XCOM Modding: Need of a centralized source of information?

[dubiousintent]

Cannot get to Wiki atm. What info is needed?

 

XCOM Enemy Unknown Patch 6 - Changelist: 398179

XCOM Enemy Within Patch 1 - Changelist: 398180

Yeah, it's been erratic. I was able to post a new page yesterday, but it's down again. Seems to be an SQL proxy problem this time, which might be another DNS issue.

 

That's the minimum, and primary data. Appreciate it. If you have the file version and release date from the EXE, that completes what I've been trying to track so people have multiple ways to determine their version.

 

-Dubious-

[Drakous79]

Do you mean Version.txt from Binaries/Win32 folder?

 

EU

Date: Monday, November 25, 2013 5:01 PM
Changelist: 398179

 

EW

Date: Monday, November 25, 2013 4:28 PM
Changelist: 398180

[dubiousintent]

Do you mean Version.txt from Binaries/Win32 folder?

 

EU

Date: Monday, November 25, 2013 5:01 PM

Changelist: 398179

 

EW

Date: Monday, November 25, 2013 4:28 PM

Changelist: 398180

Thanks. I meant from the properties of the EXE file itself (from long habit that's where us old-timers look), but the dates from the Version.txt file are good too.

 

-Dubious-

[Amineri]

Also I've discovered that every upk file has a globally unique ID, which is a 16 byte sequence in the header.

 

Not just between versions of the game but also each upk (probably in the universe) has a unique identifier.

 

I plan to make use of it as a part of the upk_mod file to allow for easier updating of mods from one game version to another.

 

Here are the numbers I've extracted so far:

UPKFILE=XComGame.upk
NUM_VERSIONS=3
FILE=C:/Games/XComGame_EU_Patch4.upk	:: GUID=33 2E 29 6A A5 DD FC 40 B5 CC 57 A5 A7 AA 8C 41
FILE=C:/Games/XComGame_EU_Patch5.upk	:: GUID=01 E9 EB 29 23 F4 DB 4F A8 2B 8E 46 A7 25 E5 D6
FILE=C:/Games/XComGame_EW_release.upk	:: GUID=B1 1A D8 E4 48 29 FC 43 8E C0 7A B0 A3 3E 34 9F

UPKFILE=XComStrategyGame.upk
NUM_VERSIONS=3
FILE=C:/Games/XComStrategyGame_EU_Patch4.upk 	:: GUID=A8 46 50 30 6F 48 84 42 AC 1A 72 B6 8D 2E 6D 23
FILE=C:/Games/XComStrategyGame_EU_Patch5.upk 	:: GUID=1D EE 33 F1 66 88 FB 49 B1 72 93 44 01 BC 85 39
FILE=C:/Games/XComStrategyGame_EW_release.upk 	:: GUID=9C F8 70 10 21 38 A0 41 8B 33 A4 2E E8 71 23 00

These are always located (AFAIK) at byte range 0x45-0x54 (69-84 in decimal) at the beginning of the uncompressed upk.

[Drakous79]

I meant from the properties of the EXE file itself (from long habit that's where us old-timers look), but the dates from the Version.txt file are good too.

 

That gonna be tougher, because I verified integrity of game cache today.

 

 

XComEW.exe I have as backup

• Version 1.0.0.926
• Last change 20. 11. 2013 15:42:45
• Size 26,3 MB (27 645 592 bytes)

XComEW.exe from today

• Version 1.0.0.4964
• Last change 8. 12. ‎2013, ‏‎21:21:10
• Size 26,3 MB (27 643 032 bytes)

Note difference in size. But nothing changed in Version.txt files. It is changelist 398180.

 

 

XComEU.exe from today

• Version 1.0.0.4963
• Last change 8. 12. ‎2013, ‏‎21:21:06
• Size 27,1 MB (28 428 952 bytes)

[dubiousintent]

Also I've discovered that every upk file has a globally unique ID, which is a 16 byte sequence in the header.

 

Not just between versions of the game but also each upk (probably in the universe) has a unique identifier.

 

I plan to make use of it as a part of the upk_mod file to allow for easier updating of mods from one game version to another.

 

Here are the numbers I've extracted so far:

UPKFILE=XComGame.upk
NUM_VERSIONS=3
FILE=C:/Games/XComGame_EU_Patch4.upk	:: GUID=33 2E 29 6A A5 DD FC 40 B5 CC 57 A5 A7 AA 8C 41
FILE=C:/Games/XComGame_EU_Patch5.upk	:: GUID=01 E9 EB 29 23 F4 DB 4F A8 2B 8E 46 A7 25 E5 D6
FILE=C:/Games/XComGame_EW_release.upk	:: GUID=B1 1A D8 E4 48 29 FC 43 8E C0 7A B0 A3 3E 34 9F

UPKFILE=XComStrategyGame.upk
NUM_VERSIONS=3
FILE=C:/Games/XComStrategyGame_EU_Patch4.upk 	:: GUID=A8 46 50 30 6F 48 84 42 AC 1A 72 B6 8D 2E 6D 23
FILE=C:/Games/XComStrategyGame_EU_Patch5.upk 	:: GUID=1D EE 33 F1 66 88 FB 49 B1 72 93 44 01 BC 85 39
FILE=C:/Games/XComStrategyGame_EW_release.upk 	:: GUID=9C F8 70 10 21 38 A0 41 8B 33 A4 2E E8 71 23 00

These are always located (AFAIK) at byte range 0x45-0x54 (69-84 in decimal) at the beginning of the uncompressed upk.

So, you're saying we should also be tracking UPK GUIDs? Sounds like I need to create a 'version data' page and link that into the 'patches' template I'm using now.

 

@Drakous79: Seems they slipstreamed a patch in there without changing the Version.txt file entry. (Never heard of a vendor doing THAT before. :whistling: )

 

-Dubious-

Edited December 8, 2013 by dubiousintent

[Amineri]

Using the full 16 byte GUID seems a little excessive for general use, but for the new tool I'm working on it is going to be the safest way to verify what UPK and UPK version the references within the modfile hex are referencing.

 

If the wrong upk gets used (for instance XComGame_EU_patch5.upk instead of XComGame_EU_patch4.upk) to look up reference-to-string for updating purposes then everything would break down completely.

 

My concept is that each modfile will have a short header :

UPKFILE=XComGame.upk 
GUID= 33 2E 29 6A A5 DD FC 40 B5 CC 57 A5 A7 AA 8C 41 // EU patch 4
FUNCTION=ApplyActionCost@XGAbilityTree

This specifies extremely unambiguously (and with redundancy check built-in) where the hex code is from and what version is can be applied to. For updating references this would automatically supply the 'source' upk. The user would select the 'destination' upk to update references to.

[dubiousintent]

Wiki Patch data has been updated for EU 6 and EW 1 & 1.1 (as I decided to call the slipstreamed version). Added GUID data as well. This can be seen in either Basic Guide to installing mods or Modding XCOM:EU 2012 articles.

 

-Dubious-

[Amineri]

By the way I recently discovered (I guess I'm just slow) that OpenOffice has the ability to directly export MediaWiki format.

 

I had to download an OpenOffice extension here : http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher?intcmp=1547

 

I still have to play around with it but I think it will make creating basic wiki pages a lot easier for me :)

[dubiousintent]

That's an interesting discovery. I'll add a note about it to the templates. (May just try it myself, though I usually just use a programmers editor and manually add the formatting.)

 

-Dubious-