How to Modify the Cheats?

[Registered55]

hi, i hope someone can help, i think i'm close to doing this myself, but for some reason "A.I. War" is blocking me,


"main.xml"
in this file lists the name of the cheats,

i am trying to change this one,
<ln id="Cheat_IVBomberStarship">bomb the stars</ln>

i changed this line to
<ln id="Cheat_VCoreStarship">bomb the stars</ln>

and

<ln id="Cheat_CoreStarship">bomb the stars</ln>

but nothing worked,

then i decided to start small, and change something simple,

<ln id="Cheat_P10000Knowledge">give me k</ln>

to

<ln id="Cheat_P90000Knowledge">give me k</ln>

this is when i realized that the cheats can't be changed in any way,


my question is, does any one know how to modify the cheats, is there some kind of lock in place which prevents the user from modding this file.


i'm after instead of having a bomberstarship, i really want the CoreStarship, the bomberstarship just doesn't do anything for me,



could anyone offer any suggestions, or is there something i maybe missing,
i did have a look at these files in a hex editor, there are mention of Cheats.csv if i remember rightly, but i think this file is encrypted and is only decrypted in memory, not accessible by an editor, in fact i saw many occurences of .CSV files in the folowing files, but i can't find these actual files, they must be compressed or something which is a shame, modding capabilities of this game is not existent.

AI War.gdf
AIWar.exe
AIWar.PDB

hope someone can help.

[x4000]

There is no way to modify the cheats, aside from changing their name in the localization file.  When you alter that file, it simply causes a localization error, the things that you are changing are labels, not instructions.

[Registered55]

thanks for the quick reply,

so am i right in thinking,

"give me k" is the input string,
"Cheat_P10000Knowledge" is the ID string,


this ID must match up some where in the code itself, my question is,
is this information in a data format, or is this information actually in a Code format, as in C# code,


usually in the files on a lot of games of this type the cheat names are in a data format,

but i think they maybe inside a file within a file,

i found this,
/src/files/c:\vcprojs\aiwar\framework\cheats.cs
C:\vcprojs\AIWar\Framework\Cheats.cs
c:\vcprojs\aiwar\framework\cheats.cs
AIWar.Cheats9F27D8FC

this is what i found poking around,
do you know if Cheats.cs is a file somewhere loaded in memory, something i perhaps could find using cheatengine, then create a trainer that could modify the contents of Cheat.cs

Cheat_P10000Knowledge gives 10,000
Cheat_P90000Knowledge can't be that hard to find that would give 90,000


thanks for the quick reply before, man that was fast,

i'm sorry if this is getting technical, i just find the cheats are quite restrictive, I.E. 10,000 knowledge per input,
but 10 Energy reactors per imput?

[keith.lamothe]

The cs file is the c sharp source code which has been compiled into the binary .exe.  The cs files are not distributed with the game, you're probably just seeing some build or linking log or something from the compile. 

Each of the Cheat IDs is hardcoded into the game (exe) itself and you cannot add or remove them or modify their current behavior short of some very dicey hacking of the binary (I wouldn't even try, honestly).

For changing numbers (like knowledge, metal stockpile, crystal stockpile, AI progress) during the game you could try a memory editor like Poke or cheat-o-matic.  As far as getting a Core Starship, I don't know how you'd pull that off since it's probably fairly complex via memory editor to modify an existing ship into another one or transfer control of one from the AI to you, etc.

[Fiskbit]

Hi, Registered55. As Chris (x4000) said, the file you're modifying is just the file that handles the text associated with the various cheats (those xml files in general hold just about every bit of text in the entire game). The labels you were modifying are how the game fetches the correct text for the cheat being executed and nothing more. There is no cheat-specific format in the game (a more robust system was never really intended and is not currently planned), and we're not particularly interested in a trainer for the game. AI War, unlike a lot of other retail games, has not been abandoned and is still receiving active support from us, so we'd like to avoid mods by third parties.

However, the lack of specific cheats that you may be craving is likely due to us simply not having thought of the cheat yet, as is the case with core starships. If there are things you'd like to see added, please post them in the suggestions forum and you may very well see them added to the game. We're happy to consider all suggestions! AI War would not be what it is today were it not for the fantastic player suggestions over the 5 months since release.

[Registered55]

thankyou for your reply, and a well thought out reply at that,
that was a great explanation,


shame though, i was hoping to have access to a better starship, the bomberstarship is great for offensive,
but not so great for defending wormholes, not that great for defending fullstop really,

but then given the fact that bombers are offensive by nature is hardly surprising,

there's just no cheat that can help with defense,
and no i'm not comfortable spawning thousands of cruisers just for defending systems and wormholes,
CoreStarships, or even other starship choices would of been nice, I'm a bit of a turtle, and the cheats seem to be more targeted for the all out attacker, 50+ Core cruisers, the logistics are mind boggling just thinking about it,

i have tried to use cheat engine on the Energy value, unfortunately either the value is encrypted, or the game doesn't store the actual amount of total energy in memory, rather it counts each reactor and does some simple math,

haven't tried Metal or crystal yet, but in truth those cheats are spot on, 100,000 of metal per input, that's great and perfect even,
AI peace again is great


Engies (+10 Mark II Engineers)
Energize (+10 Mark II Energy Reactors)
These are slightly off balanced, 10 reactors given at once, throws the power systems out of whack,


it's mainly just the ship cheats that i find a little unbalanced, and limiting,
CoreStartships would be so cool to have, 4 of them guarding each wormhole point offsetted by normal defenses......that would be nice. they could act as "Outpost/Starbases"

oh, for the record i don't crate trainers, only personal ones, i have never ever released a trainer in my life,
i use cheats, and find cheats, i don't publicize them LOL,

[Fiskbit]

Well, again, feel free to post your thoughts on cheats in the suggestions forum. Perhaps you'd like to see things like a cheat to spawn force field generators? Maybe a cheat to disable low energy consequences altogether, so the game always thinks you're in positive energy? These are just some ideas I'm throwing out there that you might like, though I can't say I know the feasibility of implementing such cheats (the energy one, specifically), nor how Chris would feel about adding them.

[Velox]

thankyou for your reply, and a well thought out reply at that,
that was a great explanation,


shame though, i was hoping to have access to a better starship, the bomberstarship is great for offensive,
but not so great for defending wormholes, not that great for defending fullstop really,

but then given the fact that bombers are offensive by nature is hardly surprising,

there's just no cheat that can help with defense,
and no i'm not comfortable spawning thousands of cruisers just for defending systems and wormholes,
CoreStarships, or even other starship choices would of been nice, I'm a bit of a turtle, and the cheats seem to be more targeted for the all out attacker, 50+ Core cruisers, the logistics are mind boggling just thinking about it,

i have tried to use cheat engine on the Energy value, unfortunately either the value is encrypted, or the game doesn't store the actual amount of total energy in memory, rather it counts each reactor and does some simple math,

haven't tried Metal or crystal yet, but in truth those cheats are spot on, 100,000 of metal per input, that's great and perfect even,
AI peace again is great


Engies (+10 Mark II Engineers)
Energize (+10 Mark II Energy Reactors)
These are slightly off balanced, 10 reactors given at once, throws the power systems out of whack,


it's mainly just the ship cheats that i find a little unbalanced, and limiting,
CoreStartships would be so cool to have, 4 of them guarding each wormhole point offsetted by normal defenses......that would be nice. they could act as "Outpost/Starbases"

oh, for the record i don't crate trainers, only personal ones, i have never ever released a trainer in my life,
i use cheats, and find cheats, i don't publicize them LOL,

     Yikes, what kind of situation have you gotten yourself into where you feel you need core starships to defend your wormholes?  You might want to reconsider some tactics...

[Registered55]

i would love too, but for over 15 years+ the same old arguments and debates are still waging on in forums about cheats,

there good, bad, wrong, right, unethical, debatable, questionable, game breaking, game making, and the good old controversial one, they make the game fun, they make the game dull LOL,


I've only just joined, wouldn't want my 1st few post to start a flame war.

but thanks for everyone's feedback,

[x4000]

In general, I'm in support of adding whatever cheats are requested that are feasible and make sense (I'm the one who would be coding that out, anyway).  I don't think anyone is going to get too ruffled by someone using (or requesting) cheats, or at least they shouldn't.  I'm of the mind that, in a solo or co-op experience, players should be able to experience it how they want.

[Registered55]

i don't like heavy logistics, using canon fodder is not me,

a bit like the Asgard in SG1, they don't have no where near as many ships as the Ghould (forgot the spelling)
but Asgard ships are so advance that just 1 of there ships are worth 50 Ghould.

i'm more for things being toned down, i like capital ships,
thats why i was hoping a few cheats that would help in that area, only Bomberstar ship is limiting, i don't feel comfortable have thousand and thousands of ships everywhere,

i love capital ships, they replace the need for canon fodder,

[Fiskbit]

No need to worry about starting a flame war. People on this forum have been really great and reasonable overall and I'd be surprised to see anything of that sort from them. It's understood that as long as it makes the game more fun and doesn't take a disproportionate amount of development time, it's a good addition. Not everyone's going to take advantage of cheats, but they're there to add more entertainment to the game for those who do. Hopefully you find the game enjoyable even without cheats, but using them is certainly not a big deal at all.

(and it's Goa'uld

[Velox]

     New unit idea: Flame Warship!

[RCIX]

In general, I'm in support of adding whatever cheats are requested that are feasible and make sense (I'm the one who would be coding that out, anyway).  I don't think anyone is going to get too ruffled by someone using (or requesting) cheats, or at least they shouldn't.  I'm of the mind that, in a solo or co-op experience, players should be able to experience it how they want.

In my opinion if you just add the ability to have a Cheats.xml file which offers the ability to customize your cheats and would look something like this:

<Cheat Text="Give Me K" Type="KnowledgeBoost" Amount="10000" />
<Cheat Text="I Can See My House!" Type="SeeAll" />
<Cheat Text="Just Cruising" Type="GiveShips" ShipType="Cruiser" ShipLevel="5" Amount="50" />

etc.

[x4000]

Cheats would be unlikely to be modable, for two reasons:

1. If one player modded, but another not, it would cause desyncs in multiplayer.

2. But the main reason is, in order to do that I'd have to add a much more robust scripting sort of interface, and anytime someone wanted to mod in a nfew cheat, I'd then have to extend that interface.  It makes much more sense to me, and takes far less effort in the main, to just add the general cheats that people are looking for.