Editing Tanks

[Shortstop4313]

In an further attempt to bring usefulness to things in X-Com UFO, I've decided to turn my attention to the Cannon HWP.

 

However, now I'm staring in completely bafflement as to where it stores the stats for the tanks. I need to get to the weapon stats most of all.

 

Anyone know which EXE is it buried in?

[NKF]

I'm ashamed to say that while I did locate the turret stats at one time, I've completely forgotten where the stats are stored.

 

But thanks to the X-Com wiki, I've now got a good approximate for the cannon tank turret in the Collectors Edition executable. It's roughly 447, 966 bytes into the file. That's in the tactical.exe portion of the file if you want to do a similar search in the dos executables - however you'll have to search from a different offset.

 

The structure of the turret is made up of 16-bit values (2-bytes each) and goes:

 

0: Damage Type

1: Ammo Type

2: Damage

3: Snap Shot Acc.

4: Snap Shot TU's

5: Auto Shot Acc.

6: Auto Shot TU's

7: Aim Shot Acc.

8: Aim Shot TU's

9: Blaster Effect (forces blaster launcher mode - fixes firing cost to 60% and allows waypoints)

 

That's 20 bytes in total for each turret.

 

If you want to search the dos executable, look for the following values:

 

0, 4, 60, 60, 33, 0, 0, 90, 80, 0

 

As these are stored as 16-bit values, add an extra 0 between each number. These numbers correspond to the cannon turret stats.

 

- NKF

[Shortstop4313]

I'm ashamed to say that while I did locate the turret stats at one time, I've completely forgotten where the stats are stored.

 

But thanks to the X-Com wiki, I've now got a good approximate for the cannon tank turret in the Collectors Edition executable. It's roughly 447, 966 bytes into the file. That's in the tactical.exe portion of the file if you want to do a similar search in the dos executables - however you'll have to search from a different offset.

 

The structure of the turret is made up of 16-bit values (2-bytes each) and goes:

 

0: Damage Type

1: Ammo Type

2: Damage

3: Snap Shot Acc.

4: Snap Shot TU's

5: Auto Shot Acc.

6: Auto Shot TU's

7: Aim Shot Acc.

8: Aim Shot TU's

9: Blaster Effect (forces blaster launcher mode - fixes firing cost to 60% and allows waypoints)

 

That's 20 bytes in total for each turret.

 

If you want to search the dos executable, look for the following values:

 

0, 4, 60, 60, 33, 0, 0, 90, 80, 0

 

As these are stored as 16-bit values, add an extra 0 between each number. These numbers correspond to the cannon turret stats.

 

- NKF

 

000004003C003C002100000000005A00500000

So that's what it'd be in Hex? With the italiced 00 being those spacer 00.

 

Thanks for the tip, and exactly what I needed.

 

Hmm, in tactical.exe, right?

[NKF]

Well, unless I'm greatly mistaken, it is in tactical.exe. But now that I think about it, the ufopaedia does reference it ... hmm. I don't have immediate access to my copy of the dos executables so I can't check it directly. Let us know what you find. That sequence of numbers should definitely be found in one of the two main files.

 

If you're using the XComutil split CE executables, they're not technically split. So you'll have to edit the correct file for the changes to take effect.

 

- NKF

[Shortstop4313]

Well, unless I'm greatly mistaken, it is in tactical.exe. But now that I think about it, the ufopaedia does reference it ... hmm. I don't have immediate access to my copy of the dos executables so I can't check it directly. Let us know what you find. That sequence of numbers should definitely be found in one of the two main files.

 

If you're using the XComutil split CE executables, they're not technically split. So you'll have to edit the correct file for the changes to take effect.

 

- NKF

 

 

Odd, didn't find a damn thing, either in 16 bit or 8 bit lengths...

 

I'm mostly messing with the DOS version for now.

 

Maybe I need a new hex editor?

[NKF]

Found it. It is in Tactical.exe - it's 379, 527 bytes into the file (dos v1.4). A quicker search would be to just look for a smaller part of the turret data. Say {0, 0, 4, 0, 3C, 0, 3C}

 

I guess when they recompiled the source for tactical.exe and geoscape.exe to create the Win32 friendly CE executable, all the constants and other fixed labels for both files were lumped together at the end.

 

I actually use MS-Edit in binary mode as a hex editor. I open the file with a 100 line width and just scroll down to Line 3895 and column 27 for the start of the cannon turret data. But any hex editor will suffice.

 

- NKF

[Shortstop4313]

Found it. It is in Tactical.exe - it's 379, 527 bytes into the file (dos v1.4). A quicker search would be to just look for a smaller part of the turret data. Say {0, 0, 4, 0, 3C, 0, 3C}

 

I guess when they recompiled the source for tactical.exe and geoscape.exe to create the Win32 friendly CE executable, all the constants and other fixed labels for both files were lumped together at the end.

 

I actually use MS-Edit in binary mode as a hex editor. I open the file with a 100 line width and just scroll down to Line 3895 and column 27 for the start of the cannon turret data. But any hex editor will suffice.

 

- NKF

 

Weird, my hex editor wasn't finding it. Or maybe Xcomutil already changed them a bit?

 

I'll go to the bit location, Thanks for the info!