Finding the first step?

[dubiousintent]

Which instructions, from where? What tool are you attempting to use to decompress the exe? Have you seen or tried following the Wiki article on 'Hex editing UPK files'?

 

We need more detail to be able to assist.

 

-Dubious-

[Amineri]

Are you using ToolBoks? It changes the "xcomstrategygame.upk" to "bcomstrategygame.upk" the first time it launches.

 

Also, if you are doing a case-sensitive search, all the characters need to be lower-case. (you can ignore case, though ... there is only one instance of the string).

Edited May 16, 2013 by Amineri

[dubiousintent]

Has anyone found a way to extract UPKs from the XComGame.EXE file itself? Or confirmed whether the loose UPKs get updated when a patch is released? Do we have to perform a byte comparison between the embedded and the loose versions of each UPK?

 

-Dubious-

[Thacker]

Sorry to ask a simple question...

I've also been trying to modify xcomgame.exe to allow directing reading of the DGC.ini but am I having no luck finding the 0x157D93A hex offset.

The instructions on the wiki make note of "patch 4", but as far as I can gather there is only patch 3 out. Is patch 4 the Slingshot DLC? If it is, do you know the offset (or how I could find it) for the patch 3 .exe?

 

Edit: Errr, I guess I found it? I'm new to this hex editing thing and apparently the offsets HxD shows depends on the width of it's window? Who woulda guessed! (well not me at least...)

Anyways I think I did it, bed now but I'll try in the morning.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Thacker

[dubiousintent]

Okay, patch information can be a bit confusing. Here is what I have been able to dig up:

 

Game version information comes in three forms: release date, EXE Version from Properties, and 'Changelist' number from the '<install folder>\Binaries\Version.txt' file. The community has taken to referring to patches by number since the original game release as well, but this is strictly an informal reference.
The 'Launch.log' file located in your 'My Games\XCOM - Enemy Unknown\XComGame\Logs' folder also contains the 'Changelist' number in the 11th line:
: Init: FxsChangelist: <changelist number>
This might be worth looking for if you haven't played for a while as the game keeps about 5 backup copies of this file.

Patch/ Date/ EXE File/ Version.txt:
#0: 2012-10-09/ 1.0.0.5443/?
#1: 2012-10-11/ 1.0.0.11052/ ?
#2: 2012-11-08/ ?/ 346964
#3: 2013-01-08/ 1.0.0.20072/ ?
#4: 2013-02-20/ 1.0.0.28586/ 356266 (this was made publicly available on 15 Mar 2013)

As for the offset in HxD varying by display width: not on mine. Each displayed line is 16 bytes. Sure you were looking at the EXE and not the COM file?

 

-Dubious-

Edited June 8, 2013 by dubiousintent

[SteelRook]

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but... How does one go about editing the DefaultGameCore.ini file at present? I know ToolBoks was a very nice mod for doing just that, but it seems to have falled out of date with recent patches. I've put together that something called "modpatcher" can do this, but I can't find a current version of it, and am unconvinced it even exists. I've found a ModHelper tool which seems like it might work... If I knew how to make it work. There's a manual way to get the game to read from the DefaultGameCore.ini file (which I believe ModHelper is intended to automate) but I couldn't follow those instructions for the life of me.

 

I don't want to make complicated modifications, just tweak some stats in the DGC in EW and I just don't have any idea how to achieve this, nor can I find a tool which does that.

[dubiousintent]

The wiki article "Basic Guide to installing mods" covers this in detail. "DefaultGameCore.ini" is commonly abbreviated as DGC.INI, and like all the INI files is a plaintext file. It can be edited with any simple plaintext editor that does not insert text formatting codes. Notepad and NotePad++ work fine. Wordpad does not. Simple way to tell the difference: if it lets you make "output" (generally "printed") text Bold or Italic or colored, or do anything to make the content look "fancy": it's not a simple plaintext editor. (How it displays inside the editor doesn't count. Only the saved content in the file matters.)

 

The trick that is covered in the "Basic Guide" is that the EXE deliberately blocks reading certain of the external "loose" INI files, particularly the DGC.INI. This has to be "hacked" with a hex editor, which is really pretty simple and the steps are covered in the "Enabling INI Loading" section of the "Basic Guide". The tools you need are listed as well, and descriptions of them (with links) are found in a linked article called, appropriately enough: "Modding Tools". And on that article page you will find alternatives to ToolBoks, such as UPKUtils/PatcherGUI.

 

The wiki is really our FAQ database. It's where you should look first for answers. Begin with the "Category:0 Start here - XCOM" section articles.

 

-Dubious-

Edited June 23, 2014 by dubiousintent

[SteelRook]

The wiki article "Basic Guide to installing mods" covers this in detail. "DefaultGameCore.ini" is commonly abbreviated as DGC.INI, and like all the INI files is a plaintext file. It can be edited with any simple plaintext editor that does not insert text formatting codes. Notepad and

The wiki is really our FAQ database. It's where you should look first for answers. Begin with the "Category:0 Start here - XCOM" section articles.

 

Thank you. After reading up on everything I could find, several things have become evident:

 

1. Hex-editing the .exe should be simple, just need to work through the steps.

2. Preventing "phone home" is tricky and requires some degree of Steam shenanigans.

 

So here's my question: If the "phone home" phenomenon changes and overrides files I may have changed... Doesn't setting those files to "read only" solve the issue? Or would that cause I/O crashes? I'm hardly a smart guy so somebody must have already thought to try that and failed, but I can't find any reference to that.

 

Beyond this, though, thank you kindly. This sounds doable now. I don't think I want to use any of the helper tools as they seem more complicated to use than the changes I want to make (namely: guaranteed psychics, consistent soldier stats, no continent panic levels and maybe mess with armour stats some). If I ever decide to do something more complicated, then I'll consider it, but... Baby steps.

 

*edit*

Never mind. Got it to work after a complete reinstall. Thank you! :)

Edited June 24, 2014 by SteelRook

[dubiousintent]

Glad to hear you got it working. To address the earlier points you asked about:

 

The "phone home" thing is only complicated in that it is a "system file" and requires "administrator privileges" because it is in the "protected files" area. It is not a "Steam" file. The same change (to the appropriate file) works with all game compatible platforms.

 

No one has reported the result of attempting that: making the files "read only" (RO). However, you need to understand that "read only" is a programming convention. It's just a "flag" that programmers and the operating system (OS) are supposed to respect. If the programmer uses an API (a standardized protocol provided by the OS): it is respected. If they "roll their own" file handling they can choose to ignore the RO flag and modify or replace at will. So it is inherently less reliable than blocking the IP addresses used to "phone home", which prevents them from even speaking with your computer through those "channels".

 

So far, in the two years the game has been out we have not seen any consequences to simply blocking the "phone home" capability, nor has Firaxis made any obvious attempts to circumvent that situation. But since modding pretty much means you WANT to keep your game "off line", that would be a pretty aggressive "anti-modding" stance, when they have publicly said they are in favor of modding. And the export of some options from the EXE to the INI files with EW is evidence in support of that position.

 

-Dubious-

[SteelRook]

Thanks again. I didn't mess with "phoning home" yet mostly because I was shooting for proof of concept (made Satellites cost 10, then 1000, then put 20 more defence on Titan, all worked) so I didn't want to do anything too drastic. Now that I know the changes are having an effect, I'll try for something more serious. If my changes end up being considerable enough, I might even have to pack and share them :) We'll see how that goes but either way - thank you kindly.