Dancing Zombie patch – Put Dancing Zombie back into Plants Vs. Zombies
When PopCap announced that Dancing Zombie would be replaced with Disco Zombie in Plants vs. Zombies: Game of the Year I disabled automatic updates in Steam.
But when the GOTY version came out, my copy of PvZ was automatically updated by Steam without my consent. So I decided to make a patch that would get rid of the lame Disco Zombie and restore Dancing Zombie to his former glory.
Download
Here it is: DancingZombiePatch.zip
Usage
To use it, just extract DancingZombiePatch.exe and run it. It will default to pointing to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\plants vs zombies but should still work if you’ve installed into a different folder or aren’t on a 64-bit system or whatever. (It might only work with the Steam version, though.)
Obviously this is offered without warranty or guarantee that it will work or whatever else… And it will certainly stop working if the game is updated to a new version. Hopefully neither PopCap nor Valve will mind. (It’s really not cool to just change the files on someone’s computer when they’ve said not to.)
Video
Here’s a video showing the Dancing Zombie patched version of Plants vs. Zombies GOTY in action:
Screenshot
How the patch was made
The game assets are all stored in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\plants vs zombies\main.pak.
In the original version, Dancing Zombie and Backup Dancer are represented in the art/scripting assets as Zombie_Jackson (probably shouldn’t have used that name, guys!) and Zombie_dancer, respectively.
In the GOTY version, Dancing Zombie and Backup Dancer become Zombie_disco and Zombie_backup.
However, in the update, PopCap didn’t actually delete the original Zombie_Jackson and Zombie_dancer files! So it was just a matter of pointing the animation data for the disco dancers to the originals. (Luckily the original version was still on my laptop.)
To unpack the PvZ main.pak file I used a generic scripted extraction tool called QuickBMS and a script that works with PopCap’s PopPak format.
After modifying the resources, I made a new main.pak using poppak.exe from PopCap Games FrameWork v1.3.
Finally I used PatchWise Free to compare the two main.pak files and generate a patching tool.
Nice, thank you for the effort. I too had set it to “do not update” and had my game updated anyways. I believe that is poor form from the publishers and steam.
Awesome work. I noticed a minor bug where when the MJ or backup dancer zombie dies the head piece reverts to the disco dancer heads.
Thanks for making the patch! I don’t understand though how come when I download the patch to my vista machine it is shows up as a Word doc. Any ideas on how to fix this?
@Jemifer There could be a million reasons for your web browser getting file types or mimetypes mixed up.. You’d have to google for the name of your browser plus “wrong file type” or something to find specific instructions for your browser.
@bleeding_gums Thanks – that was reported on the Steam forums, too. I should have time this week to make a new version of the patch that fixes this along with the size bug.
BTW, I don’t have a Steam version of PvZ, so the patch doesn’t work for me. Although this helped me restore the old Jackson Zombie myself.
I also found the cause of the Jackson zombie’s head turning into the disco zomie’s head after dying. In the main.pak’s “particles” file, there’s the original “ZombieDancerHead.png” and the “ZombieDancerHead_disco.png”. I thinkswapping these will get rid of the problem. Hope this helps :D
Thanks for the info on extracting files from a PopCap .pak file. Crazydavescream.ogg makes an excellent text message notifier. :)
Haha, I think that would drive me nuts after a while!
It didn’t work for me. It says main.pak failed the checksum so it skipped that file.
@Pointless
I think that there’s been an update on Steam recently, which has changed the checksum of that file. I’ll have to create a new version before it works again.
Yeah, there must have been a minor update, I can’t get it to work either “main.pak failed”.
when i press update it said it was the wrong file
i mean wrong folder selected
plz help
It’s now December and the patch hasn’t been updated. :/
It’s already now 2011, any luck? Can you tell us on how to do it ourselves when you’re not around? Especially which files to swap and such. And I’m using a non-Steam version.
This is my last update for dancing “jackson” zombie. Thx for tips how create.
http://rapidshare.com/files/453479881/DancingZombie_3-2011_update.exe
I don’t have a steam version plz update now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!