Hex editing MOO game.sav files
Paul James Zoski
:
:
: Folks,
:
: I've just started hex editing the save.gam files in
: MOO (sometimes hex editing is more fun than the games
: themselves, but not so in MOO). So far, I've only been
: able to jack up my missle bases. The first attempt I
: tried to go up to 200-- and promptly bankrupted my whole
: economy. After reading the faq, I find that having that
: many bases will bankrupt any economy. So I will probably
: try it again. Fyi, the calculator in Windows converts
: from dec to hex when in scientific mode.
:
: If anyone else has had much success hacking the
: save.gam files, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
I've had lots of luck hacking the savegame files. I've managed to
change the population of each planet as well as the number of factories,
etc. Here's a little help.
If you can get your planet up to max population *without* teraforming,
convert that number to hex and look for it to appear three times in a
row separated by a bunch of zeros. One of those three is original max
population (before teraforming), another is current max population, and
the third is current population. If you change current population without
changing the max population all the extra colonists die on the next
turn, which really doesn't help much. What you need to do is change the
max possible planet size as well as your current population. Try just setting
all three numbers to whatever 300 is in hex. The game is pretty clever and
seems to have some safeguards against this kind of tampering. For some
reason you can never set the max population over 300 for any planet, and
the max population is also limited in some way by the original planet size.
Of course you can change that too!
I haven't really messed with much else. I think factories works the same
way. I.e. there's a field for max, and a field for current.
Paul J. Zoski e-mail: pj...@ms.uky.edu
718 Patterson Office Tower Office Phone: (606)-257-6806
Office hours: Void Fax: (606)-257-4078
I am what I am. That's all I am, and I am it.
Nguyen Tuan Trung
: Robert W. Rutkowski (r...@po.CWRU.Edu) wrote:
: :
: :
: : Folks,
: :
: : I've just started hex editing the save.gam files in
: : MOO (sometimes hex editing is more fun than the games
: : themselves, but not so in MOO). So far, I've only been
: : able to jack up my missle bases. The first attempt I
: : tried to go up to 200-- and promptly bankrupted my whole
: : economy. After reading the faq, I find that having that
: : many bases will bankrupt any economy. So I will probably
: : try it again. Fyi, the calculator in Windows converts
: : from dec to hex when in scientific mode.
: :
: : If anyone else has had much success hacking the
: : save.gam files, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
I remember tampering with MOO save games. You can change most paremeters of any
planet including owner, size, coordinates, type, environment etc. I was less lucky with technologies,
often got system's hang or 'insufficient memory for items in .LBX' or something
like that. But I found changing spaceship's paremeters more funny. For example
you can have a ship with warp speed 15 (as far as I remember), enormous defense
values and equipped with - modestly ;-) - 1000 Death Rays at very little cost (I
guess MPS used some formula to determine the cost of a model, but large operands
caused some integers to wrap. Then you can watch your ship slaying Orion's Guardian
in one weapon's blast... One such a ship should be enough to help you rule the Universe.
But perhaps it's less challenging to play God in MOO.
Meissl Stephan
section (look for the names) It's a byte that ranges from 0 to 6, 0 being
ultra-poor and 6 being Orion (search for a "6" in Orions data). This has a
tremendous impact on planetary production and counterfies production penalties
on "Hard" and "Impossible".
--
Meissl Stephan
University of Technology of Graz, Austria
(mei...@icg.tu-graz.ac.at)
FSchray
: :
: : I've just started hex editing the save.gam files in
: : MOO (sometimes hex editing is more fun than the games
: : themselves, but not so in MOO).
I use the MoO money cheat, shamelessly. I estimate that
a $5000 gift to a new planet gives you the same production
advantage as the CP on Average. I use $7K to $10K for Hard
& Impossible. I usually plan to bankroll about 6 planets and
have a "little" extra left over for emergencies and those
miserable trade agreements. (BTW $15K per planet is a
real spoiler. I never do this.....except maybe sometimes.)
Fred
J MacNish
>: Robert W. Rutkowski (r...@po.CWRU.Edu) wrote:
>: : I've just started hex editing the save.gam files in
>: : MOO (sometimes hex editing is more fun than the games
>: : themselves, but not so in MOO).
>
>I use the MoO money cheat, shamelessly. I estimate that
>a $5000 gift to a new planet gives you the same production
>advantage as the CP on Average. I use $7K to $10K for Hard
Find a planet's name in the save game file, go 11 bytes forward from
the first character in it's name, and set (most likely) a 02 to a 05.
Poof...Instant ultra-rich planet. Set it to a 06...Poof, 4x tech planet.
Now that's fun. You can also use this to give easy or normal (i.e., non
cheating) computer opponents a little different kind of boost. Set their
planets to rich (04) and see how that helps them out.
--
J MacNish
jmac...@cs.arizona.edu
kalte melkerhaende fuerchtet die milschkuh