Copy Stat To Cheat File. . . . . . . . 12 (REGISTERED VERSION ONLY)
Advanced Topics. . . . . . . . . . . . 13
INTRODUCTION
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This is the documentation file describing how to use the shareware version of UGCS. All of the features of the complete commercial version of UGCS are documented as well. The only difference between this documentation file and the registered one is the first few paragraphs and the table of contents.
The shareware version of UGCS is primarily a sector editor and a UGCS cheat file processor. A sector editor allows you to examine a file in a form similar to that of debug.exe included with most MS-DOS systems. UGCS is different than debug in two very important ways. First of all it does not have cryptic commands that impair use. If you want to change some value, you just cursor there and change it(like a word processor). Secondly, when you register UGCS, you receive the version with an "intelligent editor." This amazing program will actually scan game files without you ever even stepping using a sector editor. This allows non-programmers to be able to edit their game files. You simply provide UGCS with what your looking for(and a little trial and error) and you will soon be able to create a editor for all your favorite games.
The rest of this manual is identical to the registered version. If you would like to see more of UGCS in action check out some of our editors that are also available(all created by UGCS, of course). We have included our ULTIMA set of editors with this release. You may run these editors with either UGCS or the included CHEAT.EXE.
CHEAT.EXE allows you to run game editors that you create with UGCS. I encourage you to distribute editors you create (and include CHEAT.EXE with them). However you may NOT redistribute UGCS.EXE. If you would like to see your cheat file distributed I encourage you to upload it to our BBS ( (314) 638-2504 ). We distribute cheat files over ASP registered BBSs, ASP ShareWare vendors, CompuServe, America On-Line, Bix, Delphi and the Internet.
Limited Warranty
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MicroGenesis warrants the physical diskette(s) and physical documentation enclosed herein to be free of defects in materials and workmanship for a period of sixty(60) days from the purchase date. If MicroGenesis receives notification within the warranty period of defects in materials or workmanship, and such notification is determined by MicroGenesis to be correct, MicroGenesis will replace the defective diskette(s) or documentation. DO NOT RETURN ANY PRODUCT UNTIL YOU HAVE CALLED THE MICROGENESIS TECH SUPPORT LINE.
The entire and exclusive liability and remedy for breach of this Limited Warranty shall be limited to the replacement of defective diskette(s) or documentation and shall not include or extend to any claim for or right to recover any damages, including but not limited to, loss of profit, data or use of the software, or special, incidental, or consequential damages or similar claims even if MicroGenesis has been specifically advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall MicroGenesisÆs liability for any damages to you or any other person ever exceed the actual price paid for the license to use the software, regardless of any form of the claim.
MICROGENESIS SOFTWARE SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Specifically, MicroGenesis makes no representation or warranty that the software is fit for any particular purpose and any implied warranty of merchantability is limited to the sixty-day duration of the Limited Warranty covering the physical diskette(s) and physical documentation only (and not the software) and is otherwise expressly and specifically disclaimed.
The limited warranty gives you specific legal rights; you may have others which vary from state to state. Some states do not allow the exclusion of incidental or consequential damages, or the limitation on how long an implied warranty lasts, so some of the above may not apply to you.
Governing Law And General Provisions
This License and Limited Warranty shall be construed, interpreted and governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, and any action hereunder shall be brought only in Missouri. If any provision is found void, invalid or unenforceable, it will not affect the validity of the balance of this License and Limited Warranty which shall remain valid and enforceable according to its terms. If any remedy hereunder is determined to have failed of its essential purpose, all limitations of liability and exclusion of damages set forth herein shall remain in full force and effect. This License and Limited Warranty may only be modified in writing signed by you and a specifically authorized representative of MicroGenesis. Use, duplication or disclosure by the U.S. Government of the computer software and documentation in this packages shall be subject to the restricted rights under DFARS 52.227-7013 applicable to commercial computer software. All rights not specifically granted in this statement are reserved by MicroGenesis.
This documentation is deviled into four sections. Each of these sections describes a part of UGCS as accessible from one of the four main menu options.
How UGCS Works
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All video games that allow you to save your game to disk open up an interesting possibility for cheating. The video game generally places your saved game in one or more files on disk. Sometimes you get to pick the file it is saved into(allowing you to save multiple games), other times the game automatically picks the filename for you. Either way the file is there on disk while the game is not running.
This file is the key to what UGCS does. By changing the contents of this file you can change your game stats. However to make any sense of this file required extensive knowledge of using assembly language and dos's debug utility. What UGCS does that is unique is that it automatically scans the file for you, looking for the number you wish to change in several formats.
Because of the fact that UGCS uses many different formats and does a random search you will generally get the location of your stat back plus a bunch of "bogus" locations. You must then try each of these locations and see which one actually works.
The UGCS Main Menu
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When you first boot up UGCS a screen as follows comes up.
This screen provides the UGCS main menu, as well as some general information on how to go about "cheating a game." You should follow these steps to create a cheat file for any game. This manual provides a more in-depth description of each of the menu options.
Manual Mode
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You should only use manual mode if you are experienced with assembly language programming or binary representation. Manual mode lets YOU use the UGCS file scanner without any of its own built in niceties. You will see this same screen when using the automatic functions however you will not remain here, this is just simply UGCS using its own scanner.
When you first bring up manual mode a blank editor screen will be displayed. Using your tab screen you can move your cursor between the editor screen and the filename box. While in the file box you can type any file name(followed by a return) and that fill will be brought up onto your screen.
Once a file is open ANY changes made are immediately written to disk. Therefore you should always make a back up of the file you are modifying(or possibly destroying).
You can make changes to the file in two ways: numeric and ascii. Numeric changes are done when you change one of the hex numbers displayed on the left 3/4 of your screen. Ascii changes are made when you change the text on the right 1/4 of the screen.
Changing something on one side will affect the other side. Both sides represent the same data, they simply show it in different ways.
UGCS can find help you find data in manual mode. The [ALT-S} command begins a search. You will be allowed to select from one of several ways to search.
When you are done modifying the file, press escape to return to the main menu.
Run A Cheat File
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This command will cause UGCS to act exactly like the CHEAT.EXE file. It is built into UGCS for connivance only. Once you have created a cheat file you should always use the CHEAT.EXE. NEVER DISTRIBUTE UGCS.EXE AS A DRIVER FOR YOUR EDITORS-- YOU MAY ONLY DISTRIBUTE CHEAT.EXE. To distribute UGCS.EXE is a violation of copyright law.
Once you select this command you will be prompted for a filename you want to run. This is the *.CHT file that you wish to execute. You may also run TRIAL.CHT which is the current cheat file that the system is trying to build.
Running TRIAL.CHT may not seem like a good idea at first, but if used correctly it can REALLY speed up your search for the variable you are trying to modify. This is method is covered under "Advanced Topics."
Once you enter the name of the file that you wish to run you will be prompted for the name of the file that you wish to modify. This is the file that your game is saved in. This is the file that you originally "searched out," or it may be another file that you now wish to modify.
After you have selected your game-save-file to modify you are then prompted for all of the values that the cheat file knows how to modify. The cheat file will provide you with the max and min that you can set each of these values to.
Once you enter the last value the system will write your changes to disk and return to the main menu.
Search Out A Stat
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This command is generally the first one executed when you are searching out a game-save-file. As you proceed through this command much information is presented to guide you through the process.
You must first enter the name of the game-save-file that you wish to search out. As UGCS will tell you, this file is where the game stores all of your stats. If the game prompts you for a file to save the information to when you select to save then this is the file name you should enter.
If the game just automatically saves your game and does not ask you for a filename you will have to search the game's directory for a file that likely contains the game-saved information. Probably the best way to do this is to do a dir of the game directory and see which files have been modified recently. Then look at each of the files that has a recent date, these are files that your game has modified since you installed the game. The game-save-file WILL be one of these. Look at the names of recently modified files, the game-save-file will generally have a "give-away" name such as PARTY.SAV, GAME.SAV, SAVED.GAM, GAME.SAV, etc.
If there are no obvious names that indicate a game-save-file then you will have to use the file time/date to cheat in this game. A utility I find particularly useful for this is TOUCH.COM. It can be found on many BBS systems. TOUCH does the same thing that its UNIX equivalent does, it resets all of the file dates in a directory. If you run touch on your game directory, then dir it you will notice that all the time/dates are the same. Now when the game saves to disk which file it wrote will be the only one(s) with a different date.
Once you enter the name of the file that you are going to search UGCS will ask you for what number you wish to search out. UGCS can currently only change numeric qualities of your characters. Once you enter this number UGCS will search through the file and attempt to find these values.
If UGCS does not find any values then it either means you are searching the wrong file, or UGCS simply cannot figure out how to change this value.
All of the locations that UGCS finds that may possibly contain your stat are written to a file called TRIAL.CHT. By using the <F>inish searching out a stat menu option you will now narrow down this list and determine which of these locations is the correct one.
Finish Searching Stat
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WARNING: This function WILL modify data in your game. It WILL almost definitely damage your game in the process of determining which of these locations is the right one. Remember, each location in that file is used by SOMETHING, when we change them to see if the desired stat changes we change SOMETHING each time we are wrong. So as a result don't be surprised if strange things happen when we load up the game and see if the value has changed. As an example when I was searching out Ultima 5 I managed to change my location(by mistake) and I found myself standing in the middle of an ocean(kind of neat, but an obvious indicator that what I had changed DID NOT control how much gold I had).
The search-out-stat function gave you a bunch of possible locations which may change the stat that you are after. You must now use trial-and-error to determine which, if any, of these locations is the correct one. This menu option is a way of doing that.
When you first select this menu option it will display some information about itself. You will be ask what file you wish to modify, this should be the same file that you originally searched out before. You will then be prompted for each of the trial locations found in the searching step. Which of these you modify is totally up to you.
The way that is almost sure to show you which one will work is to change each one, one-at-a-time and run the game after each step. Once you find one that changes your value as expected you are done. This method is slow and tedious-- if UGCS finds 20 possible locations you get to run the game 20 times. A faster method involves changing more than one of them. This faster method is covered in the 3rd part of advanced topics.
Copy Stat To Cheat File
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After you use the "Finish Searching Stat" and find a location that works, you will want to copy this location into your final cheat file. The cheat file is your actual editor that you will have when you are done. Cheat files are built "one stat at a time" with UGCS. Once you have copied your stat into your cheat file you are then free to search-out another stat or begin using your new editor.
The first thing "copy" needs to know is if this is a new cheat file. If this is the first stat you have searched out in a game then you need to create a new cheat file. If you select to create a new cheat file then you will be ask for some information about the game and finally the filename you wish to call this cheat file. The cheat file should be in the form *.cht.
If you do not select to create a new cheat file then you will be prompted for the file name of the cheat file you wish to add to.
Once you have specified what file you will be copying to(either by typing a filename, or creating a new file) copy will then ask you which of the trial values you wish to add. Once you select to add one you will be given a chance to change its name(to something more meaningful than what UGCS calls it).
Remember, if you make a error and wish to change your cheat file at any time that cheat files are dos-text files. Because of this they can be edited with any text editor. This way you can change the order of the stats and also add notes to the top. If you wish to add notes, and you should-- to tell the user what file to change, just put a ; at the front of each line. A ; tells UGCS that this line is a note and has no meaning to UGCS.
This is the cheat file for the Ultima 1 RPG. This cheat file is included in the ULTIMA archive on your UGCS disk. The cheat file has 3 parts:
Title
This is usually generated by UGCS(and the first three lines should be left as UGCS puts them to maintain compatibility with future versions of UGCS which may read in these lines. This section shows who created the cheat file and what game it is for.
Notes
This section gives the user some general information about this editor. You should always at least provide information on what file the user is to edit. You may include any additional information as well. Line lengths may not exceed 80 cols.
Stat Data
This section which is usually created exclusively by UGCS tells the editor how to change various stats. Each line is a stat, and their order may be changed around at will. The format for each line is:
<TYPE>:<OFFSET>:<NAME>
<TYPE> How the data is stored at this location
<OFFSET> Where inside of the file this data is stored( 100h is added to these numbers to cause compatibility with dos's DEBUG(what was originally used to create UGCS cheat files). This is the location of the stat.
<NAME> What is stored in this location(in human readable form)
2. Records
Some video games store multiple characters(players) in the same file. UGCS provides a special command for such files. Without the record command you would have to include a line for each character's stats. For example you would end up with lines like "Player 1's hit points" "Player 2's hit points" etc. Record provides a much more elegant approach by allowing the user to select what player they want to modify.
Few games that I have encountered use this method. As it is currently implemented UGCS leaves it to you to calculate a record boundary. This will be improved in feature versions. Currently you must add the RECORD line to the *.CHT file yourself, no function in UGCS will add it.
The format of the record line is as follows:
RECORD:<RECORD SIZE>:<QUESTION>
Once the CHEAT editor encounters the RECORD line it will prompt the user with the <QUESTION> prompt and allow them to enter a numeric answer. UGCS then uses this number to calculate what record this is written to. The <RECORD SIZE> parameter tells UGCS how large the record is(in hex).
All that you generally need to calculate is how big the record actually is. The easiest way to do this is to search-out two identical stats in two characters that are next to each other in the game. UGCS will have both of their locations stored inside the cheat file. For example if your cheat file looked something like this:
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INT:100:Character 1's Hit Points
INT:200:Character 2's Hit Points
INT:300:Character 3's Hit Points
INT:400:Character 4's Hit Points
INT:500:Character 5's Hit Points
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This is how you would write a editor without using the RECORD command. This is fine, and if you don't understand this section I encourage you to simply search-out player stats one-at-a-time.
The way that this cheat file could be rewritten to allow the editor to ask WHAT character you wish to edit is as follows:
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RECORD:100:What character would you like to edit(1-5)
INT:100:Character's Hit Points
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Now UGCS would first ask the user what character he wishes to edit and THEN allow the user to enter that players stats. ANYTHING that follows the RECORD statement is affected by it. Therefore you should place anything that is global to the entire character group first. A example of a global stat might be how much food or gold the entire party has to its name. Now of course if the game allows each character to carry his own food and gold this is NOT the case.
The hardest part of the RECORD statement is calculating the record length. This is done by subtracting two characters that are next to each other. For example Character 2's location minus Character 1's location = 100. REMEMBER these numbers are in hexadecimal. If you are unfamiliar with hex use a scientific calculator.
3. A Trick For Rapidly Finding The Correct Trial Location
Sometimes search will give you quite a few possible locations to search through. Weeding through all of these can be a huge task if they are taken one-at-a-time. A simple method that I use to search out files VERY quickly is modifying ALL of the possible locations UGCS gives you.
If you are going to change all of the values the best way is to change each one to something different. This allows you to later on find out what location actually works(if you, for example, changed all of the trial locations to 20 and then ran the game and found your stat had indeed changed to 20-- BIG DEAL! so which of the locations was responsible for that change). In order to tell these locations apart during editing they are numbered(e.g. Trial INT #1, Trial INT #2 etc. and so on). What I generally do is change each location to its number. So I end up changing each value and changing them to 1,2,3,4,5 and so on. Then when I boot the game I see what the stat has changed to. If it has changed to 4, for example, then I know that the location that I entered 4 into is the one that controls this stat. I then use the copy command(discussed in its own section) and move this stat into my editor.
4. Games That Change Their Locations
Some video games will change their locations throughout the game. For example DUNE II seems to use a different location set at each level. Because of this a editor that you create and which works fine on your game may cease to work at the next level. With the registered version of UGCS you can simply create a new editor each time your old one no longer works.
If you wish to release a editor for a game that does this you can do one of two things. First, just tell the users in the docs that it only works at a certain level, or preferably at the beginning of the game. Secondly, just create a separate editor for the game at each level.
