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Av4 Character Editor... will one ever be made


Horus

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Having tried the cheats (they suck :p ) then the in game Editor by Hawk King (so limited...), I was wondering if anyone would in the future make an application that acts like the orginal Avernum character editors (since I'm guessing it would not be hard for someone who knows Av4's data intimately to build one).

 

And I know everyone can go on with the "Why bother cheating" line but that's not what this query is about.

 

Normally when I've completed an Avernum game a number of times I get to the point where I get bored so I use the Character editor to make a ready to go character with equipment all set up and a history of great or evil deeds behind him/her, so instead of starting with a group of novices wielding rusty knifes I get to go around as a lone (normally) experienced yet balanced veteran to add to a whole new challenge.

 

The lack of character editor was a really downer in that respect... frown

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Quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:
You vote with your cash. A purchase of A4 is a vote for A5.
From what I've heard of A4 and expect from A5, an argument against. I guessed that abandoning the system of previous Avernum games would be bad, and what people have said seems to confirm that.

But hey, I'll wait for the Windows demo and see...
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Whatever the complaints, and there are some valid ones, the A4 engine is better than the older Avernum engines. Just fight a few of the more interesting fights and that becomes abundantly clear. All that's really missing is secret doors. And crate puzzles, if you're really a masochist.

 

The graphics are always a wash. Jeff can't plesae the Exile-philes, the Geneforge-philes, and the Avernum-philes at the same time. I'm not complaining.

 

The plot could have been better, but that's not an engine problem.

 

—Alorael, who concludes that you should really play the game before complaining. Have you ever known Spidwebbers to do anything but gripe?

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  • 1 month later...
Quote:
Originally written by Bent Spoon:

The graphics are always a wash. Jeff can't plesae the Exile-philes, the Geneforge-philes, and the Avernum-philes at the same time. I'm not complaining.
It's just that I would like Geneforge graphics to please Geneforge-philes and Avernum graphics to please Avernum-philes. I was totally shocked when I noticed the total lack of outdoors. I had liked them a lot in the other Avernums.
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What makes me angry its i accidently did an error to my charactors and i tried to fix it and BECAUSE there is NO editor. madmad I really wish that the creator of avernum 4 will create a "Charactor editor" and for players of Avernum to download and for those who doesn't want it don't need to download it. Anyone that read this, reply if you Agree or Disagree

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Quote:
Originally written by Super ideal idea:
What makes me angry its i accidently did an error to my charactors and i tried to fix it and BECAUSE there is NO editor. madmad I really wish that the creator of avernum 4 will create a "Charactor editor" and for players of Avernum to download and for those who doesn't want it don't need to download it. Anyone that read this, reply if you Agree or Disagree
What kind of error? You might be able to fix it with one of the cheats.

Jeff won't make a character editor, and we need to make peace with this fact. The cheats are all we're getting. Besides, if he didn't listen to the Mac users when we complained earlier, why would he start listening now?

Besides, it's more of a challenge to avoid using the character editor... so I disagree. Let somebody else make the character editor if they need it so badly.
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Quote:
What kind of error? You might be able to fix it with one of the cheats.

Jeff won't make a character editor, and we need to make peace with this fact. The cheats are all we're getting. Besides, if he didn't listen to the Mac users when we complained earlier, why would he start listening now?

Besides, it's more of a challenge to avoid using the character editor... so I disagree. Let somebody else make the character editor if they need it so badly.
Well i tried to put those Inhencers (that are "Elite Warrior", "Bless at Birth", etc...) But i forgot to put some to certain of my caracters and there are NO CHEATS eek to correct that.
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I wouldn't mind the character editor for when I forget to save my game before selling suff and accidentally sell something I wanted to keep.

 

I've only used one three times before. Once I came back to the save game to find my boat was gone and there was no other way back in Exile 2. In Blades of Exile, A Small Rebellion scenario, I was piling up experience and loot from a gold mine filled with spirits when my money went to negative 32,000 something instead of maxing out. The only time it was my fault was in Avernum 2 when I needed spell points for Move Mountains to get out an area that I should have caught as a trap and had no save files before it.

 

I wouldn't mind being able to tweak an existing character to change spent skill points.

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I'm making one but unfortunately, it will only be for windows users (being as I'll be using Visual C++ .NET) and I dont think I have the stamina to allow for item editing. Itll just be stats, traits and money editing. Ive figured out most of the save format info with regards to characters.

 

"Header" stores the little image, time, date and all that. "Data" is where character info starts. Stuff like Level, for the first character, is stored at the 23968th byte, stats begin at the 24006th etc. I was bored last night. laugh

 

p.s. i started because i didnt pay attention to the unlock door - tool use connection. madmad Took care of that problem. smile

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Quote:
Originally written by Red_Sage:
I'm making one but unfortunately, it will only be for windows users (being as I'll be using Visual C++ .NET) and I dont think I have the stamina to allow for item editing. Itll just be stats, traits and money editing. Ive figured out most of the save format info with regards to characters.

"Header" stores the little image, time, date and all that. "Data" is where character info starts. Stuff like Level, for the first character, is stored at the 23968th byte, stats begin at the 24006th etc. I was bored last night. laugh

p.s. i started because i didnt pay attention to the unlock door - tool use connection. madmad Took care of that problem. smile
Glad to hear it. Good luck to you!
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I don't think that will make it progress any more quickly...

 

It wouldn't be too hard to make an editor like Hawk King's, but with more power; it would only take some time and effort. My Geneforge editor was based on script editing, too (which makes it nicely cross-platform), and allows you to do quite a bit of stuff to your characters. Hawk King's is the same idea, but simpler.

 

Basically, if you really want an editor, try to calm down and make one yourself. Look at Hawk King's editor and my GF1 editor (or some of the later ones which other people made) and try to do something similar yourself. It will take patience, but if you actually make something nice everyone will like you.

 

If you just want something small like a Girdle of Might, that's a really simple change. You can find item numbers in av4itemschars.txt in your Scripts folder; for example, that Girdle is item 164. From there it's a simple addition of a couple lines to a talknode, after the last dialog text in that node (assuming that node doesn't already have a code entry):

 

Code:
code = reward_give(164);break;
Please back up any scripts you edit before you change them, and possibly saved games too; if you screw something up, it would be too bad to completely lose all your progress.

 

Have fun!

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Quote:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally written by Red_Sage:
I'm making one but unfortunately, it will only be for windows users (being as I'll be using Visual C++ .NET) and I dont think I have the stamina to allow for item editing. Itll just be stats, traits and money editing. Ive figured out most of the save format info with regards to characters.

"Header" stores the little image, time, date and all that. "Data" is where character info starts. Stuff like Level, for the first character, is stored at the 23968th byte, stats begin at the 24006th etc. I was bored last night.

p.s. i started because i didnt pay attention to the unlock door - tool use connection. Took care of that problem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Glad to hear it. Good luck to you!
I could make a cross platform one using blitzmax but it would require knowing how the data is stored.

however i would also need to buy a mac as well laugh
to compile it on and test it.

unless i could find someone with bmax, a mac and the time to compile it.

mm i could ask my brother who has a mac - but he lives ways a way from me - i might email him...

now i just need to now how the data is stored, if anyone is willing to share that info...

Edit: MADE A START- kinda

I got the name of the save file using readline
then skiped 33 bytes

and then got your location by using readline again.

But thats as much as i can do without know the rest of the file. i wouldnt know were to begin about finding the detials for the rest of the file.
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I finished the editor to a decent state but it requires .NET 2.0 framework since i wrote it in C#. You can get that from microsoft. I used Visual C# for GUI design purposes only, little else allows as smooth Rapid application development. The actual data itself requires little code. I will also post what i have decoded at the end of this post. I might come back to this later to add item support. Dunno.

 

Screenies:

scr23el.th.gif scr15ib.th.gif scr34te.th.gif

 

Notice the -131% XP adjustment on my character, if you have more than 2 positive traits the XP adjustment starts to go down! I havent upload the exe file yet but will if anyone is interested.

 

Core code:

Code:
private int[] off_arr = new int []{24006,29158,34310,39462 }; //offsets for each character                fs.Seek(curr_off, SeekOrigin.Begin); //c_data, s_data etc are all of type byte or unsigned char for C++ people.                fs.Read(c_data, 0, 61);//stats                fs.Seek(19, SeekOrigin.Current);                fs.Read(s_data, 0, 79);//spells                fs.Seek(241, SeekOrigin.Current);                fs.Read(t_data, 0, 29);//traits   
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would you consider making it open source so i can have a go at making a mac os version or a version that doesnt require framework 2 in blitzmax PLEASE smile .

 

Good work BTW.

 

[edit] Oh and if you need someware to host it, email me the compiled version diablo_tk (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk[/edit]

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  • 3 weeks later...

Character editors give games replayability. I usually play through a game once as is, then go through again and mess around with stats, seeing just how crazy I can make things smile

 

So if there is one made for the possible A5, it might be an after-you-beat-the-game bonus (like Bungee's Oni had)

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