raykit-instapricklies

A patcher for the Rayman Designer EXE to allow "red" events, other than the usual small and big prickly, to be made insta-killing by changing their hitpoints. It accomplishes this by means of simple adjustments to a function-pointer table governing the collision behaviour of different object types. The adjustments are made in the EXE's relocation tables.

The Issue

For over a decade, it has been known that to get a red insta-kill prickly (big or small) in Rayman Designer, like the ones from the Educational games, you need to copy the EVE.MLT code for the corresponding blue one, and change:

• The DES from CPL to CPR, and
• The hitpoints from 0 to 1.

So, for example, you can copy the big blue prickly's code, which looks like this:

/ grosse boule bleue /
�def,MS_cpl_bpic,CPL, 4 ,
CPL.ETA,
 2 ,     254,
 33 , 255,
1,1,
0,3,
18,32,0,
0,0,0,
 107 , 255 , 5 ,

And change it to this:

/ grosse boule rouge /
�def,MS_cpl_bpic_insta,CPR, 4 ,
CPL.ETA,
 2 ,     254,
 33 , 255,
1,1,
0,3,
18,32,0,
0,0,1,
 107 , 255 , 5 ,

It is possible to do something similar with moving pricklies (e.g. MS_ouye4) and even the big bouncy platforms (MS_cpl_blu1). However, while these events will be red, they won't be insta-killing, because the code in the EXE wasn't set up for that. This patcher solves that problem, allowing you to use insta-killing red moving pricklies and bouncy platforms.

You can also get red insta-killing prickly swings (MS_lia_mont) with this patcher, but in this case, you must set the hitpoints to 2 or higher. The reason for this is that the stock EVE.MLT uses hitpoints of 1 for the stationary swing (even though there is no reason to do so).

Usage

If you're on Windows (either 32- or 64-bit), you can grab the EXE from the latest entry on the releases page. Once you have downloaded it, you can drag your RAYKIT.EXE file onto this one, and it will patch it and create a RAYKIT.EXE.BAK.IPR backup file in case anything goes wrong. The reason for the .IPR suffix is just to distinguish it from any other RAYKIT.EXE.BAK that you might have, e.g. from my other patcher. Note: I've only tested this on the GOG version of Rayman Designer, so it may fail on other versions.

Alternatively, if you're comfortable with the command line and have a Rust nightly toolchain installed, you can do this to compile it yourself:

$ git clone https://github.com/PluMGMK/raykit-instapricklies.git
$ cd raykit-instapricklies
$ cargo run --release -- /PATH/TO/RAYKIT.EXE