techtree.tec - TalShiar operatives report successful mission

[Tethys]

Ive been doing some digging to try to find out how to make tech levels show up above 10 since we have found out how to add ships at higher techs and make them available, so I opened up techtree.tec in HxD...

I will attempt to decode it to the best of my knowledge:

Each Technology level for each field of Technology (Bionics, Metagenics, Positronics, Ultra emitters, etc) is 72 bytes (48 in hex?) in techtree.tec

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After editing one tech into techtree.tec, no crash up until i click on Tech 11 ship, but look before crash!

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Success in adding an 11th Comp Tech to techtree.tec! But it crashes when clicked... and many of the following Techs must be hex edited to compensate for new tech! See screenshot below!

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EDIT: Blue bits; Computer 0 = 12th Tech placement but is stored as 0B in hex (or 11) since 00 in hex (0) is first entry for Basic Biotech.

EDIT: The PINK refers to the location of the beginning of Techs description within techdesc.tec - if referred to the end of the list it starts over with a Basic Biotech description!

I would need (please) DCER to make an update for UE to be able to edit techtree.tec in order to update the bits in blue, since it is a pain to add them one by one in Hex (call me lazy, thats ok lol)

[Tethys]

It seems I may have made an error, Computer 11 arrives on Construction table... and it has words from Computer 10... hmm

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[Tethys]

Ive come to the conclusion that there must be a Limiting function somewhere in trek.exe that limits each tech level to 11 levels per tech category (0 - 10), so the Limiter would probably be stored as a single byte: 0A (in this case it could mean stop when reached) or 0B (in this case it would mean begin new/next when reached)

Would be near impossible to find I am afraid unless someone knows where in trek.exe calls for the tech tree are assessed.

So i guess this is Mothballed until one of the experienced codemasters finds the locations

Edit: Unless it is stored at or near one of the locations specified in this post: viewtopic.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopi ... 6&start=15

[Tethys]

this is what happens when i try to click on Computer 11:


-------------------------------------
ST:BOF Mon May 3 00:01:54 2010

Version Under Test: 72
File: listbox.c, Line: 640, itemNum <listBox>numItems
Initialize State: 31
Player Empire: 0 Starting Seed: 1272846857
Galaxy shape: 0 Galaxy Size: 0

[Tethys]

I just realized that all this info is available at http://members.aon.at/zelli/technic.htm

crap, i thought i did something new

EDIT: but the more i look at it the more i believe that there is a limiter somewhere in trek.exe... when I added a 12th level to techtree.tec and added another description in techdesc.tec, this time I placed it at the END of the entire techtree list, but I numbered it as if it were after Tech11, the result was UE reads both new Tech11 and Tech12, but when in game Tech screen, only Tech11 shows up and no Tech 12 (i am assuming its placed in the Sociology screen at the end, which is limited to 11 Techs (0-10) and cannot be seen)

[Peter1981]

good work tethys 'Never give up - Never surrender!'

I agree with you that there must be a limiter in the trek.exe that swaps between standard tech levels and future tech levels. Any one know where the routines are in the trex.exe?

[Tethys]

I was hoping u might have known lol! Maybe SCT has some idea, he knows just about everything about trek.exe

Well, at least information in techdesc.tec doesnt have to be in order, just correct placement and reference to description in techtree.tec

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[Tethys]

I just got to thinking that maybe we are looking for a series of 6 or 7 Limiters...

On the other hand, it could be that we are looking for a reference pointer in Trek.exe to the first Tech Level (Tech 0) of each Tech field in its place in techtree.tec

The second option to me seems the most plausible... Ill be doing more digging later on tonight...

EDIT: To add to second option, there could be a pointer in Trek.exe to the Tech Fields techtree placement (the blue highlights in 3rd pic from top) (meaning that each entry for each Tech will be different, so we would be looking for these values near or at where we would find the 7 Techs in Trek.exe (i believe))

00 - Basic Biotech location in techtree.tec
0B - Basic Computers location
16 - Basic Construction
21 - Basic Energy
2C - Basic Propulsion
37 - Basic Weapons
42 - Sociology 0

[Tethys]

Could someone take a look at 0x17735B and tell me what this is supposed to do? Is this a check of some sort? If so, this looks promising... Ill see if i can change some values around to see what happens...

[Flocke]

Could someone take a look at 0x17735B and tell me what this is supposed to do? Is this a check of some sort? If so, this looks promising... Ill see if i can change some values around to see what happens...

That's just some stored failure text. You wouldn't find anything by try and error over there.
Taking a look with ida 4.9 (the free one), the text get's loaded at asm452777 (0x51B77), around there you might have more luck. But best take a look with ida yourself, even if you don't know anything about assembler it might help you to figure much more.
I've also seen, the error message get's loaded in case of the value 0xC80 in the cx register.

good luck =)

Edit: there's a similar procedure + failure message for the minor races some lines above. I guess the whole check could be related to the race's advancement and to the galaxy generation. The research index might be used to retrieve the evolution state (research, systemcount, buildings, ships,...).
But only guessed...

[Tethys]

I have IDA 5.2.0.908

Does text only load in IDA 4.9?

If so, do u have link? I have to run to get wife now...

[Peter1981]

I was hoping u might have known lol!

thanks for the confidence Tethys but I haven't even started disassembling the code.

Just as a note I'm working v. hard at the moment and donot have time to help with this for atleast 2 weeks I will keep an eye out but hope you cointinue to make rapid progress.

[Tethys]

Thats fine theres no rush, Ive mothballed this myself (i cannot go any further since my skills with Asm are still quite noobish), so i will look forward to your return as well as any information that may pop up here, or if i have a heavensent revelation, i will let everyone know, rest assured

[Flocke]

I have IDA 5.2.0.908

Does text only load in IDA 4.9?

I don't think so, just wanted to let you know there's a free version in existance (on ida's homepage). Didn't know you already have one bought. *fib*

I didn't run the debugger, just watched the source. I didn't find a working way to play botf in windowed mode yet and without it's quite hard to debug. For me, tools like D3DWindower always had troubles with moving the cursor.

[Tethys]

Didn't know you already have one bought.

Who said it was bought...

Anyway, I cant do anything with it other then get lost amongst the asm, ebx, eax, and whatever else 3 letter code words that fill that 1.69 MB of exe...