Tricksy Cheatsing

[CaptainFibulum]

I've kinda figured out how to fiddle with research data thru the game.txt file (which looks frightfully encoded), and thus start the game with the first four techs at LV4 so one can put full attention towards getting LV4 airstrikes . Of course, one can start with level 4 airstrikes and there are many bizarre phenomena, such as editing the TaskMan up to LV5 for 6 tasks at once (the 6 button even works for selection). I imagine that more freakishness is possible, but have yet to experiment as it takes time to fart around with this stuff, and the code is beyond my ken to understand by simply reading it.

Would anyone be interested in what I have figured out, or is this old news?

[Bitter Sticks]

This is as old as the wind blowing around the world. But good find on your own. If it's your first time playing through, don't cheat, it ruins the gameplay.

[andrewas]

Except if Im reading this right, this guy is actualy altering the text without de-redshirting it, which is a lot more impressive than the usual gag of screwing with the unencrypted version found in main.dat, or using the decrypter to get a plaintext version.

[xander]

No, it sounds like he is editing the game.txt file that can be found in main.dat. If you are really looking for something interesting, try giving yourself a coupld of levels of the Squad weapon Controller. On the other hand, maybe I am reading things wrong, and he is playing with the redshirted files... more power to him...

If you are more interested in looking at your profile data, search the boards for redshirt2.

xander

[CaptainFibulum]

Sorry to butt back in and knock this gobbledygook up to the top of General again, but I was unaware of redshirt. Looking at the game.txt in user.dat via Wordpad, WinRAR etc. (Windows is the devil) I can see that this would be the far better way of going about monkeywrenching the game. Either that or using redshirt to, presumably, bring sense to the code.

I just found out how to monkey with the game.txt in the "username" folder, with semi-predictable results!

After the opening textlump, and then after the long stream of 6-column stuff, there is a block that looks like (in a NewUser profile from the Steam version:

(I use underscores to emulate the indentation used)

h!u%h{dsaXyd$=P)|%p){rpy
_________Tjxhr;o, Z|t7pwjlp 5 7
_________Uv<q%)~j nmojngw 5 3
_________c.)w.e( Zzvlf 5 6
_________Uv<q%)~j kh|f} 2 6
_________Wh%.m6y$ I2lwbog 5 5
_________Uv<q%)~j qvllpv 5 5
_________Uv<q%)~j bvwu}qqqh$ X <
_________u{/g!yli LkwXw$2w) F K
_________T%znb}em Fu~8"6 F K
_________T%znb}em Yd%4Y%%|i%y 9 3
_________]gxjd$,t h%#k.lns ; 3
_________Hzu$.z8h!u%h{ds Uvzdu
_________k"6)!p4Wxjyvx 5
Uv<q%)~j~LweOgknqz=u3%

It turns out that this mess countains the research information for the profile.

Counting down from the first line followed by numbers (the Tjxhr;o, Z|t7pwjlp line), each is responsible for a different tech:

1st Darwinians
2nd Officers
3rd Squads
4th Laser
5th Grenades
6th Rocket
7th-9th ? Airstrike, Armour, and something else in some order or other
10th TaskMan
11th Engineer

Then there is a line of mystery text, in this case "Hzu$.z8h!u%h{ds Uvzdu"

The next-to-last line indicates the number of research points remaining in the pool, by way of a one-to-two character cipher.

The very first and last lines seem to open into and close the research portion of the gamesave, and I do not know that modifying them will produce any useful results.

For the 11 research columns, the first number to come after the code-text(usually a '5' in a NewUser profile's game.txt) seems to represent the amount of research that has been made towards the next level of research. '5' seems to represent ZERO points here and in the second-to-last line for pooled points.

The second number (7, 3, 6, etc) in the descending columns) indicates the highest research level that has been attained. There seems some disagreement among the various techs, but you can generally knock the level of the tech up one level, without fail, by increasing this value by one. For example, replacing those final sixes after the third and fourth research lines with nines will bring squaddies and lasers to level 4.0. Monkeying with the details out of their normal bounds (bringing research higher than 4 or lower than 1) has provided amusing results, some of them terribly useful. I have not played with every option as my curiosity failed me once I started cheating as I wished (starting with lv4 in the basic 4 techs), but there is no doubt more to find out.

The one problem I have noted is that it seems that making all but the most minimal changes in-game (capturing a single control tower, allowing a single point of research to be spent) causes havoc in the game.txt file, and all the values go haywire. I can only recommend this method for a fresh profile, which has not been terribly mucked-up by gameplay.

Also, this can cause the game to become very angry, and punish you with crashes. I am in no way responsible, etc...

[xander]

--==<snip>==--

Seriously, you need to search for redshirt2. While I aplaud your efforts to play with the encrypted files, you are going over ground that has been gone over before. The extra research item, for instance, is the squad weapon "Controller", which allows squads to act like officers with the follow command. Redshirt2 is the name of the algorithm that is used to encrypt those files, and getting one of the decrypters will allow you to look at your files.

Also, code tags are useful for displaying things the way you want to:

Code: Select all

Here is some text...
                ...and some more text that has been offset...
                ...and a bit more.

xander

[andrewas]

h!u%h{dsaXyd$=P)|%p){rpy
_________Tjxhr;o, Z|t7pwjlp 5 7
_________Uv<q%)~j nmojngw 5 3
_________c.)w.e( Zzvlf 5 6
_________Uv<q%)~j kh|f} 2 6
_________Wh%.m6y$ I2lwbog 5 5
_________Uv<q%)~j qvllpv 5 5
_________Uv<q%)~j bvwu}qqqh$ X <
_________u{/g!yli LkwXw$2w) F K
_________T%znb}em Fu~8"6 F K
_________T%znb}em Yd%4Y%%|i%y 9 3
_________]gxjd$,t h%#k.lns ; 3
_________Hzu$.z8h!u%h{ds Uvzdu
_________k"6)!p4Wxjyvx 5
Uv<q%)~j~LweOgknqz=u3%

Extracting the same block of information from my game in progress via redshirt2:

Code: Select all

Research_StartDefinition
   Research Darwinian 0 4
   Research Officer 0 4
   Research Squad 71 3
   Research Laser 0 4
   Research Grenade 0 4
   Research Rocket 0 0
   Research Controller 0 0
   Research AirStrike 0 3
   Research Armour 0 0
   Research TaskManager 0 3
   Research Engineer 0 1
   CurrentResearch Squad
   CurrentPoints 361
Research_EndDefinition


As you can see, its a lot easier this way, and the game will understand the decrypted version as easily as the encrypted, so you dont even need to re-encrypt it yourself.

[CaptainFibulum]

Thanks!

[Kittensune]

Still I have to agree with andrewas' first post here, it is rather impressive that he figured out how to tinker with the original encrypted version of the file.