#animal crossing hacking

[some-melon]

ACNL CUSTOM VILLAGER/NPC/NPC VILLAGER GUIDE 2025

PLEASE READ THROUGH EVERYTHING BEFORE ATTEMPTING!!!

I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS WITH YOUR 3DS OR GAME!!!

PLEASE BACKUP YOUR FILES BEFORE ATTEMPTING!!!

Hi! I'm here to make a guide on how to make a custom villager/switch an npc to a villager in 2025, since there are not a lot of guides, and any guides out there are now old and obsolite

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

A hacked 3DS with CFW

Computer

7-Zip or Winrar

Animal Crossing: New Leaf (cartridge or digital)

Any Image Editing Software (i.e FireAlpaca, Gimp, Photoshop)

Ohana 3DS [link]

Ohana 3DS Rebirth [link]

HxD [link]

First things first- you're gonna need the romfs files of your game. The way to get them is through GM9 (GodMode9) The way to acsess GM9 is to turn on your 3DS, and as it boots up, hold down the START button.

Besides editing the sprites, this will be the LONGEST part out of this entire process. The romfs has EVERY SINGLE GAME ASSET, so youre basically dumping every single thing from the game onto your SD. For me, this took ALMOST 2 HOURS, so be ready!

FOR CARTRIDGE

Go to [C:] GAMECART ()

Go to the file that has .3ds (NOT THE .trim.3ds)

Click NCSD image options…

Click Mount image to drive

Click yes when prompted

Click content0.game

Go down to romfs and hit Y to copy the romfs files

You can now paste the romfs files to any folder on your SD, but if you want to be organized, created a designated folder for your romfs on the root of your SD

To get to your SD, go back by hitting B until you get to the first page

Go to [0:] SDCARD and click on it, and you'll be in your SD card.

Find the folder you'd like to paste your romfs in

Open the folder and hit Y to paste the romfs, and now you wait

FOR DIGITAL

Hit the Home Menu button in GM9

Go down and click on Title manager

Click [A:] SD CARD

Find Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Go to Open title folder and click it

Click 00000000.app

Click NCSD image options…

Click Mount image to drive

Click yes when prompted

Click content0.game

Go down to romfs and hit Y to copy the romfs files

You can now paste the romfs files to any folder on your SD, but if you want to be organized, created a designated folder for your romfs on the root of your SD

To get to your SD, go back by hitting B until you get to the first page

Go to [0:] SDCARD and click on it, and you'll be in your SD card.

Find the folder you'd like to paste your romfs in

Open the folder and hit Y to paste the romfs, and now you wait

When that is finished, power off your 3DS, eject your SD, and put it into your computer.

Move your romfs to your computer or a USB, that way you don't have them clogging your 3DS' SD and you have a backup of the vanilla files

To keep things organized, make a folder to copy any files you're going to edit to that folder.

Finding NPC files

FOR VILLAGERS

romfs> Npc> Normal> Model

There you can find the .bcres files of every villager

FOR NPCs

romfs> Npc> Special> Model

There you can find the .bcres files of every NPC

Open Ohana3DS rebirth to open and view the .bcres files so you can find the villager or NPC you're looking for

Once you find them, copy them to your desiganted folder

If you want to edit a villagers name you'll need the STR_NNpc_name.umbst file

To find the file go to romfs> Script> Str and find the file, then copy it to your designated folder

If you want to edit your villager's icon go to

romfs> Item> Model

the file will look like brm_(villager id).bcres , FOR EXAMPLE brm_mus17.bcres

When making an NPC into a villager, you're going to have to find a villager to replace. FOR EXAMPLE I edited Sabel and replaced Penelope, so I renamed Sabel's file, hgc.bcres, to mus17.bcres

EDITING THE VILLAGER/NPC

use this guide when it comes to editing the textures and renaming your villager [link]

LOADING YOUR FILES

Now that you have finished your character, heres how you'll put your files on your SD so they'll load into the game

Put your 3DS's SD card into your computer

on the root, located the luma folder

now go to luma> titles> and find Animal Crossing: New Leaf's title ID

US title ID's are

0004000000198F00 for New Leaf

0004000000086300 for Welcome Amiibo

If there is no title ID folder for ACNL, make one

Inside the title ID folder make a romfs folder

In the romfs folder, make a folder for whatever files you edited, so if you edited an NPC, the script, and the NPC icon make 3 folders and name them: Item, Npc, Script

Lets start with Npc first, if you edited a villager or replacing a villager with an NPC, open the Npc folder, make a folder named Normal, open the Normal folder, and make a folder named Model, and in the Model folder put your .bcres file

So luma> title> (title ID)> romfs> Npc> Normal> Model

If you edited an NPC open the Npc folder, make a folder named Special, open the Special folder, and make a folder named Model, and in the Model folder put your .bcres file

So luma> title> (title ID)> romfs> Npc> Special> Model

Now with the script, open the Script folder, and in the Script folder, make a folder named Str, and in the Str folder is where you'll put the .umsbt file

So luma> title> (title ID)> Script> Str

Finally, the villager icon. In your Item folder, make a folder named Model, and in your Model folder, put in the .bcres file that is the villager's icon

So luma> title> (title ID)> Item> Model

Once you have finished that, put your SD back into your 3DS, turn on your console, boot up Animal Crossing, and your custom villager should be there waiting!!

That's All!!

[powdermelonkeg]

Me, playing New Leaf: Ha! I've found a way to make money that isn't limited by time and probably wasn't intended! I'm so gaming the system.

The "game-breaking" method: Pay 1,000 bells to go to Kapp'n's island, play the free tours, collect fruit from trees there, send it home to sell.

Guys. I discovered the concept of "being paid for labor." My gaming the system is exchanging money for goods and services.

[cicadatree]

revisiting mojito

[wandapinkay]

Happy new year from me and the silly boys who kept me company so far in the last year!! 💕✨️

[snowdrop-milk]

*+✧･ﾟ *✧･ﾟマイ ドリーム ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

[eleanr-crossing]

a trip to the local supermarket 🍦🍜

[azraelasitgets]

visit my dream town!! DA is 7F00-01E3-FC92 🐑

some of th rooms in the houses are empty i will b decorating them soon and also will most likely be adding some custom designs on the ground!

feel free to comment ur dream address i will probably visit

[irl-loading-screens]

[i-luv-queen]

Remember, if your favorite cousin isn’t given enough love… put them in Animal Crossing!

Also, here’s Princess and Prince

[joshconfirmed]

august 2024.

[juette]

a comprehensive guide to custom villagers

when making my custom villager it was very difficult to find good tutorials as many of them would point to deleted pages or only cover things i already knew, so i have decided to make my own complete tutorial. please let me know if you need any aditional help! i will try my best to keep this tutorial up to date and clarify it if needed.

it's important to note that these villagers will NOT show up in online play and dream towns. since only your game is edited, other players will see whichever villager you've replaced instead of the one you've made unless they also mod their game.

first things first, you will need a hacked 3ds with luma3ds and an SD card for this. you can probably play in citra, but i dont really know how using mods in citra works so i will focus on luma3ds for this tutorial.

if you haven't hacked your 3ds yet, do not follow a video tutorial: they can become outdated very easily with no indication of it and following outdated guides makes it a lot more likely that you'll brick your console. follow the guide on 3ds.hacks.guide instead.

other software you will need:

hackingtoolkit9ds to decrypt and unpack the rom

kukkii to extract the textures and put them back in

a drawing software (can be anything, even mspaint) to edit the textures

blender or another 3d editing software to preview what you're doing

010 editor to edit the bin and .umsbt files

step 1: getting a rom

if you're simply downloading the rom online, you may skip this step.

for those who wish to dump the rom from their console, you must first turn it on while pressing the START button to enter godmode9's menu. click the HOME button to see more options, then select "Title manager", then select where you've installed the title (SD card or the console itself). a list of all your installed games will appear. scroll down to Animal Crossing New Leaf or Happy Home Designer depending on which game you want your villager to be injected into.

once you've chosen the game, select "Manage title..." and choose either "Build CIA (standard)" or "Dump CXI/NDS file". you may then shut down the console and insert the SD card into your computer. the rom will be in the folder \gm9\out on the root of your SD card

step 2: decrypting/unpacking the rom

drag and drop your rom to the "PackHack" folder that hackingtoolkit9ds is in. rename it so that it doesn't contain any spaces or special characters.

open up hackingtoolkit9ds and type either CE (for .cia roms) or CXI (for .cxi files) in the window that appears depending on the format of your rom. it will ask you to write the name of your file without the extension. type it and press enter and wait for it to do its thing.

step 3: making your textures!

you'll find your extracted villager models in the folder \ExtractedRomFS\Npc\Normal\Model

the first three letters in each .bcres file name represent the species. open up one of the files of the species you want to make yoir villager be. it doesn't have to be the file of the specific villager you want to replace as we can rename it later, but do be careful that certain villagers have slightly different models than the rest of their species (tucker having tusks or étoile having hairpins, for example)

since i wanted to make an elephant with tusks, i've picked tucker as my base. he uses model elp09.bcres

click the "Batch export PNG" button and choose the folder you want the textures to go in. you may then edit them as you wish. your textures do not need to be semi-transparent like the extracted textures are.

i like seeing the way things look as i work, so i get a copy of the model as a .dae file to open it in blender. you may get those from models-resource.com or you may extract them yourself using ohana 3ds rebirth, though ohana can be a bit unreliable at times. blender's "texture paint" tab also allows you to draw directly on the model, though i don't find it precise enough to my taste so i mostly use it to lay guidelines for me to draw over.

once you're satisfied with your model, make sure to draw the different expressions as well.

eyes 0: neutral

eyes 1: half-blink

eyes 2: blink

eyes 3: angry

eyes 4: sad

eyes 5: happy closed (think ^_^)

eyes 6: surprised

eyes 7: >_< face

mouth 0: neutral/smile

mouth 1: half-open

mouth 2: fully open

mouth 3: frown

mouth 4: half-open frown

mouth 5: fully open frown

you do not have to follow those expressions exactly: for example, being a plush elephant, tusker's mouth moves up and down as he speaks instead of opening and closing.

once everything is done, open the .bcres file in kukkii again and import all of your textures in the right slot (i've found the mass import button does not work for me), then save the file.

step 4: editing names and catchphrases

note: if the villager you are replacing is already in your town, editing the catchphrase in the game's files will NOT change it in-game. similarly, if you are putting the villager in your town with marc robledo's save editor, they will have the catchphrase of the villager you've replaced unless you change it in the save editor yourself.

editing a villager's name or default catchphrase is quite simple, but the new name/catchphrase cannot be longer than the old one. if it is, it will mess up the names and default catchphrases of all the following villagers in the game files.

since you can edit the villager's personality in the game files, simply pick a villager with a long enough name and the right gender. you may also look at the villagers' favourite colors and styles on nookipedia to find one that most closely resembles the villager you wish to make.

since i want tusker to have the sisterly personality, i looked at all the sisterly villagers and i found that pashmina's tastes were close enough, so this is who tusker will be replacing. since her id is goa08, tusker's model needs to be renamed to goa08.bcres

you will find villager names in \ExtractedRomFS\Script\Str\STR_NNpc_name.umsbt and \ExtractedRomFS\Script\Str\STR_NNpc_name_ASR.umsbt

scroll down until you find the name of the villager you wish to replace and change it. the dots between each letter are NOT periods! make sure not to delete them. if you do delete one, or if the villager you're replacing has too many letters in its name, you can copy a dot from another name and paste it between the letters or in place of the extra letters.

catchphrases are found in \ExtractedRomFS\Script\Str\STR_NNpc_habit.umsbt

step 5: editing birthdays, species and personalities

you may skip this step if you only wanted to edit the villager's name. as far as i know, this does not work in happy home designer.

first, download this template.

then, open up \ExtractedRomFS\Npc\Normal\ConstPack.bin in 010 editor and click View -> Line Width -> Custom Width... and enter a value of 34 to make all the villager IDs align.

next, click Templates -> Run Template and select the template we've downloaded. a list will appear at the bottom of the window. scroll through it until you reach the villager you wish to edit, (it will be highlighted in the top half of the window) mine being goa08.

clicking the arrow to the left of struct VillagerConst will reveal a list of all the data this line contains. i will show you how to change birthday, species and personality.

the page we downloaded the template on shows a list of "cases" for each field . for example, for the species field, we want tusker to be an elephant, which is case 0x01 on the page. we will thus type 0x01 in the u8 Species field of 010 editor. the same thing goes for the u8 Personality field. sisterly is 7.

the birth month and day simply require the date. tusker's birthday is may 1st, so i typed 1 in the u8 BirthDay field and 5 in the u8 BirthMonth field. leave everything else alone.

step 6: putting them in the game

luma3ds makes it really easy to put your villagers into the game as long as you pay attention to the folder structure of the original rom.

on the root of your sd card, there should be a folder named luma, and within it a folder named titles (if there isn't, you can create it.)

within that folder, create a folder named with the title ID of your animal crossing game. that title ID will depend on the region of your game.

you can then create a folder named romfs in which you will place your mod files while respecting the path of theoriginal files. for example, the path for the models will be \luma\titles\<game title ID>\romfs\Npc\Normal\Model

when all the files are in place, pop your sd card back into your 3ds and open the game. if the villager isn't in your town, use wisp and an amiibo card (or wumiibo) to see if they show up properly.

and that's it! enjoy your new villagers <3 feel free to tag me in your custom villagers, i'd love to see what you make!

did you find this tutorial helpful? you can buy me a ko-fi as thanks!

[transgirl-gaming-thoughts]

Every now and then when thinking/talking about ROM hacks, I’m reminded of those projects I see on romhacking.net where people take retro sports games from the SNES/Genesis era and update them with the latest season’s roster. This thought recurred just now, and this time I thought: why don’t they do that for other games?

Pokémon has seen a little bit of this, with ROM hacks adding every dex and gimmick up to Gen 8 into the Gen 3 games, but I think this should go further than that! What about Animal Crossing? Seeing something like Wild World updated to include items/villagers/mechanics from City Folk, New Leaf, or even New Horizon would be so cool! As someone whose favorite console ever is the DS, this would be a great hack to play, and I know I would eat it up! Games like Smash Bros, Mario Kart, and even Mario Party could play into this too, for much the same reasons.

I’m also a fan of those hacks that recreate a different game entirely, using this game’s engine/assets. What if we just recreated Animal Crossing: New Horizons in Wild World? Add all of the fighters from Smash Ultimate into Melee? Put MK8 tracks in Double Dash? The list could go on.

If I had much of any ability with regards to hacks like this, I’d be all over organizing projects like these. Unfortunately, I’m sort of at the whims of the many talented creators out there making hacks out of love and passion for the games. These are just some neat ideas I had that I would love to see become a reality :3

[smell-o-gram]

Normal behavior is making a shrine for your f/o in Animal Crossing

[videogames-i-wish-were-real]

Videogames I wish were real #44

A videogame where characters from a certain genre are dropped into a videogame of a completely different genre where their skills, knowledge and personality turn out to be very useful (or because they could simply use a break). One level is a magical girl in a zombie apocalypse battling zombies with sparkles and rainbows. Another level is a detective straight out of a typical noire visual novel dropped into a charming farming game where he has to figure out how to stop the big evil corporation from taking over the town. Or a level that is a hack and slash game were you play as the chef from a cooking game. There could be a level where the main character of gritty game full of violence and political intrigue ending up in an animal crossing type of game where they get to enjoy a peaceful life, watering flowers, catching bugs and chatting with their neighbors. The most stressful choices they have to make are about interior design and they've never been happier.

Feel free to comment/reply with other combinations of characters and genres that would pair surprisingly well!

[marbarmars]

Nothing too crazy today, sometimes I just like to make outfits in ACNH and then proceed to use them on my characters 0.01% of the time xD

If any of these inspire you go ahead

[ye-olde-dream-suite]

Did I find your Dream Town?

Some hacked towns I came across, I honestly don't dislike hacked towns, you can create some really cool things with them, what I don't like are hacked towns that would actively harm your game.

The last two are definitly different towns but this are all the hacked pictures so I bundled them together.