 hold up to 8 wrestlers maximum. If all eight slots are used, a terminating value (four bytes of 0x00) must be written to separate the stables. VPW Studio does not always handle this case correctly.

Costume Data

This section describes the data for the available costume parts. If you are looking to edit the default wrestler costumes, please see the "Default Costumes" section.

Costume Colors

Costume colors in Edit Mode are defined in file ID 0A63 (NTSC-U/PAL) or 0A9D (NTSC-J).

Arena Data