DuchessOfKvetch

Read that article and I think about everything else on this website, Steam, and GOG already. I flat out can't install MSDE 2000. It is considered more ancient than dirt by Microsoft, and a huge security risk (probably full of juicy buffer overflows). They don't want you running obsolete software because of liability concerns. SQL 2000 and MSDE were some of the hardest hit databases back in the days of serious online database viruses, a decade ago - they were highly vulnerable to injection attacks and whatnot. When Microsoft upgraded to SQL 2008, they dropped a lot of support for older database files, but I was able to load the .mdf via using a legacy compatibility mode. The security restriction on using a blank sa password are so onerous now that I can't even configure a datasource to work with the SS database, even with full rights. The SQL service rejects insecure logins as well. Some folks seem to have had luck with old versions of MS Access, but I don't own a copy. And either way, with DataImport failing, there's no way to actually create a mod. I have wracked my brain trying to figure out just what sort of arcane format the game.db files are in - since it would seem they'd just be XML/YAML/SQL query files of some sort, with schema data, but they don't correspond to any known encryption or compression format. Even tried running them thru Trid, which says they're RPGMaker XP files (!). Since that app didn't come out until 2004, I doubt that's the case.

You got further than me, amigo. I never was able to get the editor up at all, due to my OS being too modern, it seems. And since I can't install MSDE either (security restrictions in Windows 10 means it is not verbotten), I spent quite a bit of time just figuring out how to load it into SQL Express. To make things more fun, the current versions of SQL won't read the old database, since Microsoft stopped supporting SQL 2000 era files many moons ago - had to install SQL 2008. Furthermore, you can't install it with a blank 'sa' password, and the devs originally thought it would be brill to hard code the login and pw into their utils. And the whole ODBC connection deal is more or less no longer supported either. Used to be required for connecting to the db using MSDE or Access, but it doesn't really work anymore either (you can, however, attach to the core database directly). Ultimately I got around a lot of these issues through brute determination, only to be flummoxed by the DataImport app terminating on me whenever I try to run it. I've run ProcMon against it, as well as looked at SQL logs, and it's either a Named Pipes issue or another fight over blank 'sa' passwords. I think I need a much older and less security conscious machine.