🚀 go-pugleaf

Sorry it took me such a long time to reply to this, finals week is fin :)

Ok, so yeah, their database is a disaster at best when it comes to trying to
hack it, but here is what I could get from it:

In a hex editor, do a plaintext search for "fireball" to jump down to the
fireball entry.  The entry is orginied like this:

Each "field" of information is preceeded with a numerical identifier and
0x08, so the field headers in plain Hex go : "01 08 ... 02 08 .... 03 08
..." etc.  Why this is done this way is completly beyond me.

The fields that I figured ot are:

01 08 is the spell fullname

02 08 is some "short name"

0C 08 is the number of default targets, stored as unsigned int

15 08 is the Complexity of the base spell, stored as unsigned int

0D 08 is the duration of the effect, stored as short int, in 1/10 sec.  A
value of 0 represents an instant.  Giving duration to things like fire arrow
may have odd results.

10 08 \ both these values crash the game if changed at all.
11 08 / I think they have to do with the casting animation.

12 08 is the icon in the "shop screen"  (pointer to an array)

0A 08 is the "base effect" stored in two byte values that seem to be put
through a function internally.  Taking fire arrow as an example, which has
the values E0 40, when you preturb the first value (E0 -> D0) you get a +/-
1 to the effect, when you preturn the second value (40 -> 41) you get a +/-
21 to the effect.  Furthermore, changes seem to defy logic, as another
change might do something totally weird.  (E0 -> 70 == -13 to effect? -- I
have verified this)  I went all the way to playing with this equation in
binary and never could figure out "how it works".  I was able to apply the
+/- 1 to get from 7 to 10 with no problem, which is all I had set out to do,
so I walked.

My final program (hack) replaces E0 40 with 20 41 which causes the effect to
become 10.

I was waiting until I get the retail version next week to really try to
determine whats going on as well as map the other fields in the spells, all
the above work was done vs the demo.

database.res is the file to attack, btw.

Chris Woods

Brothel wrote in message ...
>On Thu, 3 May 2001 23:57:20 -0500, "Chris Woods" <woo...@okstate.edu>
>wrote:
>>On spells,
>>
>>I hacked the demo database to "fix" the fire spells by moving the base
>>damages from 7 to 10.  It very much improved the game for me.  Didn't mess
>>with the acid/elec spells because the weren't in the demo, but considering
>>it's doable I plan to pick up the game after finals are over (end of next
>>week) and I'll do the same.
>>
>>If anyone wants a copy of the executable to take care of the database,
email
>>me.
>>[...]
>Can you post a format desc? I couldn't make heads or tails from their
>compressed (?) format
>
>TNX