Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!jgh2
From: jgh2@unix.cis.pitt.edu (John G. Hardie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Bard's Tale II - details??
Message-ID: <28671@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 15 Aug 90 15:20:32 GMT
Reply-To: jgh2@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (John G. Hardie)
Distribution: na
Organization: Nuclear Physics Lab, Univ. of Pittsburgh
Lines: 42


I have a question about the character files for BTII.  But first,
a story...

I started playing BTII with level 1 characters.  After being slaughtered
many times I got frustrated.  Off to a BBS to find a BT character
editor.  Found one for BTI so made myself some strong characters.  Used
the transfer option to make them BTII characters.  This was fine until
I tried to have my Wizard use some spells.  Guess what?  He didn't know
any.  Nice - now I've got this damn near omnipotent wizard but he's so
stupid that he only knows level 1 conjuror spells.  Ugh.  Still, it was
kind of fun seeing him beat the sh** out of monsters with his bare 
hands ('WIZARD swings at the zombie and hits 124 times for 10038 hit
points damage...' - and he didn't even have a staff!).  Anyway, a little
looking with a hex editor and I've pretty much figured out the BTII 
character files.  I've now got an editor which will - er- edit BTII
characters directly.  The magic users even know the correct spells.
I made an ARCHMAGE with some gawdawful huge number of hit points and
spell points (next thing to god).  Then made yet another party of
level 1 characters and had the ARCHMAGE shepherd them through the
training dungeon - letting them do most of the work, but resurrecting
the dead ones and blasting the monsters when they came too fast.  I
now have a level 15 party and am going to retire the archmage for a
while and strike out on my own.


And now the question:  to tie up loose ends I would like to know
what purpose bytes 43-50 and 80-86 serve in the character files.
Also what does the counter at byte 77(?) count?  I haven't been
able to figure these out - 43-50 are all 0 for level 1 chars and
other values for higher levels.  I can't yet see a pattern.  I leave
them alone if editing an existing char, set all to 255 for new chars
and this seems to work.  80-86 are always zero.


Thanks,
John
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
John G. Hardie					jgh2@unix.cis.pitt.edu
Dept. of Physics, Univ of Pittsburgh		jgh2@vms.cis.pitt.edu
	We chose the name Q because it's short and easy to spell