Ambrosia Software Web Board: I want to be a ghost - Ambrosia Software Web Board

I was looking at the monster stats, and it seems that ghosts have all the benefits Alaric has, plus the they can fly. I decided I want to be a ghost. I never did learn how to use HexEdit, so I decided to see what I could do with Pandora's Box. I was able to change myself into Alaric, Sabinate, a lit wall torch, an urn of water (which can be used to make dough), a piece of sulfur (which can be used to make infinite healing potions), a full sized bed, what looks like someone sleeping on one of those uncomfortable Seldane beds, half an aligator, all of Cademia (which can sometimes squeeze between mountains & get stuck), a flying chicken, and many other interesting things. But not a ghost. I went though all 256 options, and no ghost :( There's lots of other monsters I never came across either. Can anyone help? Hackers? Geeks?

Unrelated question: When Kat left for three weeks for Australia/Japan, is that a wedding/honeymoon trip? Or just a fun vacation? Sorry, I forgot to ask her and now I'm really curious.

BreadWorldMercy453, on 10 July 2012 - 04:31 PM, said:

well, don't do anything rash.

I can't help you, but I also can't help but be reminded of http://youtu.be/ZJZhwhQ6N4s.

Alrighty, thanks.

I put the ghost problem on the back burner for now, though it still bothers me because I feel there must be a way to do it & I just can't figure it out. For the moment though, I've been working on another Pandora-hacking project of obtaining followers that I shouldn't have. I got quite a few of them. It seems that when you have more than 7, the rest get stuck and don't even follow you. Bummer. I even kind of got Omen, but if he's there, he's invisible, and his picture down in the group list is just a stripy glitch square. He won't even kill people for me, useless "follower." Magpie is more practical, he will sometimes kill enemies instantaneously for me. Or cast less useful spells... oh well. I couldn't figure out how to get ghosts to follow me either. Or Alaric. Anyway, Emesa's the most useful of all my new followers, because she pulls food out of thin air whenever I ask her to (& yet she pesters me for food when she gets hungry -_-).

This post has been edited by BreadWorldMercy453: 12 July 2012 - 05:13 PM

No progress as yet. Unfortunately, the graphics system may be even more complicated than I already thought it was. It appears that there is another byte that can be used to (occasionally) alter graphics, and it is one of which I was previously not aware. I'm still not quite clear on its function.

I can, however, turn you into Ignae or Ur-Sylph. Alternatively, I can make you completely invisible: a process that seems to make you able to fly, but I am not certain of its other effects.



As for followers, I like my army of cloned Alarics, although I confess to not really having used them ingame.

Thanks Sely. I have been reading some of your old hacking topics ^_^

I still haven't had any success in turning myself into a ghost, or even getting a ghost follower. I have worked up the courage to try out ResCompare & HexEdit again. With HexEdit I was able to get Alaric to follow me, though my method wasn't very good. I just can't make hardly any sense out of all those numbers in HexEdit. Why does each location have like 15 values? How do I know which to change? There's numbers everywhere! @_@ & I don't know how to ask it to change a specific number, it seems to go off changing the next one. That may have been how I got Alaric. I'm not really sure. My method goes something like this: "Maybe if I change this random value, something good will happen. Hmm, now my file is corrupt? No fair! Go back and try again. Change 20 different values because I have no idea which one is the right one. Oh cool, I got the result I wanted! Now, how'd I do that?"

Yeah, I don't know if I'll ever learn how to use this program. But having Alaric as a follower might be fun. At least he'll heal me whenever I want, and he's powerful.

16 values including 0 if I don't miss my guess. Each location is a value from 0 to hexadecimal 15 (F) correct? If yes, these are representing 4 bit "words." Two of these words form an 8 bit long byte. That's the extent of my knowledge on hex editors; my understanding is that in order to get any use out of hex editors you have to understand the format of the file you're editing at the binary level.

I don't understand at all, but don't feel bad, it's nothing personal :\

Dec Hex Bin
0   0   0000
1   1   0001
2   2   0010
3   3   0011
4   4   0100
5   5   0101
6   6   0110
7   7   0111
8   8   1000
9   9   1001
10  A   1010
11  B   1011
12  C   1100
13  D   1101
14  E   1110
15  F   1111

So if your hex editor resembles my memory browser in Xcode a "value" is a 4 bit binary string, a byte is an 8 bit binary string with 2 values, (DD would represent 11011101 and 10 would be 00010000) and a word contains an arbitrary number of bytes. (Words usually represent data types. The length of a word for specific data types is arbitrary, but in OS X integers typically use words 4 bytes long, characters use words 1 byte long and floating point numbers use words 6 bytes long.)

This has a ton of tie-ins with programming, in fact it is a form of programming, so yeah. It has a basis in science, but unless you have the source code for the program that wrote the file hexeditting is more of an art than science.

This post has been edited by JacaByte: 16 July 2012 - 12:20 AM

Well, I haven't had a chance to work more on this yet, and, unfortunately, school is starting. It is thus unlikely that I'll be able to get back to this for some time.

I'm afraid your game character is doomed to be a living, corporeal being for the time being, 453 .

You say that like you have no faith at all that I'll be able to figure this out.

I'm a ghost! And it wasn't hard at all. I'm rocking this immortality thing ^_^

R.I.P.

Me, or the thread?

This is my instruction page for changing your sprite (& therefore, your special attributes) using Pandora's Box. I still have next to no idea how to use HexEdit. Pandora's Box is available for download off Cythera's addons page.
1) Make two save-game files, one with a male character and one with a female character. Open the male game.
2) With the game open, toggle to Pandora's Box. Search for the value 32 in Cythera under 'short's.
3) Toggle back to Cythera and open the female game (don't quit the program, it needs to stay open or Pandora's Box will lose the search)
4) Toggle to Pandora's Box and search for short values that changed to 33. If there is more than one, switch back and forth between male and female characters until you narrow it down to one.
5) When you've isolated the location, change the value to whichever sprite number you'd like to be.

Monster sprite number list (in alphabetical order... kind of):
Flying bird: 89
Ruffian: 47
Chicken: 228
Child: 79
Small crab: 349
Titan: 204 (be careful with that one, because of its awkward size it's easy to get stuck in stuff)
Demon: 295
Beggar: 50
Fighter: 116
Firesprite: 290 (296 is also a firesprite but it is not animated)
Fool: 35
Gator: 84 (front half only :()
Ghost: 289! (293 is also a ghost but it is not animated)
Zombie: 288
Slug: 208
Goat: 90 (goats physically can't go through their fences)
Guard: 46 and 229
Harpy: 291
Hero: 32
Heroine: 33
Hunter: 117
Hydra: 278 is one tile of its tentacles and 279 is the center tile
LandKing: 34
Giant crab: 91
Land jellyfish: 207
Lich: 297
Magess: 81
Mage: 80
Man in blue clothing: 82
Workman: 211
Noblewoman: 44
Nobleman: 45
Gecko: 348
Woman in grey clothing: 49
Man in grey clothing: 48
Polyp: 277
Wolflizard: 93
Ratlizard: 92
Scylla: 206 (head only)
Female Seldane: 86
Male Seldane: 85
Head Seldane (purple clothing): 87
Skeleton: 287
Ooze: 115
Asp: 88
Tentacle: 205
Golem: 294
Unicorn: 225 (front half only :()
Woman in purple clothing: 83
Sylph: 292

When choosing what you'd like to be, you can check out each monster's attributes on the Monster Stats page. There are many other interesting and occasionally useful sprites that you can be, but I did not write all of them down. You can even find some sprites that do not appear in the game ^_^ But the vast majority of the values are boring little bits of walls or shadows or such.

I'm sure this can be done with HexEdit too, but I have no idea how, and I bet it's considerably harder than my way.

Quite an impressive accomplishment. I congratulate you, 453, not only on finding the ghost graphic but also on the very nice graphics list that you have compiled.


Regarding HexEdit or Pandora's box, I would say that it appears Pandora's box has the advantage of having to alter only a single byte to control graphics, whereas HexEdit requires two or three. However, Pandora's box appears to require at least two save files and some degree of work to locate the byte, but HexEdit requires only one file wherein the byte can easily be found. Also, HexEdit enables me to easily alter the graphics and such of other characters.

Selax, on 29 September 2012 - 09:33 PM, said:

That's what I thought, which is why it took me so long to find the ghost. Technically I can change the graphics by changing a single byte (though there are three different bytes, I only have to change one, I then need to move a space for the change to occur), but a byte needs to be a value between 0 and 255, so I wasn't able to change the value to 289 to become a ghost. Therefore I need to change a short, not a byte. And there is only one short controlling it, as opposed to three bytes. I don't know how you change bigger values than bytes with HexEdit, but I don't know how you do anything with HexEdit.

I changed the graphics of other characters with Pandora's Box too. But, I don't doubt that mass changes are more convenient with HexEdit. I just can't understand how to use it. I'm sure I'll try again eventually, because I'm not sure my dream of interior design is possible with Pandora's Box. You say you can change floor tiles by spreading flour? Does that change the value of the floor tile?

I haven't messed with floor tiles recently. I seem to recall each tile itself is stored as an item on the map, so that, in theory, changes could be made directly without using flour if one could decipher the map and find all the floor tile bytes. I'm not certain how the floor tile is affected by placing an item on it. I'd have to look over it again.