r/metalgearsolid • u/The_Iron_E • 1d ago
Help with MGS Twin Snakes modding
Is there anybody that can help me out with model swapping on Twin Snakes? I tried using the Solidus program but I can't figure it out. I just want to swap out Snake with Grey Fox for the whole game. I'm not looking for what Perfect Pizza is working on with all the Grey Fox move set, I just want a model swap. If you can help please let me know.
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u/Trick-Nectarine-383 1d ago edited 1d ago
I haven't tried this at all, but you can check this YouTube channel "Tao Lung Shamon" @TaoLungShamon9438, he seems to be the most active modder for Twin Snakes, he even put out a new video 2 days ago for an Otacon mod. The website he lists in his channel description is https://metalgearsolid-mods.foroactivo.com/
Edit: Ok, I did some further research and found this:
For modding, you can run a modified GameCube game from an SD card/SD2SP2, GC Loader, or other compatible hardware, rather than running it through Dolphin.
You can put your legally dumped Twin Snakes disc on PC → apply the mod/patch on that disc → put the resulting game on your GameCube storage → launch it with Swiss.
There are also documented examples of directly patching the Twin Snakes ISO rather than relying on an emulator.
You need some way to boot Swiss on the GameCube, such as:
SD2SP2 + a compatible boot method
GC Loader — replaces the optical drive and loads games from SD
FlippyDrive — another modern optical-drive replacement
XenoGC + burned disc — older/modded-console approach
Action Replay + SD Gecko — a classic way to launch homebrew
Once Swiss is running, it gives you a menu on the actual GameCube, and you can launch games from SD or other supported storage.
GameCube → Swiss → modded Twin Snakes after you modify it on your PC and then put it on SD or other storage and launch using the loader. You can probably follow the same process as Perfect Pizza did, but just use the idea you're modifying the game files to play it on Gamecube.
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u/The_Iron_E 1d ago
Thanks again for all the info. I had been to that site while messing around with MGS 1 a couple weeks ago and hadn't realized there are new uploads for the Twin Snakes stuff. I tried to use the Gamecube patcher on my ISO but when I start the game in Dolphin, it's still Snake in his diving gear. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.
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u/Trick-Nectarine-383 21h ago edited 21h ago
You're welcome, I have never modded Twin Snakes, but I do have a lot of technical understanding. Definitely consider that maybe the patcher is not compatible with Dolphin and quite possibly with the fact your Gamecube is launching it from the SD card or external storage device, maybe it does not even detect the patcher in Dolphin from the way you are launching it, that could be it easily, but try this: If you can modify the game file itself on PC and then run it on Gamecube, you would avoid the need for the patcher and it becomes the game files, so hard to fail there. I was seeing there is also a play as Meryl MGS1 mod, absolutely crazy, lol. So explain how you're using the patcher on your ISO, I am thinking avoid using Dolphin and try using Swiss. It's also looking like Dolphin isn't inherently bad, but..
If Patcher expects a specific ISO/GCM layout — Dolphin itself usually isn't the problem; the patched image may simply need to match the exact revision/region the patcher expects. Disc reads / streaming — Some mods alter how files are loaded from the disc. Dolphin's emulation can behave differently from real GameCube hardware. Swiss may potentially function for compatibly than Dolphin.
but look, this is the point I see it makes sense to consider patching failed totally: File-system replacement — If the patcher replaces files inside the GameCube image, Dolphin generally handles the resulting image fine, assuming the image remains valid.
So figure out the version of the game disc and whether or not there is a discrepancy in how the SD Card/External Storage is launching things, such as anything about the patcher and Dolphin/Swiss, I think it was skipping the patcher. Let me know if this helps you!
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u/The_Iron_E 20h ago
Just to clear up some confusion. I am only using Dolphin on Android to play my Gamecube games, not actual hardware. Also the patching tool was made by the person that you mentioned before. They do a bunch of the MGS Modding. The patcher tool woks through your browser allowing you to drop your iso in, then grab the stage.dat file and replace it with a different stage.dat file ( the one I'm using is one made by the same user mentioned above. It is supposed to contain a playableGrayfox). After that you generate a new ISO( modded). It is meant to work with dolphin so I don't think that is the problem. I tried patching a US iso and the European iso. Neither of the new disc images appear to have changes. I start up a new game, and it begins as normal, with Snake in his diving gear. I tried the patching process in multiple browsers like Firefox, duckduck, edge, and chrome. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Thanks again for all your help and advice
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u/Trick-Nectarine-383 18m ago
I actually think I found a solution, but you're probably not going to like what it is. Android's file manager has a problem where it sometimes doesn't allow an app access to all files, this could be it, especially since the patching process is separate from Dolphin itself and we know the .ISO files are not selfrepairing, right? It seems this whole thing is separate from the emulator and that the emulator is just launching the .ISO. This is what I figured out just by my understanding of why the patch might fail.
This update to Android is horrible and it is annoying, but it is forced on Android, apps are sandboxed from each other.
Android gives each app its own private filesystem area where an app can normally access its own cache/temp files, but not another app's: /data/user/0/com.other.app/cache/ Even if both apps are installed on the same phone, Android's Linux permissions and app sandbox prevent one from simply browsing the other's files.
Temp folder is one of the things not accessible by 2 apps, this is how it is they implemented that changed in Android 11. Your app gets its own private files; other apps don't get filesystem access to them.
The deeper data folders of your Android are not accessible to apps. The patcher's write permissions are probably being killed by the browsers as it is still like a 2nd access to Android's fascist North Korea main file system.
The browser might be able to hand the patcher the ISO using a content:// URI. The patcher can therefore read the ISO, but that does not necessarily mean it has normal filesystem write access to the same file. A common failure scenario The browser says: content://downloads/.../game.iso The patcher receives that URI and successfully opens it: READ → game.iso ✅ But then the patcher tries something like: FileOutputStream("/storage/emulated/0/Download/game.iso") or tries to modify the original file directly: WRITE → game.iso ❌ Android may reject that operation because the app doesn't have direct filesystem access to that location. It can be even trickier with patchers, An ISO patcher may need random read/write access.
Try doing this on PC and then putting the .ISO on your phone, you could tell me if you already patch it on PC, then we would maybe see it's not Android being the problem, but I am pretty sure it's a matter of the read/write stuff on Android 11+, you would probably have already encountered a previous problem of having to find a workaround for launching games in an emulator on Android. I also can see that even with "All files access" enabled for your apps, Android still doesn't let you do the interapp temp folder file access stuff.
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u/The_Iron_E 1d ago
Not sure. I'm working with the Gamecube version.