Hex Madness: Custom Difficulty, etc.

Northon on 11/6/2004 at 04:40

Any luck finding the constant that controls the amount of time guard's will search?

Orkin Man on 11/6/2004 at 08:06

Cool, it works! Looks like we get custom difficulty afterall! Between this and ThiefBot, you can set everything to your liking (besides # of gaurds)! It even shows the options you choose using the gamesys modder in the goals list.

I noticed something that might be cool to have added though. In the gamesys there are two values that seem to be missing from your utility: DontKillNonComb and DontBlackjackNonComb. I'd try changing them myself, but I'm not sure how you're coming up with the offsets...

Lake on 11/6/2004 at 15:03

Quote Posted by Saracoth

Heh, you can probably beat the game with only a single water arrow for the training mission, if you have the perseverance. Even in the training mission, you can jump instead of using a noisemaker to distract the guard, and I've had success with the last encounter by carefully mantling over the barrel to the left as you walk into the room (avoiding the encounter alltogether).

I do play that way but less equipment means less temptation. The only piece of equiment, I buy, is the climbing gloves.

Can you edit in having the climbing gloves?

Saracoth on 11/6/2004 at 18:51

Quote Posted by Orkin Man

I noticed something that might be cool to have added though. In the gamesys there are two values that seem to be missing from your utility: DontKillNonComb and DontBlackjackNonComb. I'd try changing them myself, but I'm not sure how you're coming up with the offsets...

There's a lot of FFFF FFFF flags in and around T3DifficultyInfo -- there's four more sections, it seems, beyond the four standard difficulties (maybe one for city sections, for instance). I've just changed the values to something other than -1 and recorded the results. There does not appear to be an effect in changing the additional four sections near the start of this area, however.

It may well be possible to add in these other restrictions in place of other ones, but changing the file size by adding them will cause game crashes. Not that it should be a problem, if the identifier was pinpointed--few people would want every single possible optional restriction. Sadly, it's not as easy as I thought it might be. These objectives/restrictions start with XX0122, where XX happens to match up with a line from a text file I've made. All these values are mentioned at the beginning of the file, and I've just dumped them into this file line-by-line. Loot percentage starts with 630122 (the 99th line), but the non-combatant ones (0x84 for no-kill, 0xEA for no-BJ) cause crashes at startup. Also, I've had difficulty finding similar patterns elsewhere, and it isn't always 0122 (though the second usually is a 20-something).... I don't know. Probably possible, but so far, no go.

Quote Posted by Lake

Can you edit in having the climbing gloves?

Sadly, if it's possible it's more involved than changing a starting item entry to ClimbingGloves. It's possible (even likely) that there's a value for upgrades you start the second mission with though. Around the same section, if they're there. Otherwise, look into setting up the debug menu--you can add individual upgrades with it. Meanwhile, I'll add this to my to-do list.

Another nice thing about the debug menu: you can turn on wireframe sound portals. Very handy in finding entrances to obscure or hidden areas of an area. I'll have to explore it sometime, if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

Saracoth on 11/6/2004 at 19:13

Quote Posted by Northon

Any luck finding the constant that controls the amount of time guard's will search?

Doubt that it's in the gamesys. Possibly AICore.t3u -- it has values for SearchYellowMinLookTime and SearchRedMinLookTime. Promising. I'll check into it.

If we ever get an SDK, we'll be able to easily pinpoint and change all these values, and my hard work will be for naught, but that sure as heck won't stop me for now :ebil:

Salvage on 13/6/2004 at 02:57

I came here looking to figure out how to do this manually, so this is a nice treat.

Tripled the cost of everything except the gloves(which now cost 10,000). Lowered the Expert difficulty loot percent to 80%(for the poor widow).

Inline Image:

http://s95328126.onlinehome.us/uploader/uploads/pics/ty.gif

Saracoth on 15/6/2004 at 05:10

I've updated the program again. (http://members.socket.net/~manta/TDSGameSys.zip) The link remains the same.

Check the readme with it for full details, but the jist of it is that I've added a working starting equipment tab. I wanted to have a fuller understanding of all the values before releasing another version, but what worked sometimes failed other times. So there are registry settings that can override defaults with larger, "safe" values in case you have problems. As I've said, more info in the readme.

If you still have crashes after flagging all italicized starting equipment items as problematic, let me know. It shouldn't be an issue, but who knows....

So do as you will. Start with (near) nothing if you want. Just remember what the readme says--don't just uncheck everything! It's safer to just set quantities to 0 instead and has the same effect on gameplay.

Also, small bug, but aren't the oil fires supposed to go out when the oil disappears? I guess they disappear ahead of time if you start flinging around dozens of flasks at once, but the fires will permanently remain after that! (http://members.socket.net/~manta/T3iNotMyMostElegant.JPG) Not my most elegant entrance...but it worked.

S_Hole on 15/6/2004 at 09:57

nice
though, a suggestion:
a user modifiable hex hack program
like.. one exe that reads it's own .ini file and lists changeable attributes according to it
the ini file could be like this

Code:

[entry #1] ; or something
description=Description field of this hex edit
file=%thiefpath%\system\T3Gamesys.t3u ;this could be %thiefsavepath% aswell, so all thief related paths are accessible - or an absolute path
offset=9DC7E
type= ;some way to mark it int or string or whatever
size= ;in bytes
original= ;original unchanged value

when started, the program would show all the 'hack entries' and their values and descriptions and allow user to change it's value
this way people could do these hacks without actual knowledge of programming

Azal on 15/6/2004 at 12:56

Excellent idea!

I didn't use oil flasks for most of the game, but now I am a convert to their unrivalled comedic value. As such I desperately wanted to be able to buy dozens of them and make a huge slippery slide fo the AI to use.

Now I can :D

Thank you.

Saracoth on 15/6/2004 at 18:12

Excellent idea, S_Hole. I think I'll keep the interfaces for what I already have, but yet another tab for custom modifications shouldn't be a problem.

Too bad some things, like starting equipment, aren't quite as simple as offset/length if you want the full effect, but this would be better than nothing. I'll try to make it easy to import offsets so people won't have to manually edit them into their ini files. I should be able to easily include things like multiple (optional) Quick Buttons for each offset (similar to the all prices 1 gp and 999 max for all items), value type, etc.