Any way to edit the UFOpedia entries?

[EBM]

Hey folks,

 

I've been modifying Apocalypse recently with various tools to tailor the game more to my liking, but I've not seen any methods for changing the UFOpedia entries. Some of the equipment no longer corresponds to the UFOpedia descriptions, so I'd like to change their entries to match. It certainly isn't game breaking, but is mildly irritating when I page through the descriptions and see outdated information.

 

I searched for any previous topics on this subject, but came up dry. Have I missed a tool capable of such edits? At first I thought Apoc'd could change the entries similar to how it can change object names, but I can't find any options to do so.

 

Any assistance would be appreciated!

[j'ordos]

No there's no tool available yet, and apoc'd doesn't support it. I still haven't get round to figuring out the header file for the UFOpaedia entries so it'd be possible to change the length of each entry. You can use a hex editor or even notepad to alter the entries, as long as you keep them at the exact same length.

[EBM]

Ah well, was worth a shot. I'll look into the hex editing and see how it goes.

[j'ordos]

Took a peek at the header file PAEDIA.MTI today and it's actually exceedingly simple, just a list of offsets that point to the start of each ufopaedia page. Internal formatting of the PAEDIA.MT file that contains all text takes care of the rest. Writing a text editor sounds boring though. Anyone happen to have some source code (preferably basic) for one that can be adapted easily?

[Bomb Bloke]

I'd be more inclined to write a program that can "unpack" the entries into something a standard text editor (eg Notepad) could deal with (eg HTML), then re-pack them back into a format the game will accept. Writing an interface would be re-inventing the wheel.

[j'ordos]

Excellent idea BB! I was considering a tool that read the paedia.mt file and updated the mti index file accordingly so you'd have to edit paedia.mt directly using notepad or a hex editor. I still like this lazy approach but when I feel up to it I may write an extractor/packer.

---

edit

---

Here we go: paedind v1. https://users.telenet.be/V776822/Project/paedind.zip. Put it in the ufopaedia folder and it will scan the paedia.mt file and update the mti index file afterwards. Use a hex editor to edit the text entries inside paedia.mt to your liking. Note that saving the file using notepad or word will destroy the formatting so you have to use a hex editor.

 

Enjoy!