Open save game files in Essence Editor

[Adam Beckett]

After seeing how (user made) old saves are no longer working*, I decided to see what can be seen opening those save files.

Luckily, you can open and read them with the Essence Editor, which was already shipped with the release build.

You choose the "Chunky Files () ()" drop down option from the Load File opened box, to get to see them.

You can see not only the structures, but also how the modifiers are well organized in small 'chunks'. Binary files are easily readable since the ASCII part has comprehensive descriptions of each file.

While this is great in one way (for learning), I fear, this is opening up 'manipulations' too easily for the kind of people who have less 'honorable' intentions? As long as "Get 999999 of everything" is a Single Player only mod in the Workshop and not a 'Trainer' on dubious websites? I trust, Relic has multiplayer cheaters 'covered', one way or another.

*) the official changelog on the CoH3 website explains why the save game files are no longer working (basically: "new build = mid-mission saves invalid), which is the most common thing with freshly released games.

The devs are still making core game changes, which could lead to save files not just being corrupt (referring to nowhere, much like c-pointers!), but could also crash the game, leading to another (avoidable) overload of crash reports.

https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/forums/3-patch-notes-and-known-issues/threads/3509-company-of-heroes-3-changelog?page=1#post-21324