SMTV Modding Has Begun

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Shin Megami Tensei V has just been released on the Nintendo Switch, and modders have wasted no time digging into it. Because it utilizes Unreal Engine, the process for this title is completely different than prior Atlus games.

Getting Set Up (Creating Mods)

If you’re looking to create mods, you’ll want to read on. Skip this section if you’re only wondering how to install them.

To begin, you need to install the Epic Games Launcher from here.

Then, install both versions 4.19 and 4.23 from the Unreal Engine tab on the left.

Extracting Assets

If you have the game on a moddable Switch, boot with Atmosphere and use the homebrew nxdumptool to dump the game’s files to your SD card.

Switch emulators also have the option to extract romfs data by right clicking the game from the games list.

If your SD card is bigger than 32GB, it’s likely formatted with exFAT, so you’ll need to use a program like HxD to combine the pakchunk0-Switch.pak file from the 3 .bin files it gets split into due to file size limitations.

To decrypt the PAK file, download UnrealPak from here and unzip it. Also replace the Crypto.json with this one. Open the command prompt and type the following, substituting the paths with your own: "D:\SMTV\UnrealPak.exe" "D:\SMTV\pakchunk0-Switch.pak" -Extract "D:\SMTV\Unpacked" -CryptoKeys="D:\SMTV\Crypto.json"

Editing and Repacking Assets

From there, you can open up .uasset files with UModel (aka UEViewer) to extract models, textures etc for editing. The reason you need the 4.19 version of Unreal is for this special version of Noesis, which comes with a .bat file you can drag your textures onto (after “cooking” them into .uasset files in Unreal 4.19) in order to “swizzle” them. The textures can then be re-cooked in Unreal 4.21 in order to finally be modded back into the game. You can also edit material values and such using AssetEditor.

To create a new PAK file containing only your modded assets, recreate the directory structure. Say you edited Nahobino’s hair texture. Create a “pakchunk0-Switch” folder containing the following path: pakchunk0-Switch\Project\Content\Design\Character\Player\pla603_hero_union\Texture\T_pla603_hair_D.uasset

Then, download this (separate) UnrealPak and edit filelist.txt to reflect the actual path on your computer to the folder you’ll be creating your PAK from. Then, simply drag the folder onto the UnrealPak-With-Compression.bat to generate a new PAK! Make sure you also replace the Crypto.json with the one from earlier.

The newly generated PAK can be named anything you want, and placed in the game’s Project\Content\Paks folder. You can even put it in a ~mod folder inside that directory to ensure it gets loaded over the game’s main PAK. You can download my Orange/Green Nahobino mod to see an example.

For more in-depth information on unpacking the game’s data beyond this point, see chlor’s guide on Google Docs. It provides a step by step tutorial on getting edited textures into the game, which I think is a great place to start.

Saitsu, another well known member of the modding community, has already produced a few video tutorials that should help you with editing textures, materials and models.
Check them out below and be sure to subscribe to him for more!

Installing Mods

There are several options if you’re looking to play SMTV using mods.

  • Nintendo Switch Custom Firmware (CFW)
    Atmosphere, a popular CFW for Switch, has built-in LayeredFS support.
    This means it overrides game files with modded copies from your SD card’s atmosphere/contents/010063B012DC6800/romfs folder while playing. This only happens when you’re booted into CFW, so it isn’t a permanent modification.
    It’s also unlikely to get you banned or otherwise alter your game/save/system in any undesirable way. That is to say, it’s pretty safe. Take this with a grain of salt though, since with Nintendo’s excessive telemetry, it’s never 100% guaranteed how they choose to enforce their policies.
    To learn more about setting up Atmosphere, check out this excellent guide.
    The latest Atmosphere can be downloaded here.
  • RyujiNX (PC Emulator)
    This is the recommended way to run mods on PC at the moment.
    However, you will need to either begin the game on Switch or Yuzu (another Switch emulator) to bypass the protagonist naming screen and transfer the save to RyujiNX.
    While you can also play it with Yuzu, RyujiNX is known to better support mods (pending a rewrite of Yuzu’s virtual file system).
    Once you have installed an NSP or XCI of the game, right click it and choose “Open Mods Folder” to place your mods.
    Likewise, you have the option to dump the ROMFS data for the game for use with creating your own mods.
    Follow this guide for setting up RyujiNX if you haven’t already.
    Here is a save file after the naming screen so you can start using RyujiNX right away. The protagonist is named Fumo Shujynx in this save.

Modding Support

Here on ShrineFox.com, SMTV has been added to the Browse section. Mods, guides and tools will all be featured there as they are uploaded! To contribute your own, check out the SMTV Section of Gamebanana.

If you have specific questions about modding the game, feel free to create a new thread on the forum’s Q&A/Troubleshooting board or Gamebanana’s SMTV section.

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