Enemy Within Discovery Thread

[BlackCompany]

Wanted to chime in and doubly confirm: Resource Hacker does indeed work. Modded my Defaultgamecore.ini today, and used Resource Hacker to force the game to load it. Worked like a charm. Do note that I still needed to run the game first, in order to get all of the original, vanilla config files in place. Once this was done, I shut down the phone home, disabled auto updating in Steam and went offline. I then made my changes to XCOM, and will only play it in offline mode just in case.

 

But it does work. Which seems to be very good news for the bigger mods out there.

[Chains101]

So im new at this modding but i do program code for a living. I have tried Resource Hacker followed multiple instructions to the letter but nothing happens. What am i doing wrong?

 

I go to the folder...

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\Binaries\Win32

 

and i use resource hacker on the XComEW.exe file

 

To test it i change the cost value of a satellite to 1.

 

I compile the data and save.

 

satellite's are still 100.

 

Am i doing something wrong? Is there something else im not doing?

 

any help would be grateful!

[Strumisgod]

I'm in the same boat as chains, this worked fine for EU but clearly things are different now

[Amineri]

I've done a file datestamp check on the EU files after the EW expansion was installed, and it looks as though the following files in CookedPCConsole were patched:

• XComGame.upk
• GuidCache.upk
• XComShell.upk
• XComStrategyGame.upk
• GlobalPersistentCookerData.upk
• Startup.upk
• OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.upk
• Engine.upk
• IpDrv.upk
• GlobalShaderCache-PC-D3D-SM3.bin
• Core.upk
• GameFramework.upk
• GCxUI.upk
• Command1.upk

None of the map upk files have altered dates, so it appears that none of the old EU maps were patched. EW has separate copies of every single map upk used.

 

The "big 3" upk files that most mods alter (XComGame.upk, XComStrategyGame.upk, and Command1.upk) have changed, almost certainly meaning that function/variable references will have changed, requiring updates to mods.

 

There were also quite a few bik files in the Movies folder that were updated. I'm not going to list them all, but there are 57 updated movie files in the folder. This looks like about 40% of the files in the EU Movies folder.

 

None of the EU Localization appears to have changed.

 

Some of the EU DLC files appear to have changed as well (I'm not sure why, though ...)

 

Note that I haven't done the file-to-file byte comparison as of yet -- I've just compared date-stamps. It's definitely possible that Steam updated some files with duplicates.

[Amineri]

The method to disable the SHA hash checks (which replaced XSHAPE) appears to no longer be valid.

 

There is no reference in XComEW.exe to any of the upk files as text (I check both ASCII and Unicode). I also checked the XComLauncher.exe that pops up the first Launcher to allow selection of launching XComGame.exe or XComEW.exe (selecting EU or EW).

 

So I did a simple check by simply decompressing both XComGame.upk and XComStrategyGame.upk and replacing the compressed files in /XEW/XComGame/CookedPCConsole. I also removed the .uncompressed_size files.

 

The game ran without a hitch.

 

It appears that Firaxis has simply removed the SHA hash checks, making modding just that one step simpler.

[Oxeter]

I went to redo my old no blood mod in xcomgame.upk, and realized that the enemy within .exe doesn't contain the string "xcomgame.upk" anymore. I figured I'd have to wait for someone smart to tell me how to get it to eat my modded .upk, but I just started it up and it played no problem. I guess this removes a step from my old post-patch remod.

 

If this is old news, sorry, I haven't been here in half a year.

 

edit: well it's at least 4 minutes old, because Amineri seems to have posted it above me.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Oxeter

[graaa]

I for one refuse to play any more of this game without at least some of the basic mods found in the toolboks. Also, was having a hell of a fun time with Long War Mod jus a few days ago, so let's get that up and running for EW mm??? =)

[Krazyguy75]

I for one refuse to play any more of this game without at least some of the basic mods found in the toolboks. Also, was having a hell of a fun time with Long War Mod jus a few days ago, so let's get that up and running for EW mm??? =)

Ha, I suspect long war will take quite a while to repair, and balance.

[TheOldOne822]

I did a comparison on the EU command1.upk and could not find anything changed but I was only checking parts for the Item scrollbar mod witch still works without any change even to the offset.

[grenademagnet]

So im new at this modding but i do program code for a living. I have tried Resource Hacker followed multiple instructions to the letter but nothing happens. What am i doing wrong?

 

I go to the folder...

 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\Binaries\Win32

 

and i use resource hacker on the XComEW.exe file

 

To test it i change the cost value of a satellite to 1.

 

I compile the data and save.

 

satellite's are still 100.

 

Am i doing something wrong? Is there something else im not doing?

 

any help would be grateful!

Did you start from a new game? From what I understand the DefaultGameCore.ini changes only take effect with a new game. If a game is in progress it just reads settings from the latest save file. Try a new game and see if your changes work.