32 Character-Units....

[Kurukaze]

....with just using RebEd. Now as the manual says it doesn't work and it did nonetheless, thought I'd let you know.

I just replaced 2 Rebels with 2 Imperials and recruitment did not stop at 30 but continued to 32. So as this "30" per faction does not seem to be a hard-coded limit, maybe there is a way to actually add at least characters ?

[Moribundus]

I believe the limit is not on the number of characters per side, but on the total number of characters in the resource file.

[Jahled]

Interesting, I don't think it would be possible to add additional characters without the game's source code, an observation simply made by looking at the string tables with Resource Hacker.

 

I once had a simular experience when I used RebEd mid-game to adjust something with a character an accidently switched them from rebel to Imperial. Given the character was captive by the Empire I suddenly found them as an Imperial. Unfortunately, I found I couldn't actually do anything with them! The character just sat their being useless.

[Kurukaze]

I didn't use RebEd during the game itself, I just set up the enviroment I wanted and started playing. The point is recruitment didn't stop at 30 so the "30" Mark doesn't seem to be hardcoded. Additionally, I tried a recruitment run for the rebels yesterday with the same settings and that one did stop at the correct 28. So there may be a top-limit of total 60 characters, but it doesn't look like a 30 per side limit hardcoded for the recruitment missions.

[DarthTex]

I think this has been mentioned before. Since in RebEd you can opt to have a character be recruited be either side (at the same time). At which I think that character falls under the "first come, first recruit" category. Therefore, the possibility of having "more" characters on one side than another is possible (although I've never done this or tried myself). But as J has stated, the character slots are "hardcoded" so the max number is set permanently in electrons. And the "key" to those little devils (the electrons) are locked up in the source code

[Kurukaze]

Ok, I gave it a shot....

and added a unit - a minor char.

things that do not work:

 

1 - the name does not get displayed, even though I added it in the TEXTSTRA.DLL with resourcehacker. Also when applying command functions, the then "new" name does not get displayed either.

 

2 - the TACTICAL.DLL as well as the not yet in RebEd bitmaps of the characters - prolly not even used in game - do not use the structure of the other DLLs.

 

For 1, I'll do some tests with crosslinking in the MNCHARSD.DAT to see if this is a problem of array-dimensions....

 

For 2, there must be a table that holds information about what tactical bitmap is assinged to which unit. finding this table would be a great step towards getting behind the last secrets of this game.

 

The result I have at the moment is an additional rebel minor char, succesful entry of background in the encyclopedia files and a correct assignment of images. The unit gets recruited and can perform all types of missions.

[Evaders99]

Wow that is pretty exciting if you indeed get a new character slot working.

[Kurukaze]

Scratch 1 - Name problem is solved. It had something to do with arrays/pointers.

 

Not sure if there isn't another problem coming up - still have to test that in a multiplayer enviroment. It may be possible still that recruitment stops as soon as there are 60 characters in total around, though I doubt it - 'cause of the structures in DLL and strings.

 

Speaking of structure - the TACTICAL.DLL proves difficult. As far as I get it, the reserved space for characters - both minor and major - is ranging from resource 2200-2299 limiting them in total to 100. This would still leave room for 40 additional characters, but the structure used in that DLL differs from the others.

Assumption: The tactical space battle was developed by another production unit and the existing game parts were later sorta hardwired into another.

So what I'm missing is some sort of table offering a junction between eg Villar's 10907-ID from the MNCHARSD.DAT and also found in the TEXTSTRA.DLL to his 2262-entry in the TACTICAL.DLL - but ....

 

.... this problem shouldn't affect gameplay as long as you do not use the tactical console

 

So what I'll do now is:

Add 2 characters - one Imp, one Reb - to the original game files, start a game, see if I can recruit up to 31 one chars again, and then packup the DLLs, the MNCHARSD.DAT and the images for the EDATA-directory into a zip, upload it somewhere and post a link here. Should be done within the next 24 hours unless I get a sleep attack.

[Lord_La_forge]

 

Amazing! Could all this work for other type of cards?

 

I think I should install this game again

[Kurukaze]

So, I'm running tired and getting sloppy, forgot to add a "how to" to the archive. I put this here:

 

EDIT:

http://www.teutloff.net/zip/charupdate.zip

 

The rebupdate.zip contains:

EDATA.193

EDATA.194

----- put these 2 into (yourpath)\Rebellion\EDATA

MNCHARSD.DAT

----- put this one into (yourpath)\Rebellion\GDATA

ENCYBMAP.DLL

ENCYTEXT.DLL

GOKRES.DLL

STRATEGY.DLL

TEXTSTRA.DLL

----- put these into (yourpath)\Rebellion

 

If successful, the Empire will have Mara Jade around, while the Rebels get Kyle Katarn - additionally, not overwriting existing chars.

 

BEFORE using these - backup your current settings

 

Information/Known Issues:

I used this on the BASIC files of Rebellion, no other patches attached, not even the official update.

The bitmaps were done in a hurry so they have sadly blue "frames" around the characters, and one of the Kyle BMPs shows the full blue background. I'll fix that later, I was more into the mechanics while doing this.

Mara Jade's encyclopedia entry gets an automated "If you can read this you should report a bug"-message added. I'll look up where this may come from.

I did not add bitmaps to the TACTICAL.DLL so the game might crash when trying to take command in a space battle and Mara or Kyle is on one of the ships. I need to get more information about how the TACTICAL.DLL is structured or if there is a table around where the resource numbers get allocated to the chars.

 

So with this additional things available - does anyone know if there is a newer version of RebED on the launch ? Would be great if I could edit additional characters with the card system instead of using a HEX-Editor....

 

Last but definetly not least:

BIG THX to vakundok for posting this detailed information about the structure of the .DAT files in the GDATA directory. It is this information that made it possible for me to solve the generic part of "Add a new Unit". What's left is details.

 

And @ Lord_La_Forge:

I'll try ADDING Z-95 Headhunters for the Alliance next, but this would prolly take a week or something. I have to HEX all the values of the units into the .DAT files. And again - though it would be no problem to add an entry to the TACTICAL.DLL, I don't know WHERE to add that entry or HOW to link it to the unit. So again there is the risk of a crash when taking command in a space battle.

 

If two of you people could set up a fast multiplayer game and run recruting to see if BOTH sides can get to 31 chars before recruitment is done that would be great. There is still a tiny chance of a total cap of 60 character units maximum per game, though I really doubt it.

 

EDIT: I updated the link to the new package which has a ReadMe included now.

Edited November 10, 2007 by Kurukaze

[DarthTex]

... Mara Jade's encyclopedia entry gets an automated "If you can read this you should report a bug"-message added. I'll look up where this may come from....

I ran into that message just the other day! Now where did I see that ...

 

Quite amazing there; I do hope you get more characters added and more testing accomplished

[Jahled]

Wow! Excellent work that man

[Evaders99]

Ooh 40 new characters? If that is an option, even more exciting. I think we may see a bunch more Rebellion editing then.

 

 

does anyone know if there is a newer version of RebED on the launch Very Happy ? Would be great if I could edit additional characters with the card system instead of using a HEX-Editor.

 

Sadly no. We've never heard from Rebed's creator, Revolution. So there's nothing in the way of a new version. We don't even have the source code.

Ideally we'd recode Rebed or create our own... but the efforts to read Rebed's card file format haven't progressed anywhere. (Ultimately for some kind of compatibility with the existing cards out there)

 

You want to tackle a new editor? We'd certainly love to help

[Lord_La_forge]

You want to tackle a new editor? We'd certainly love to help

 

Agreed!

[DarthTex]

You want to tackle a new editor? We'd certainly love to help

Saved game editor too?!

[Kurukaze]

Took some time to clean up the BMPs. They look much better now, and the blue blurr is gone. I'll update the zip within the next days as I hope to get rid of the bug-message in the Encyclopedia as well.

 

Tested the behaviour of the tactical fight: The game does not crash (windowed mode) but gives a "the pixel format was invalid as specified" message - twice, so my guess is one message per new unit. So the game tries to look up the pixel in the TACTICAL.DLL, just now I need to find out at which adress it looks up - or better where a unit gets an adress assigned. Looks like this is the final information needed to fully add new units - except for star fighters, and again the problem is inside the TACTICAL.DLL - star fighters get split up and assigned to groups (gold red blue green) by type first. Now if you come in with 5 types of star fighters the game would run out of groups to assign them ....

 

So what we know by now is that the game loads up the required graphical elements when switching between the main screens - options, command centre and galaxy map. Prolly due to minimize memory usage back in a time when machines had 32? 64? MB of RAM....

 

EDIT:

Assitional Update:

I found the Bug-Message. It's the next entry following the one after Mara's encyclopedia entry, and resource hacker for some reason forgot to add in a 00 00 block to divide the entries. A simple recompiling fixed it.

 

With this done, we have quite some space for additional characters available and are not running into some hardcoded limitations as I feared when the message showed up. The only limitation left is the TACTICAL.DLL now. Is there a chance that some of the modell-modders run into entries that are neither textures nor wireframes ? It could be possible that the table type resource I'm looking for is somewhere among that entries in the TACTICAL.DLL itself.

 

Another EDIT:

I'll start a new thread with the title "Additional Units" and the fresh download inside, so some more people will have a look. I also updated the link in this thread in my earlier post.

[DarthTex]

...Tested the behaviour of the tactical fight: The game does not crash (windowed mode) but gives a "the pixel format was invalid as specified" message - twice, so my guess is one message per new unit...

Good guess, but I don't think that's it. Whenever I run the game in "windows mode" (even the original vanilla version) I get those same errors whenever the tactical space battle starts. So, I don't believe it has anything to do with your mods. It's just a compatibility error with the "window"

[Jahled]

With the apparent possibility of 40 additional characters Kurukaze has uncovered, it rather begs the question this most excellent game was kinda left half finished for some reason! Perhaps the muppets at Lucasarts underestimated a game based more or less on imagination on the consumer market. The continued interest in this website somehow completely reinforces this, given there are always about a hundred 'guests' online whenever I log on. That, and for me personally, it's still about the most faithful dose of Star Wars experience I can lap-up, interact with, and waste away the hours with, other than simply shooting/slashing things with Jedi Knight.

 

Sort of thing

[Kurukaze]

...Tested the behaviour of the tactical fight: The game does not crash (windowed mode) but gives a "the pixel format was invalid as specified" message - twice, so my guess is one message per new unit...

Good guess, but I don't think that's it. Whenever I run the game in "windows mode" (even the original vanilla version) I get those same errors whenever the tactical space battle starts. So, I don't believe it has anything to do with your mods. It's just a compatibility error with the "window"

 

Ok, there is no error message running in full screen mode. If even the standard version gives that error, I guess that's one issue less

So the last problem is:

If an image gets added to the TACTICAL.DLL, where is / should be the pointer to the referring unit ?

[Lord_La_forge]

With the apparent possibility of 40 additional characters Kurukaze has uncovered, it rather begs the question this most excellent game was kinda left half finished for some reason! Perhaps the muppets at Lucasarts underestimated a game based more or less on imagination on the consumer market. The continued interest in this website somehow completely reinforces this, given there are always about a hundred 'guests' online whenever I log on. That, and for me personally, it's still about the most faithful dose of Star Wars experience I can lap-up, interact with, and waste away the hours with, other than simply shooting/slashing things with Jedi Knight.

 

Sort of thing

 

Amen, mate! This whole stuff grows to be something Team Gizka's Restoration Project is for KOTOR II!

If this Kurukaze modding goes further, and perhaps Reloaded could be finished in few months.. the Anniversary of the game that we have next year will be very, umm .. WOO YAY!

[Moribundus]

I wish you the best of luck and hope there aren't any nasty hardcoded limits you wouldn't be able to circumvent.

[VinBadir]

Being able to add more characters would be great, and the idea of a second RebEd is intriguing.

 

Could it be made to edit encylopedia pics and text as well? and how about the event pics and text? (other than the main ones you can edit with rebed)

[Kurukaze]

The newly added units have an encyclopedia entry, so basically it's possible, yes. Just atm it's much working with HEX and DLL editors.