Heroes of Might and Magic Community
visiting hero! Register | Today's Posts | Games | Search! | FAQ/Rules | AvatarList | MemberList | Profile


Age of Heroes Headlines:  
5 Oct 2016: Heroes VII development comes to an end.. - read more
6 Aug 2016: Troubled Heroes VII Expansion Release - read more
26 Apr 2016: Heroes VII XPack - Trial by Fire - Coming out in June! - read more
17 Apr 2016: Global Alternative Creatures MOD for H7 after 1.8 Patch! - read more
7 Mar 2016: Romero launches a Piano Sonata Album Kickstarter! - read more
19 Feb 2016: Heroes 5.5 RC6, Heroes VII patch 1.7 are out! - read more
13 Jan 2016: Horn of the Abyss 1.4 Available for Download! - read more
17 Dec 2015: Heroes 5.5 update, 1.6 out for H7 - read more
23 Nov 2015: H7 1.4 & 1.5 patches Released - read more
31 Oct 2015: First H7 patches are out, End of DoC development - read more
5 Oct 2016: Heroes VII development comes to an end.. - read more
[X] Remove Ads
LOGIN:     Username:     Password:         [ Register ]
HOMM1: info forum | HOMM2: info forum | HOMM3: info mods forum | HOMM4: info CTG forum | HOMM5: info mods forum | MMH6: wiki forum | MMH7: wiki forum
Heroes Community > Heroes 3.5 - WoG and Beyond > Thread: HotA text files
Thread: HotA text files
pekute99
pekute99


Known Hero
The prettiest I must say
posted May 28, 2016 11:28 AM

HotA text files

I opened the HotA.dat file with TxtEdit to edit the texts but when I do the game just crashes. Can someone help me how to edit HotA's texts ?
____________
I'm maybe the only female Hero here but who knows 🤷

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted May 28, 2016 11:37 AM

It must be hexadecimal editor.
And remember that NUMBER BEFORE WORD mens number of letters. So if you want eg 9 letters than 7 word you must paste 9 in place with 7.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
pekute99
pekute99


Known Hero
The prettiest I must say
posted May 31, 2016 02:13 PM

Baronus said:
It must be hexadecimal editor.
And remember that NUMBER BEFORE WORD mens number of letters. So if you want eg 9 letters than 7 word you must paste 9 in place with 7.

I don't understand... Can you say more specifically ? I'm really bad at these.
____________
I'm maybe the only female Hero here but who knows 🤷

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted May 31, 2016 06:27 PM

You must open hota.dat using HEXADECIMAL EDITOR! See in net what it is.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted May 31, 2016 09:31 PM

Baronus said:
And remember that NUMBER BEFORE WORD mens number of letters. So if you want eg 9 letters than 7 word you must paste 9 in place with 7.


I had trouble understanding what he meant with this as well (and yes, I do have plenty of experience with hex editing), but after opening the HotA.dat file, I now understand what he means.

If you open the HotA.dat file in a hex editor, you will see that each text string is preceded by 4 bytes. These 4 bytes indicate the size of the text string that follows.

For instance, the text regarding Cassiopeia is this:

0A 00 00 00 43 61 73 73 69 6F 70 65 69

The first four of these indicate the length of the string that follows. 0A is 10 in hex; in other words, the string that follows has 10 characters. The 43 61 73 73 69 6F 70 65 69 string is the name of the character in hexadecimal representation. Any decent hex editor worth its salt has a column next to the hexadecimal representation showing characters in ASCII format too and you can see that it's "Cassiopeia".

Directly following is the bio of Cassiopeia. The first four bytes once again indicate the length of the string that follows, the number of bytes after it is the actual string itself:

3E 01 00 00 49 74 20 69 73 20 73 ... etc

3E in hex is 62 in decimals, the next value 01 represents multiples of 256, so in this case 1 x 256 = 256 (obviously ). The total length is therefore 62 + 256 = 318 bytes.

I hope this clears up the concept of length indicators a bit. So if you adjust texts in it, you'll also have to adjust the length indicators, otherwise you'll totally screw up the file layout which - as you have seen - crashes the game. So let's say you want to rename "Cassiopeia" to "Cassy" (removing the excess characters from the file), you also have to change the 0A 00 00 00 that precedes the name to 05 00 00 00, so the game still knows how to read the rest of the file that follows.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted June 01, 2016 11:36 AM

Without opening in hdeditor is no chance to understand:-) Practice make master :-)

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
pekute99
pekute99


Known Hero
The prettiest I must say
posted June 01, 2016 01:55 PM

Thank you so much ! I can do it !

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Jump To: « Prev Thread . . . Next Thread »
Post New Poll    Post New Topic    Post New Reply

Page compiled in 0.0291 seconds