Battler TPS

A very silly project

What?

On June 8, I made this tweet:

While it was a joke, I did realize that Mami Tomoe TPS had actual modding potential (not to mention speedrun potential) so I decided to continue this epic joke by trying to see how far I can mod the game.

So far, I've replaced a couple of bosses and enemies, I tried to figure out how the levels in this game work three months ago, but I've had no luck.

Make your own battler shooter

The modding process for this game is sort of complicated, but I'll try to explain it since I want to see what funny image replacements people can make.


The first step is to get Apktool. This would normally be relatively simple, but the first step is actually two steps.

The first real step is to make a folder somewhere. I would highly recommend it. If you don't have JRE (Java Runtime Environment) please install it. Also install the JDK (Java Development Kit)

The second step is to save this file as a .bat file: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iBotPeaches/Apktool/master/scripts/windows/apktool.bat

The third step is to get the latest release of Apktool from here (get the .jar file!!!): https://github.com/iBotPeaches/Apktool/releases

To make your life easier, open command prompt and run a cd to your folder. It should look like this:

cd C:\path\to\folder\

Run the bat file through command prompt (don't double click it, open command prompt and drag-and-drop it). Download the Mami TPS apk and put it somewhere. The command prompt should look like this:

C:\path\to\folder\apktool.bat d C:\path\to\app\jp-co-fwinc-madomagimamitps.apk

It should decompile to a folder called "jp-co-fwinc-madomagimamitps". You are finally free to start modding!

Important I have only tested swapping images. I don't even know how to edit the map files yet, so be warned not everything you do might work

After swapping an image or two or something and deciding it to be finished, then you can finally rebuild/recompile the app.

Here's probably the hardest part of the whole tutorial. Remember the JDK I mentioned earlier? Yes that becomes relevant now. You also need another thing, some Android dev tools. It was difficult for me to even find these tools and I can't even bother so here's the file that you need from version 29.0.2: apksigner.jar

Put apksigner.jar somewhere, preferably somewhere you can remember, maybe even the same folder as Apktool if you want.

Run this command in command prompt, similar to earlier:

C:\path\to\folder\apktool.bat b C:\path\to\app\jp-co-fwinc-madomagimamitps\

It should compile an apk file. Looks finished right? Wrong!!!

The .apk file won't run without being signed, which is where the JDK and the apksigner.jar file comes in.

First, we need a keystore, which is what we're going to be using to sign the apk file. Run this command in the command prompt:

keytool -genkey -v -keystore enter-ketstore-name-here.keystore -alias alias_name -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

It will ask a series of questions like your name, company, city, state, and others. You can pretty much put whatever you want on those. The important question is the password for your keystore. DO NOT LOSE YOUR KEYSTORE PASSWORD. When you make one, keep it somewhere. Without your password, that keystore is useless! Once it is finished, it also gives you the option of converting it to a different, more modern algorithm. It would depend on you on whether or not you want to do that.

After this, run this command in command prompt:

java -jar C:\Path-to-signer\apksigner.jar sign -ks enter-ketstore-name-here.keystore "jp-co-fwinc-madomagimamitps.apk"

The .apk file to be used here is the one built earlier with Apktool by the way. The password it asks for is the one from earlier.

After that, the apk should be usable and your funny meme edit should be working, at least I think.

After making a keystore, you can safely skip from building the .apk to signing it immediately.

Possible speedrun strats

So far, I've managed to get a 54.86 in the tutorial level (game was modded with Battlers so I'm unsure if this could count, or if I can replicate it on the base game). The main strat so far is to either kill everything really fast or ignore it, and to save up Tiro Finales to use up on the level's boss. I haven't found any crazy strats so far, but I think it may be possible, although I'm uncertain, to be able to clip out of the map, not sure how that would help though.

I might make a page documenting my times on this game at some point. By the way, the 54.86 happened on August 27 if anyone asks