*.usr file editing

[DrFreenote]

So, I found a copy of redshrt2.exe and managed to decrypt my player file. Fairly excited, I opened it up and looked through it, only to find everything in disarray, disorderly, with a mess of redundancies and no tell-tale formatting to make things easier. Surely if Uplink itself is reading these files, there has to be some sort of rhyme or reason to how they are being read, and in turn, to how they are written.

To be clear, I don't want to edit my player file so-as to fill my bank accounts or anything silly like that. I've hacked enough banks to gain the TERMINAL (Grade 1 Agent) rating through such actions alone, and I have millions of credits at my disposal. No, the issue isn't credits.

The issue is with the saved passwords system. I tend to be very OCD about simple things, and this is one of them. It's not that it completely ruins the game for me, but it irks me that when you have a code for a login, you can select the code, but you can't order the codes, edit the codes, or even remove redundant or out-of-date codes. It wastes space in my opinion and it irks me that you can't remove such things from within the game. I figured that such data would be saved in the user files, in a nice convenient list or something easily accessible, because that seems like the most efficient way to handle save files, but what I found was a complete mess.

So, my question is this, to anybody who knows enough and gives a damn enough to respond; Is there a correct way to go about editing this file, and if so, are you willing to share? The only reason I'm posting is because I don't want to spend days trying to make heads or tails of everything if the answer is publicly accessible.

[frenchfrog]

If you are a programmer yourself, you could modify Uplink with the help of the DevCD and make yourself a modified Uplink.exe with this feature, I don't think it would be so hard to do.

For the save game itself, if I remember correctly, it is a binary file where each object in the game (agents, servers, missions, ...) simply append their data at the end of the savegame file until everything in saved.

So there is no structure in the savegame, I don't have the source on hand but I guess the password information is contained in an array, so you would need to change the total number of items in the array and delete the passwords you don't want.

[DrFreenote]

I appreciate the reply, sorry for taking so long to get back. (It's been quite a month.)

I was thinking of grabbing a copy of the games source code, to do just that, edit the password save feature for the game. Two problems with that as of currently, unfortunately. The first is that I'm not all that fluent in C, or C++ for that matter, and while I'd probably be able to figure my way about after quite some time, I'm not sure I'd want to put all that effort in without the help of someone much more experienced. While I understand there are developer forums probably for just that situation, querying those more qualified on matters beyond ones comprehension, that's not really the big thing that's completely keeping me from this.

Simply put, I'm broke! I'll be buying an Uplink Dev CD eventually, but unemployment takes it's toll and, with the exception of Steam Sales (which are the bane of my wallet's existence, by the way), I've been generally very prudent about my spending habits. So yeah, eventually you might see me in there with a question or two, but that'll probably take a while.

tl;dr Pointless post is pointless.

[frenchfrog]

Bad timing You could have bought everything Introversion from Humble Bundle not so long ago, at a ridiculous price.

If I have some time to burn in the coming days, I'll check if it is easy to do your modification. (It would be build on top of 1.56+ since this computer is still on Visual Studio 2005)

[frenchfrog]

Done the modification to allow the deletion of obsolete access codes on the user id screen (password screen). Only obsolete access code can be deleted, less chances to break something.

UplinkPatch-10.0-Remove-Obsolete-Code.exe

Give it a try and tell me how it goes. (the savegame format haven't changed so you can easily rollback to another version, I would still recommend you backup your agent before using it)

I also patched some problems with the BTree data structure, both changes are committed to my SVN branch on IV repository.