Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom/Save State Hacking: Difference between revisions

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I've been hex editing everything from emulation save states, to PC save games for a while now, but mostly for personal use. Basically, I've had all the offset locations for the stats and stuff. All I needed was a few more things and it was complete.  

<!-- In the rest of this section there are numbers in brackets. They refer to the original numbers for each section before the guide was cleaned up and copy edited. To fix the scentences that refer to these numbers will most likely require skimming the original version of this that was imported to find out what titles/sections they are referring to. Please do not remove this note unless the numbers in brackets have been fixed. -->Also, the SNES emulator I was using was ZSNES 1.35. I am not sure if all emulators save states the exact same way. If you aren't sure, download ZSNES and take a simple save state (of anything) and compare the *DOS* file sizes to see if they are the same size. The reason I say to use DOS, is that Windows (which I assume you are using) displays file sizes in Kilobytes, and rounds out. DOS displays file sizes in bytes and, therefore, is more accurate. Even if the files are only a few bytes apart, I would still try. Some emulators might add a few extra info, like the emulator version. An alternative method is to open up the save state file, look at offset 1C15, and see if the first letter of the first character's name is there. If not, you can still look around for your characters' names and then just add or subtract that many (in hex) from the values I give in section [5].

Look through section [4] to see what you want to edit. Each element in the game that is covered in this guide will have a description, as well as the format used to edit it. How many bytes long and what the values mean, for example. Then, go to section [5] to see where exactly you want to apply it to.

Basically, each character is exactly 128 bytes apart from the start of the next character. This is perfect, as all (or at least they should) hex editors display characters 16 bytes wide which, in turn, means all the characters' data will be perfectly aligned. This is useful because you can just scroll down 8 lines in order to edit the next character, in the same offset. That probably didn't make much sense but you'll see what I mean when you start editing for all characters at once.

There are a few gaps within the majority of the data block, and a large one at the end until you reach the next character. I don't know what these do exactly, and I don't think I want to experiment around. They might be objective flags, but I'm not too sure.

As noted from the table above, the A/C/R value has been compressed. Sort of. Instead of a value for each, it can represent every possible combination of character's alignment, class and race into 1 value. Although it seems impossible it works quite well. Basically, every time you change this value by one, you change the alignment. For every 4 steps, you change the class type (Fighter, Thief, Mage, etc.) and end up with the same alignment. For every 32 steps, you change the race, but the alignment and class remains the same. With the above information we can use this procedure to completely change a character's a/c/r (we will be using decimal for this example, just add along the numbers):

Then, all you have to do, is convert the finally decimal value into hex and use that value. '''Example:''' We want an Elf (32) Lord (24) who is Neutral (1). 32 + 24 + 1 = 57. Convert it into hex and we get 39. So, if we wanted to change character 1, we slap the value 39 in offset address 1C1D and boom. We now have a neutral Elf Lord. At level 1 :) The '?' alignment I decided to keep in even though I didn't experiment with it any. My guess is that it's kind of like Type-O blood. It can hang around other people with a '?' alignment, as well as G-N-E characters. I could be wrong, though.

===Strength, IQ, Devotion, Vitality, Agility and Luck===

A. For some examples I used the xx xx format, for sake of example only. When I was explaining the ranges for certain stats within the game, it was either because the value wasn't a numerical value (continuous 'xxxx' format) or it was because the value was non-numerical like a text string, or each value within the range has it's own 'slot', like inventory or spell points (separated 'xx xx' format). Other than that, there really is no difference.