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Editing Avernum 3?


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My torment-difficulty one-character game has gotten far too easy, it turns out that using only one character just means that all the best items and knowledge brew get funnelled into that one character.

Obviously, the only sensible thing to do by nonsensical logic is to edit the very scenario of Avernum 3 itself, and make it insanely difficult.

I want to have more than one, perhaps a dozen of the ridiculously OP ~600-melee-damage-a-turn Prototype Demon Golems, make Prototype Doom Guards a thing; make the Alien Slime take forever to kill and have assisting slime pools (And also have slimes things that you can't just one-hit kill with level 1 ice lances); make Alien Beasts come in vast swarms; you get the idea.

 

I just can't do anything to the scenario or scripts of Avernum 3 though, beyond opening it as hex code which is completely useless to me as all that is not garble is dialogue.

Blades of Avernum doesn't recognse the .dat files also.

Anyone know what to do?

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Just in case the earlier responses weren't clear: A lot of Spiderweb's games (second Avernum Trilogy, Geneforge series, Avadon series) have scripts that are just ordinary text files, so any user can edit those games. Avernum 3 came before all that; you can't edit the game in any easy way.

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I think I have found the data arrays for monsters in the Outdoor.dat and Town.dat files. It will take a while for me to confirm this guess.

Spiderweb forum rules may or may not allow me to post the information. Data on monsters would not seem to constitute "cracks or keys" because this information is freely available for BoA and all later games.

Edited by Ishad Nha
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From offsets 2,606 to 29,742 of Town.dat you have 256 records of 106 Bytes each. Most numbers seem to be Short, 2 Byte. I have not checked Outdoor.dat.

 

First few columns seem to mean:

0 to 1: Creature level

2 to 13: Creature stats, for list of stat numbers see below.

14 to 25: Levels for stats

 

0 Strength

1 Dexterity

2 Intelligence

3 Endurance

4 Melee Weapons

5 Pole Weapons

6 Bows

7 Thrown Missiles

8 Hardiness

9 Defense

10 Assassination

11 Mage Spells

12 Priest Spells

13 Arcane Lore

14 Potion Making

15 Tool Use

16 Nature Lore

17 First Aid

18 Luck

19 Barter

20 Find Herbs

21 Blademaster

22 Anatomy

23 Gymnastics

24 Pathfinder

25 Magery

26 Resistance

27 Dread Curse

28 Vahnatai Lore

29 Parry

 

Table was created with this code:

 

 

printf("\n Monster Records: 256*106\n");

for (i = 2606; i < 29742; i++) {

if (i % 106 == 62)

printf("\n%d,",(i - 2606)/106);

printf("%d,",buffer);

if (i == 29741)

printf("\n");

}

 

 

 

Creature names occur separately: from offsets 100,298 to 105,418 you have 256 Creature names each of 20 Bytes. Code used was:

 

printf("\nCreature Names 256*20\n");

for (i = 100298; i < 105418; i++) {

if (i % 20 == 18) {

printf("\n%d,",(i - 100298)/20);

for (j = 0; j < 20; j++) {

printf("%s",scen_letters[buffer[i + j]]);

if (buffer[i + j + 1] == 0)

break;

}

printf(",");

}

printf("%d,",buffer);

if (i == 105417)

printf("\n");

}

 

 

Edited by Ishad Nha
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It is hex viewing. Translating the file from hex to decimal is easy enough, I prepared an Excel spreadsheet showing the monster data array. I was hoping Kel might host it but he did not want to, so I had to do it myself:

http://www.freewebs.com/ishadnha/A3Towndat.7z

 

The printout was created with the ProjectA3.exe program. Included is the source file used to create the program. The program is a simple console, MS-Dos Prompt, program to be run from the same directory as the file 3AOutdoor.dat.

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No, I reckon that the numbers are usually "Short", 2 Byte. For the stat levels the final number = (256*Byte 1) + Byte 2, hence you could have a stat level of 255*256 + 255 = 65,535.

These numbers are base-256, first byte is not unused, as you would see if you altered it.

 

You should make a backup copy of your Town.dat file and then open it in a Hex Editor, this will show you what the game is dealing with. Hex editors are frequently freeware too, I use Hexplorer and HxD myself.

Edited by Ishad Nha
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No, I reckon that the numbers are usually "Short", 2 Byte. For the stat levels the final number = (256*Byte 1) + Byte 2, hence you could have a stat level of 255*256 + 255 = 65,535.

These numbers are base-256, first byte is not unused, as you would see if you altered it.

 

You should make a backup copy of your Town.dat file and then open it in a Hex Editor, this will show you what the game is dealing with. Hex editors are frequently freeware too, I use Hexplorer and HxD myself.

I meant inserted into the spreadsheet.

But I've figured out how to understand what the spreadsheet means, I was confused by the fact that stats I thought vital, such as endurance and dexterity, were not defined.

Are undefined stats based on level, and can all of them be overridden?

Also, why is Grah-Hoth there as a level 19?

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"Are undefined stats based on level, and can all of them be overridden?"

If they are defined on level, they can only be changed by altering the level. I don't know if they are defined by level, but that is the case in BoA.

 

Grah-Hoth, I forget if he is actually present in the Tower of Magi meltdown.

Alright, I'll just put the level really high.

And unless it's an event when improbable conditions are met, Grah-Hoth is never present in the meltdown.

I did the meltdown pretty recently, and looted searched the whole tower.

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  • 3 months later...

Preset items, those placed in towns, can be edited to give them unique properties.

There are 500 canonical items. An item with a "(+)" after its name is simply a canonical item which has been altered to give it a unique property. Town preset items in BoA have 8 Bytes each but in A3 they have 10 Bytes.

A Spell Tome that gives you knowledge of a spell is simply an altered Book or Tome.

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