Modding Aftershock Demo?

[Silencer]

Well the good news is that Aftershock will be released in the US. The bad news is that as far as I can tell it will be a few weeks before it's actually available. In the meantime I'm curious if I can mod the demo to get a little more life out of it. I don't want to do anything drastic, basically I just want to increase the quantity of ammo and guns in my inventory so I can try a few new loadouts. I'm not talking about adding new guns or anything, just giving myself more of what is already there. This may not be possible but I might simply be doing it wrong so this is what I have done...

 

1: Using VSFTOOL 1.3 I unpacked the gamedata.vfs to d:\UFO Aftershock Demo\unpack\

2: I make a new folder d:\UFO Aftershock Demo\repack\

3: I copy the folder d:\UFO Aftershock Demo\unpack\demosave\ and the files in it to d:\UFO Aftershock Demo\repack\demosave\

4: I make no changes to these files, I'm just trying to repack it to test it out

5: I repack the files by doing "VSFTool in gamedata.vfs repack" and it packs the 3 files and says ok

6: I load the game, and after clicking NEW GAME it crashes at 44% while loading tactical data

 

Am I doing this right? Since it always crashes at 44% while loading tactical data rather than the game not starting at all or giving an error it seems more like I'm repacking it wrong than the game rejecting a modified file, but I'm not sure. I also tried updating the MD5 but it still crashed at the same place. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Pete]

It could well be that the demo has too few files to support the extra equipment, but that's only a guess and doesn't sound right...

 

Anyone else have any ideas?

[Kret]

While the demo is modable in a way as I've managed to put in the music of AM into AS, the modding of the "demosave" contents doesn't seem possible. I've attempted to give myself different scanners in the inventory and the demo will ignore it. And trying to repack directly into the demo's gamedata.vfs file ends up, as you said, in a CTD during load.

 

Note to others: This CTD is NOT a demo bug, it is essentially me messing with the demo's files

[Pete]

Yup, since the game itself requires a DVD to store all the info on, I think there's some vital things missiong from the demo that would otherwise allow you to edit it in this way.

 

Oh well! Shouldn't be too long before a US release (fingers crossed).