pretenders .2h file specification

Herode · #1 May 29th, 2008, 04:24 AM

Out of topic, but... I'm trying to run the God Editor. I had to load and register missing ocx & dll (more VB/M$ specific stuff...) and followed the link to Ascentive. Several adware are hidden in the .exe wich installs the files.

So : keep an eye on your AV & malware hunters when you run files coming from these Ascentive guys...

Herode · #2 May 29th, 2008, 04:44 AM

Maybe it's a catgod GUI but it does not output the exactly the same things : no body/hit/titles informations but the points used for the design and the points left where showed.

I didn't code this editor, the work and the original post were from another guy. But if you are interested, and provided neither the guy who developped the tool (if he reads this thread) nor the moderators raise some opposition, I can attach it here one again.

llamabeast · #3 May 29th, 2008, 05:44 AM

I think you mean EvilDave's catgod.

QXel · #4 May 29th, 2008, 12:53 PM

For instance, catgod work no more since version 3.15.

I've use it before and it works perfectly, but since I have patched, it don't work anymore.
The fiel format must have been changed since this version.

QXel

lch · #5 May 29th, 2008, 12:58 PM

Quote:

QXel said:
For instance, catgod work no more since version 3.15.

It still works on my system. Maybe you need to download the latest version.

Herode · #6 May 29th, 2008, 01:25 PM

Ha, here is a screen of the mystery pretender editor.

Unfortunately, I can't find what are the missing dlls for you, Ich...

lch · #7 May 29th, 2008, 04:17 PM

Ah, so it is a different program, but has the same functionality like the catgod program, plus editing and saving your pretender god. This is the first time I ever saw anything about this, though. It seems to me like you're the only person knowing it.

I guess there are a number of people that would be interested in a tool like this. To edit pretender gods is really a feature that the game is missing. Fun trivia: did you know that there's code inside the game to load and edit pretender gods that you already made? It's just not active. Maybe it's from Dom:PPP days and never got included again?

lch · #8 June 3rd, 2008, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Herode said:
Unfortunately, I can't find what are the missing dlls for you, Ich...

Okay, I took another stab at this. It turned out that the problem wasn't missing DLL files. That thing is just throwing around exceptions like crazy. And there is no failure recovery in it at all. I ran the program in Microsoft's CLR Debugger and the first thing I saw was that it tried to open the directory "\Program Files\Dominions3\savedgames\newlords". Since I don't have that directory, the execution failed. Since I didn't feel like renaming / moving my Dom3 installation folder, I hex-edited the program to point to my real game folder instead. Then I could use the program successfully. Another solution would have been to create the directory structure with empty dirs, then launch and try to use the "Change Dir" button to go to the real game dir. But that is restricted to your (localized) Program Files folder and if you abort, it crashes again. Hah! Not very user-friendly, that program.

First of all, this is no God Editor. Maybe it meant to become one, but this has only display functionality. It even is titled "Dom3 Pretender Viewer". The up/down buttons are non-functional, and from decompiling the MSIL code I could see that there is no code in it to save files. And the code to load files is kind of funny, too. Very... inventive.

Other things I learned: The programmer is named Tom, and his girlfriend is probably named Kel. Or those are siblings.

Still, this program doesn't have much more than what catgod has, besides the pretender cost calculation, and since it doesn't seem to be maintained anymore, you better use Evil Dave's catgod instead, which is still being updated (soon).

QXel · #9 May 30th, 2008, 02:54 PM

Hum ...

Made some tests ...

Apologies: catgod works perfectly, even with 3.17, at the only condition you use it as it must be used.
In others words: don't be AS DUMB AS ME and DON'T try to view 2h files in another directory than ...\savedgames\newlords, AS IT IS SAID!

In fact, I'll try to view pretenders files in a running game subdirectory, and THEN I have something completly different as output, like KJHKHG00000fdh etc. as name, no scale and insane magic: Fire 127 Water 159 and so!!!

Well, to bad: my intentionnaly main use of it was to view my unsaved-just-for-this-game created pretenders ...

Seems that file formats are differents.

Herode: this program looks cool. What its name exactly and where have you find it (i.e. the exact thread: I've made a research on the mod forum, but since the research function isn't very 'aware', I didn't find anything ...)?

QXel

Evil Dave · #10 May 30th, 2008, 09:16 PM

Quote:

QXel said:
In fact, I'll try to view pretenders files in a running game subdirectory, and THEN I have something completly different as output, like KJHKHG00000fdh etc. as name, no scale and insane magic: Fire 127 Water 159 and so!!!

Well, to bad: my intentionnaly main use of it was to view my unsaved-just-for-this-game created pretenders ...

Seems that file formats are differents.

Different file format for temporary pretenders? Well, now that's interesting. Thanks for finding this, QXel!

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon09.gif[/img]

In case anybody's curious, I think I'll have time to update catgod for Dom3.17 this weekend. Ich found and fixed some bugs, so I need to do a little more work than usual for a new version. I gotta merge in Ich's changes and check to see if there's anything else I missed.