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Daemonjax

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Just thinking out loud here ... Are UPK files roughly the same (or similar) to .BSA files, in that the contents are all in a directory structure, just compressed?

I ask because I used to do a fair bit of modding for Hellgate:London, and that game also had compressed/cooked asset files which couldn't be re-compressed/re-cooked, However some bright person came up with a little program that created a "dummy" version of the data files, which was pretty much just a line of code that said to the executable file ... "nothin' to see here, move along ... Oh, you want a game file? Well just look over there for them" ...

So you could unpack the games data files into their respective directories (similar to Skyrim, FO3, etc.) and the game would look at the original cooked asset file, then move along and read the unpacked (and subsequently modified) files instead ... Modding nirvana ensued ...

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Dunno. I don't normally get involved in modding for the Unreal engine... last thing I did for it was for Deus Ex... the original. :D

 

But, at least for that game we had unrestricted access to all the scripts. Editing and recompiling was no problem at all.

Edited by Daemonjax
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Got an error code 5, but I'm still not clear on what I'm supposed to do. Here's what I've done so far.

 

1: Decompress upk file.

2: Decompressed file is named xcomgame.upk

3: Edited decompressed file

4: Replaced unmodified compressed file with the decompressed one.

5: Ran XShape, got the error code 5.

 

What step am I missing?

Edited by Mashadar
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Got an error code 5, but I'm still not clear on what I'm supposed to do. Here's what I've done so far.

 

1: Decompress upk file.

2: Decompressed file is named xcomgame.upk

3: Edited decompressed file

4: Replaced unmodified compressed file with the decompressed one.

5: Ran XShape, got the error code 5.

 

What step am I missing?

 

5: You have files in the configuration file that are normally compressed, but then failed to remove/rename X.uncompressed_size file. Normally, this isn't fatal, except that there were no files left to check, so the program had nothing to do.

 

:D

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5: You have files in the configuration file that are normally compressed, but then failed to remove/rename X.uncompressed_size file. Normally, this isn't fatal, except that there were no files left to check, so the program had nothing to do.

 

:D

 

So if I understand this correctly, I'm not supposed to replace the compressed file, but put the uncompressed one there as X.upk.uncompressed_size alongside it and then run the patcher?

 

Because I'm not clear otherwise how I'm supposed to be able to mod it because we still don't have a way of compressing the files.

Edited by Mashadar
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If you delete/rename <filename>.uncompressed_size, then the game will load the uncompressed version of it without a hitch. ;)

 

So, yeah, you delete or rename the original to something else, then plop the new uncompressed and edited one into the folder. Finally, you must delete or rename <filename>.uncompressed_size to something else, or XSHAPE won't patch the exe for that file.

 

Oh, and, make sure the filename is in XSHAPE.config. :D

 

 

 

Also, if you ever want to patch the exe back to using the original compressed file, you can. All you have to do is:

 

1) Put the original uncompressed file back, then run XSHAPE again.

2) Replace the uncompressed file with the compressed version.

3) Finally, you must restore the <filename>.uncompressed_size file, so the game will load the compressed.

 

I recommend not going through all that hassle. Once you uncompress it, there's no real reason to go back to the compressed version. Just keep the original uncompressed around just in case, because it's very easy to switch back to the original uncompressed file (it's just step one above).

Edited by Daemonjax
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Figured it out. I was confusing the uncompressed_size file with something else doh. Had a couple of crashes trying to start it up, but from the looks of it, you have to start with a fresh exe first to load the .upk mods then only add in the resource hacker for any .ini editting.

 

Though from the looks of it, either I've been looking for the wrong value, or changing the base_num_rockets.const won't take effect until after new game is started.

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Sometimes the game doesn't actually use the constant value, but they're somewhere else as some magic number.

 

Sucks, right?

 

Let us know what works!!! :D

 

then only add in the resource hacker for any .ini editting

 

I use modpatcher without problems... shouldn't matter either way, as those two sections of the exe are far away from each other.

 

Also, my program actually performs a search for the data to modify... so, even if the locations in your exe are different from mine, or change in the future, for whatever reason, it'll still work! :D

 

But, whatever works for you. :D

Edited by Daemonjax
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