Few Small Modding Questions

[EnterElysium]

Hey guys, just getting in to adjusting some of the things in X-COM using the excellent Long War mod as a base. Unfortunately (and I feel dirty saying this) I want to adjust a couple of things to make it easier.

1) Adjusting the interval for alien upgrades to be longer. As far as I know this is done using the iCritHit values for easy and normal in the exe? Is that based on days? Because I could have sworn I saw those upgrades quite early on.

2) Remove or reduce the alien leader buffs. No idea where the stats for this are stored.

3) Reduce outsider regeneration a notch, as far as I could understand this should be stored in the psyc stat but, to the best of my knowledge, the regeneration is 3hp and the psyc value for the outsider reads 20. So unsure where I should be changing this value.

4) Where are the stun %s for the arc thrower stored?

Sorry if these questions are a bit noobish, only just having a crack at this for the first time!

Edited October 12, 2013 by EnterElysium

[johnnylump]

Glad you are enjoying the mod. I've set up a "mod Long War" subforum off the mod's main page with details for 1 & 4. (There's also a separate strategy subforum with some tips for handling those outsiders) If you have additional questions, I'd appreciate it if you'd ask them there so I can point folks who ask the same questions in the future to those answers.

 

As for 2 & 3, you'll have to hex edit XComGame.upk >> class XGUnit, function #AIUpgrade. I'd note we are borrowing some variables, so the variable names won't make much sense.

 

This code:

// End:0x751
    if(iMirror == 43)
    {
        I = 3;
    }

sets the outsider regeneration to 3.

 

The unique hex for that line is

07 51 07 9a 00 98 b5 00 00 2c 2b 16 0f 00 8e b5 00 00 24 03

 

In a hex editor, you can change the last 03 to whatever you want the regeneration to be; if you want to eliminate it, change it to 00.

 

...

As for leader & navigator upgrades, most of the function sets that; if you're confident in your abilities to hex edit, then

m_iSmokeGrenades is leader level (navigators occur on a 1 on a d6 after day 60)

iMirror is leader pawn type

offset is hit point gain

i and coverdir are assigned perks ... until the bottom of the function, when i becomes the regeneration value.

Edited October 12, 2013 by johnnylump

[EnterElysium]

Thanks man, I had a quick search through that thread ('Long War discussion' right?) for some keywords for both 1 & 4 but couldn't seem to find the posts about changing those. I can repost the end results of this thread in their after if you like so that the info is available.

Also, what effects the time soldiers spend as 'wounded'? Couldn't find it in a search either.

[johnnylump]

You haven't found the right place. "Long War discussion" is the main discussion; there's a modding-specific subforum (that also has answers to your question about time wounded)

 

Go to the mod page:

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/88

 

Click on the "forums" button, and you'll see several subforums. "Modding Long War" has what you're after.

 

Within the standard forum UI, the link is this

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1151348-modding-long-war/

although it's harder to pick out the subthreads & replies.

[EnterElysium]

Ah right that would explain things! Frankly though I am feeling completely lost with this, I don't program and this hex editing malarky has me so lost I'm not even sure what I am looking for. The wiki seems a little... sporadic in its helpfulness and I seem to be missing the couple of steps to make it where I understand the majority of the information in this forum.

For instance I understand that to disable the hash checks I need to open the exe in HxD and change:

"78 63 6f 6d 67 61 6d 65 2e 75 70 6b

to
77 63 6f 6d 67 61 6d 65 2e 75 70 6b "

however according to the search functionality neither of those are present in the hex code.

When I search for the floats for the arc thrower value in the upk I find that one of them turns up all over the file and I have no idea which to edit... I also don't understand why the hex code for it is reversed.

I managed to find the hex line related to the outsider health regen, although that was just hitting a search function so I can hardly call that a victory. I'm completely lost on this one, sorry for being the frustrating newbie! It's just that LW fixes oh so many of the issue I have with X-Com but tweaking the difficulty down is necessary for what I have in mind.

 

I also disabled the 'aliens move when discovered' and reduced the frequency of the Thin Man plague ability (to 0 in the file however they have still used it, I contemplated taking the ability away but had no idea what effect that would have on the AI) because the large range, AOE, no miss, death sentence that that provides when you lack a medic was just stupid IMO.

Edited October 12, 2013 by EnterElysium

[johnnylump]

 

For instance I understand that to disable the hash checks I need to open the exe in HxD and change:

"78 63 6f 6d 67 61 6d 65 2e 75 70 6b

to

77 63 6f 6d 67 61 6d 65 2e 75 70 6b "

 

Doublechecking:

Are you using texmod? That alters the exe setup and you'll have to try this without it.

Are you searching C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\XCom-Enemy-Unknown\Binaries\Win32\XComGame.exe, a file of roughly 27 MB?

Are you searching the first hex string without the quote marks?

In HxD, are you searching Datatype hexidecimal, and not text-string?

 

 

 

When I search for the floats for the arc thrower value in the upk I find that one of them turns up all over the file and I have no idea which to edit...

 

You should search for the whole hex strings I posted for the arc thrower, not just the floats.

 

 

 

I also don't understand why the hex code for it is reversed.

 

Just the way compilers handle floats sometimes.

 

 

 

I managed to find the hex line related to the outsider health regen, although that was just hitting a search function so I can hardly call that a victory.

 

I'm unclear, were you able to make a change? As I said, the last value in the string I posted (03) is the number of hp an outsider regenerates every turn. If you switch that to 00, the outsider will not regenerate any more.

[EnterElysium]

I may have used a couple of programs to do set changes such as ToolBoks which might well have changed the hash check, I'll assume that was the issue.

Managed to change everything else just fine other than the offsets for the leader hp, I found the functions fine (thanks for the direction) but didn't know which parts of the hex code to edit for all the offsets and the chance of me making a silly mistake was too high to risk it. I wasn't sure how to grab only the hex code for the offsets.

Everything else (as far as I am aware) seems to be good, thanks you very much for the help! Looking at the code I have no idea why I was bumping in to upgraded enemies so early. Either way the difficulty should (in theory) be a tiny bit easier making it it somewhat better for my LP, although I somehow doubt that trying to commentate and play a hard mod is going to work out well for my soldiers.

Thanks a bunch again! Do you want me to repost the key point of this thread to the main LW modding thread or not?