modding for this hellgate

[Selek]

i see alot of cheats but no real mods yet as we all know this game will need an army of modders to keep this game alive as it needs alot of tweeks and bug fixes
x4 has a huge amount of mods for its thriveing and its just out fallout 76 has no modders for it and its dead
we all know mods keep games alive it would be good to see a mod manager for hellgate
wat are yout thoughts on this ?

[Maglad]

Yeah, Im pretty curious about how the workshop works.

Anyway, for mods, simple quality of life changes would be nice:

Larger inventories
Larger & Shared stash
DX10 or 11

[Selek]

i think how the x4 adds its mpds is good as its like a folder and they are plugin files ie no iinstalling fiddeling or its more like oblivion or skyrim where you need a mod maniger to handel things but once there is a system for it then the magic happens new items clothing weapons fixing the bugs the devs have not got to

[TheLostOne(JamilNielsen)]

hello there, i've been messing with ancient mod tools for older installations of the game, they "work" however you'll have to ignore all the errors the program throws at you, oh and i have yet to figure out how to mod the game AND keep strings intact. (strings is ingame text)
oh yea, the tool "Reanimator 1135" and an even older variant of that called "unhell"
There's also someone working on a variant for this but so far i'm having no real success.
atm i'm working on trying to repack files into .dat archives after making changes as i cant seem to fix the string issue.

you might be wondering what you can change with the tool, and the answer is "graphics,sounds,mechanics,stats,etc,etc"
you could make a graphic overhaul mod and throw it in there i bet, i myself just want to make every level give 50 skill,attribute instead of standard :p, oh and have items max augment/upgrade be 50 instead of 3/10
so what CAN i do atm while still have it playable?
i can mess with everything, make changes ingame to character and items, then quit and revert game to standard, this lets me keep "invested" skill/attribute points without the game automatically resetting things, oh also had fun with augment, took a random item and made it a 6 augment mod, after reverting the game the item showed as -3 augments remaining :p

[Selek]

i care mods keep games alive and we can all see this game wants to live

[TheLostOne(JamilNielsen)]

this game needs a complete remake in a new engine honestly.
anything short of that is patch work.
(The entire problem from the start is that this game runs on a self-developed engine made back in windows 95 days i believe?)

[Selek]

wishfull thinking hg2 mabe but agen wishfull thinking
mods are all this game can i see getting to make it better

[Wilfrid Wong]

If I had the mod skill, I wouldn't spend time modding this version. This version is a mess, beyond savage. I would mod the original version instead.

[TheLostOne(JamilNielsen)]

by the way i figured out how to mod the game without everything breaking :)
using Reanimator extract and patch everything, then copy "hellgate000.idx" to somewere, then use steam to verify integrity, it'll fix the game, then re-insert the idx and you now have tons of files you can mess with.
i myself modified the game to give me 50 attribute points per level and modified max augment from 3 to 12 and reduced shop refresh time, but the possibilities are endless.

[Krieg]

Still trying to figure out Reanimator. Aren't you supposed to extract the cooked files or something?

[TheLostOne(JamilNielsen)]

here's what i do.

What i use: Reanimator r1135 or the steam variant w/ever they work the same for my purpose.

Setup steps:
A1: make sure you have the game installed and dont have it running while reanimator is running.
A2: unpack it somewere and let it know were the game is installed(as you start it it'll start shooting errors at you as if you'r having flash backs to WW1 all over again, click ok a few times until it gives you "Show futher errors?" and click "No") afterwards restart the program.
B: start it up again and forever forward repeat the "No" to errors until someone patches it.
C: now you have reanimator and what may seem like a strange window inside it, ignore that for now first we need to set things up, as such you now want to click View-file explorer in the top toolbar.
now be aware that game files are encoded in various different ways and have not been patched properly for the steam variant,
D:in the right section check "Extract" on and the "Patch files; for..." as well, then press the start button, if it asks you to overwrite anything just say yes.
at this point if you start the game you should have every single text in the game say "missing string" to fix this i myself opted to only patch hellgate000 (a file in the Data folder, but since we cant selectively extract and patch only 1 we had to do it this way.)
E: now go to your game's folder and go into the data folder, you should see a bunch of folders as well as some .dat and .idx, now the ONLY thing you need to do here is copy hellgate000.idx somewere safe and then after that tell steam to Verify game integrity (it'll revert all .idx files to normal) after that put your patched hellgate000.idx back in there and overwrite, you now have a working moddable game!

Changing stuff and modding after setup:
Now you can start playing with Table Editor, but do note that not all of them works due to reanimator not working, i personally recommend taking a look at GAME_GLOBAL to start with, you can slowly expand as you go from there.
when you want to save a file have that tab open and click file-save and save it were it is in the game folder.
if you want to modify xp curve you can do that in PLAYERLEVELS/RANKS.
you might ask "what about textures and such?" well not 100% sure if they're hooked up though hellgate000.idx but you should be able to overwrite texture files in the folders and it should work, otherwise figure out what .dat/idx file contains whatever you'r looking for.
here's one thing though, dont mess with strings/text, it needs patching.

[TheLostOne(JamilNielsen)]

if we have someone out there who'd love to try and fix Reanimator or make something based on it here's what i know so far.
you need to use the zlibwapi86.dll to read the .dat/idx (and THAT exact version of the dll)
as for the specifics im not exactly a pro but i noticed people talking about each kind of file needing to be coded differently.
there's source code out there somewere so at least you dont have to reverse code everything.

[Krieg]

Thanks for the explanation but when I did all of that, copied hellgate000.idx (patched) back into the game folder, after the initial splash screen, I got a black screen.

[TheLostOne(JamilNielsen)]

not sure what happend in your case, but i can say the obvious.
the black screen happens if game assets are incorrectly loaded, aka it gets stuck.
here's a control question, do you get the missing string problem if you extract&patch all and launch the game?
an other thing you could do is to toggle all the folders on the left of the reanimator file browser and use the other button instead(instead of D) and then ofc afterwards do the idx switching.

[Mimic]

Originally posted by Void(null):

So why you postin' here jabroni?

To warn people not to waste their time and money.

[kosfaton4ik__]

Originally posted by TheLostOne(JamilNielsen):

here's what i do.

What i use: Reanimator r1135 or the steam variant w/ever they work the same for my purpose.

Setup steps:
A1: make sure you have the game installed and dont have it running while reanimator is running.
A2: unpack it somewere and let it know were the game is installed(as you start it it'll start shooting errors at you as if you'r having flash backs to WW1 all over again, click ok a few times until it gives you "Show futher errors?" and click "No") afterwards restart the program.
B: start it up again and forever forward repeat the "No" to errors until someone patches it.
C: now you have reanimator and what may seem like a strange window inside it, ignore that for now first we need to set things up, as such you now want to click View-file explorer in the top toolbar.
now be aware that game files are encoded in various different ways and have not been patched properly for the steam variant,
D:in the right section check "Extract" on and the "Patch files; for..." as well, then press the start button, if it asks you to overwrite anything just say yes.
at this point if you start the game you should have every single text in the game say "missing string" to fix this i myself opted to only patch hellgate000 (a file in the Data folder, but since we cant selectively extract and patch only 1 we had to do it this way.)
E: now go to your game's folder and go into the data folder, you should see a bunch of folders as well as some .dat and .idx, now the ONLY thing you need to do here is copy hellgate000.idx somewere safe and then after that tell steam to Verify game integrity (it'll revert all .idx files to normal) after that put your patched hellgate000.idx back in there and overwrite, you now have a working moddable game!

Changing stuff and modding after setup:
Now you can start playing with Table Editor, but do note that not all of them works due to reanimator not working, i personally recommend taking a look at GAME_GLOBAL to start with, you can slowly expand as you go from there.
when you want to save a file have that tab open and click file-save and save it were it is in the game folder.
if you want to modify xp curve you can do that in PLAYERLEVELS/RANKS.
you might ask "what about textures and such?" well not 100% sure if they're hooked up though hellgate000.idx but you should be able to overwrite texture files in the folders and it should work, otherwise figure out what .dat/idx file contains whatever you'r looking for.
here's one thing though, dont mess with strings/text, it needs patching.

Could you upload the edited file to a file sharing site? I would really like to try to get 50 attribute points per level, there are also files that partially repair the transformation cube, as well as increased inventory and sharpening weapons increased by 20