User:Pi Masta

Alright I finally created this page. Tired of seeing so much red on the Recent Changes page.

Um, I like computers and math (hence Pi) and of course XCOM or I wouldn't be here. Just something about the gameplay and concept of the game intrigues me.

I'm hoping to get a possible 'free-for-all' editor going in python. I had success getting an old version of Python to work in DOSBox, though it's not very stable. I'm working on a 'back-end' (currently dubbed PyXcom) for all the saved game files so applications would just have to worry about what values to put in and not formatting the file correctly, giving it a more 'pythonic' interface. Could still use work, but I have a simple class that can read and write .DAT files (really any fixed-length or delemitted files), and is somewhat simple to add new fields as values in files are discovered.

From this I could make a Tk/Tcl version that would require a much later version of Python to do editing on modern machines (including *nix, and probably Mac). This would probably do more in depth editing, of say the bases, stats of objects or soldiers, etc.

Before that I think I'll make a DOS friendly version (aka command prompt, maybe keyboard selection) that could implement changes (I'm thinking of making a better soldier equip screen that runs before going into tactical, downside is I don't it will be easy to display images).

Another idea I have is to make a Monitoring program (PyXMon?) that can watch the save game and MISSDAT directories and apply patches to them automattically. The main use this would have is renaming soldiers since it is impossible to have an App, like XcomUtil,rename them after combat (GEOSCAPE updates the stats then), instead you could save your game, possibly wait a second or 2 and then reload it. The monitoring program will catch the new save game and apply the fix. This would also go with the 'Finished' Dirt Modules bug, though handling that between battles would probably be enough. Another application would be for Data Miners to have the scripts automattically output data from files (in a more readable format) on saves, for instance Zombie's initial Funds data could have had a script written in python to automatically append a file with the data about the countries.

I have too many ideas, and most likely I won't complete these projects, but I hope to get close. I'm updating this Wiki for the most part on the files, and trying to crack some of the others.

LEASE.DAT

some working notes on lease.dat

fixed length of 180 bytes, prime factorization of 180:

2^2 * 3^2 * 5, 

factors of 180: (probable line widths)

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 30, 36, 45, 60, 90, 180

only offsets that seem to change (out of about 14 files) (compared from 1st to 14 others, but not 2nd or 3rd etc with the other 14 so could be more)

0-1,  5-17,  20-23,  26-28,  32-35,  38-41,  44-47,  50-53,  56-59,  62-65,  68-71,  74-77,  80-83,  86-89,  
92-95,  98-101,  104-107,  110-113,  116-119,  122-125,  128-131,  134-137,  140-142,  146-149,  152-155,  
158-161,  164-167,  170-173,

There is a lot of symmetry in this format, lots of double 0's will line up at the line widths of the factors, with the exception of the very first byte, almost as if the first record is somehow different...

On the fields that change, there doesn't appear to be many different values for them, usually only 2 or 3, with the exception of the first byte again.