Topic: Hex Editing of Starfleet executables

[d4v1ks]

(removed)

[EschelonOfJudgemnt]

Pretty interesting.  Even if the displays on the side were made bigger (assuming you couldn't figure out how to display say the tractors and weapons window at the same time), it'd be an improvement.

My two 'pet suggestions' I think are still beyond our reach though.  Don't think I've shared these before, but I'm constantly reminding myself about these whenever I am playing...

1) Assigning fractional points otherwise assigned to shield reinforcement, also to ECM/ECCM, to battery recharge automatically.  5.3 points of shield reinforcement, or 5.3 points of ECM is kind of silly...  This would make batteries a little more useful I think.  Manipulating sliders at the fractional level is kludgy at best, and the game should just not assign fractional points to ECM or Shield Reinforcement (no benefit to shields, only in rare cases does a 3.1 ECM matter, if say your opponent somehow ends up with say 2.1 in ECCM).  Movement and Weapons recharge rates can put fractional points to use, so fractions are fine for those.  Tractors I think automatically assign 'whole numbers' based on the power level, so they aren't an issue to begin with...

A slider for battery recharge would also be nice (assuming it was assigned a priority level), but that's well beyond us I think.  Batteries in general are poorly implemented, but could be more useful for weapons recharge and such.  While I'm on the subject, it'd be nice to have a 'battery window display' that had 'checkboxes' which designate where battery power should be used (weapons, movement, etc.).  Again, it's a wishlist thing, but Exeter might want to take note of these ideas for his new game...

2) Adding shield strength, as a numerical representation, on top of the shield bars on the ship systems/weapons display.  That way you'd know if that rear shield had only 1 point of shielding, or 5 or whatever it current strength is, as the shields sustain damage, and also as they are repairing.

[TarMinyatur]

Even if the displays on the side were made bigger (assuming you couldn't figure out how to display say the tractors and weapons window at the same time), it'd be an improvement.

Agreed. When I started playing this game at the age of 25, I could see the elements of the UI clearly. Now that I'm almost 42, I would love to have 25% larger buttons, panels, sliders, etc. when using today's typical monitors that have many pixels per inch.

[TarMinyatur]

sfc.ini contains the variable "lowres" that the .exe reads to determine resolution.

We can update these values.

0= (800,600) ; 1366x768
1= (640,480) ; 1280x800
2= (960,720) ; 1440x900
3= (1024,768) ; ok
4= (1152,864) ; 1920x1080
5=(1280,1024) ; ok
6= (1600,1200) ; 1920x1200

Or allow any resolution to be chosen for, let's say, the lowres setting of 2.

[d4v1ks]

In collaboration with Tar i bring you the first demo of the next patch 2676, featuring full HD support !! 

1366x768
1920x1080
etc...

... that you can set in your own SFC.ini!
It is wonderful what the change of 4 numbers in the exe and add some stuff into sprites.q3 can do in a few hours of work, right?
Sorry for the shaking as i was holding the camera while doing stuff. Anyway who cares? It works !!

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=5BEA448F9325A62B!45376&authkey=!AD9AF4S0TqaiGBg&ithint=video%2cmp4

[Javora]

That's amazing, good work!

[d4v1ks]

(removed)

[d4v1ks]

Awesome. I've been dying to play 1920x1200 on my monitor. Do you think you can include it with the Sprite Editor since that has to change when changing the resolution. Instead of having two programs we can just have one. Maybe a seperate tab or sub menu.

You are the best

Dunno yet. As it have to patch 3 files...

[matchbox2022]

This is awesome, I'd love to see SFC OP HD resolution support.
If you can tell me an address or what to look for I can make the file myself to upload in HxD.

[TarMinyatur]

The Romulan Photon and the Mirak Disruptor were lacking quicktips. I was surprised that I could paste quicktip data into the sprites.q3, modify the preceding integer for an index, and not cause obvious problems. The file size has increased by a hundred bytes or so, which could cause everything to crash and burn. But it hasn't. I guess the position of the data in this part of the file isn't critical. Of course, I'm placing information exactly where it should have been...so that's why it works.

[d4v1ks]

(removed)

[d4v1ks]

This is awesome, I'd love to see SFC OP HD resolution support.
If you can tell me an address or what to look for I can make the file myself to upload in HxD.

Such thing don't exist yet.
It is being developed by me and TarMinyatur atm.

[TarMinyatur]

If you can provide me details on exactly what you did to the Romulan Photons and Mirak Disruptors I would really appreciate it. I would like to fix this for sfc2op. I believe you mentioned these two fixes which involving hex editing the sprites and the third you mentioned previous was fixing a Klingon arc but I believe that's simply replacing a Sprite photo to display proper arc placement.

Besides these three, are there any other fixes I should be aware of involving improper commands in a race UI?

Romulan Photons had PPDStatus as an associated function. Of course they didn't work. Mirak Disruptors were simply missing the quicktip data. (Don't focus on the hex addresses in these images.) The point is to show the arrangement of the quicktip, button_type, aaString, and Starfleet.function. Normal, overload, and proximity modes must be edited too.

Seems that quicktips (tooltips) don't need the racial affix. A6_DISRUPTOR_OFFLINE produces the same output as Z#A6_DISRUPTOR_OFFLINE. Maybe Taldren was going to use different fonts for quicktips by reading the first character.

[d4v1ks]

Very cool work Tar,
Now we can clearly give a name and meaning to those tooltip strings.
Thanks.

I think we can even improve the fix, so we dont overwrite something there, by mistake.

[d4v1ks]

There it is!
For all the SFC OP fans..

A demonstration of the game running at 1920x1080.
Just finished the basic to make it work, so i didn't edited any image yet.


https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=5BEA448F9325A62B!45794&authkey=!AGUIVNUMf_VhcIQ&ithint=video%2cmp4

[Klingon Fanatic]

Nice! I can't wait for the OP patch!

Thank you guys for continuing to work on this.

[Tumulorum Fossor]

Wow! One more OP patch, and its a biggie!

Who would have believed it?

[Klingon Fanatic]

Some questions...

The Doomsday Machine anti-proton beam has been simulated using the ISC PPD and Mauler. Is there any way to give it more punch without making it the new death star?  Nothimg short of a CL in size should be allowed to take down a planet killer. I'd love to tractor a freighter or an enemy CL and ram it into the maw of the DDM. It's anti climatic when a mere fighter or shuttle group runs through it and kills it!


Tholians web  - Klingon Academy modified the T web into a sphere that surrounds an enemy ship. Is there a way to repurpose the Lyran ESG to make its duration last longer and say give it the properties of the Plasma E? iIRC the Plasma E was as close to an energy damping weapon the Galaxies at war mod team could come up with for a T web.

Also does all this hex editing allow for Firesoul's ESG loop fix to be incorporated or is that something not related to this topic?

Are asteroids hex editable? Is it possible to make it so standard. Asteroids can be track red without having to be a c## programmer?

There has been amazing progress in this area keep up the great work!

[d4v1ks]

There has been amazing progress in this area keep up the great work!

Thanks Klingon,
About your questions, those are in fact good ideas.
I'm sure they would be possible if anyone was actively working on the game code itself. But SFC is not really a community project, or even open source code, where anyone can contribute. Is as close as it can be.
From my point of view, all this hex editing is very time-consuming and not fun to work with. To tell the truth i just hate hex editing. Barely touched in it. All was done by Tar and others.
I just made the SFC_Editor and Q3_Editor, and will contribute to these patches as they require a bit of both.

It is not likely that i will continue to work on these kind of things anymore.
I just want to play SFC in HD, with a good shiplist, and a good model pack.
Just want to adjust one or other detail with the Sfc_Editor and Q3_Editor.
Play some games.

I really love the concept of Dynaverse and SFC CE...

But in pratice, from my user perspective, i barely notice any difference between SFC EAW and SFC CE...
They both run as well in my Win10 machine...
And OP really looks as it offers much more...
Wich is sad... rigth? After the code being released 8 (?) years ago...

Just notice this example...
Without any experience or knowledge on the game code and sprites.q3.
It only toke one afternoon talk, and 2 days, to realize that it was possible to make an HD patch for CE and OP.
Yes i did the Q3_Editor, but i also didnt even knew what it was 2 month ago.

There is other examples... but nevermind... it has not been a good experience at all.
And for what i read in the forums, that people have been posting all these years...

[TarMinyatur]

Some questions...

The Doomsday Machine anti-proton beam has been simulated using the ISC PPD and Mauler. Is there any way to give it more punch without making it the new death star?  Nothimg short of a CL in size should be allowed to take down a planet killer. I'd love to tractor a freighter or an enemy CL and ram it into the maw of the DDM. It's anti climatic when a mere fighter or shuttle group runs through it and kills it!

You can do this by giving the DDM more batteries to power the Mauler. I have no idea how to select unit types that can kill the DDM by flying into its maw.

Tholians web  - Klingon Academy modified the T web into a sphere that surrounds an enemy ship. Is there a way to repurpose the Lyran ESG to make its duration last longer and say give it the properties of the Plasma E? iIRC the Plasma E was as close to an energy damping weapon the Galaxies at war mod team could come up with for a T web.

No. This cannot be done with a hex editor. Creating an ESG Snare is impossible with the tools I have.

Also does all this hex editing allow for Firesoul's ESG loop fix to be incorporated or is that something not related to this topic?

The ESG loop (or any other audio) can be disabled in sounds.txt with a plain old text editor (notepad). Just put a tab before any annoying audio entry and it won't be played.

Are asteroids hex editable? Is it possible to make it so standard. Asteroids can be tractored without having to be a c## programmer?

The OP missions can be edited to allow asteroids to be tractored. But this does require old C++ development software and the OP API. Bypassing this might be possible with a hex editor and the help of a disassembler.

There has been amazing progress in this area keep up the great work!

Thanks. But 2.561 will be the last OP patch that I work on. CE 2.676/2.680 are almost done too. Little can be reasonably accomplished thereafter in SFC without access to source code. The Q3_Editor, SFC_Editor, and the research recorded here are the tools available to ambitious modders.