What is a Hexeditor and could it be used to alter the .bic-file?

[Astafas]

In lack of a NightKeeper, has anyone found a program who allows you to open and alter the .bic-file of a saved game? What's a Hexeditor and could that be used?

[Quark]

If you don't know what a hex editor is, you probably shouldn't be touching one.

As a note, if you're persistent: I'd recommend looking up a Hexadecimal Editing FAQ or Tutorial on the web. It takes quite awhile to learn it if you have no experience with it or other non-decimal systems.

An Addition: Hex editing can pretty much change any numbers you want to. However, IF .bic files are compressed or encoded, forget it.

[Phantom Lord]

A hex editor allows you more editing editing possibilities than a normal editor, because you can see and edit the the hexadecimal value of every character in a file with it.

This is not the case in a normal editor, mainly because you have fonts that don't use all 256 possible characters and / or display them in different ways (eg an "N" in Arial is the same character as a small skull in Wingdings).

Editing non-text files in a normal editor would be difficult too, because you'll find less than 256 documented keys on your keyboard. Theoretically you can enter any character using ALT+<number between 0 and 255> in a normal editor (eg ALT+78 is "N" in Arial or a small skull in Wingdings), but as said before most fonts don't display 256 different characters.

If you open a bic-file with a hex editor you probably won't see anything except a great cryptic mess of characters. Never tried it myself, but that's my guess. The days of unencrypted savegames and game ressources are long gone. If you decide to experiment with a hexeditor and bic-files anyway, make sure to backup the file first.

[Xyx]

I'm not too sure about save games and .bic files, but Near Infinity has recently gained basic NWN support.

[Nygma]

A hex editor allows you to see and change any bit in a computer file (or rather, any 4 bits in a file, 2D being sometimes easier to deal with than 00101101).

Problem is that while you can see and change any bit in a file or program, you still need to know what that bit is supposed to do. It's all about the information. And if that information is compressed, encoded, or accompanied by checksums, it makes it just that much harder.

So in answer to your question, yes it could be used. But backup your files before trying.

[Nygma]

Well, I decided to go play around with one of the .bic files. Opened up a save game from right before the intellect devourer and took a look at the player.bic file. Mostly incomprehensible, but did have things like name, journal entries, and items. Tried to keep it simple, so I just changed the name of my character and then loaded up the save. Nothing changed. Apparently the save games do not use the player.bic file but save your character info in the save itself (it's big enough). Then I opened up a save game that had an intellect devourer's brain, copied all the bytes from the item name ("m1q2plotreagent") to the next item name, then went back to the pre-intellect devourer game and pasted that whole string over what appeared to be the prison log book string. Copied the altered .bic over to the localvault directory and started a new game with that character. The newly renamed character now had a green book called "Intellect Devourer Brain" with appropriate description. Missed the picture somewhere. Decided to quickly run through the prelude and talk to Aribeth. (By the way, the old man will not level you up.) Went through, got to Chap. 1, and Aribeth assigned me the Waterdavian quest. Clicked on her again, and came up with an option about having found one of the reagents! She congratulated me and showered me with gold.

So, yes, you most definitely can alter a .bic, though I need to do a lot more file mapping.

[Astafas]

@Nygma

Well done - you've found a solution for one of the larger problems.

However, I've looked around a bit on the Net as well and decided to follow Quark's rather straightforward advice ( ) not to mess around with it. I'm simply no hacker...