Again, the uses for this are limited at the moment, but they may give modders a much easier time when altering the character list in the future. The screenshot seen on this article shows two characters having Barry Unger's face - this was done by changing a single number. Using a single value, you can decide which character gets which face. PROFEX does allow two things that PROEDIT simply could not do: Granted - the game doesn't really support values outside of PROEDIT's hardcoded limits, but I expect that now that those limits are broken, coders may take advantage of this when they go off improving and enhancing some in-game features. However, by now it already allows you to set unconventional values, where PROEDIT's user interface limited you to whatever values were deemed "acceptable" by the system. The uses of PROFEX are limited, as it is still a very young system. Two Barrys? Nope, one is Blood with an altered portrait. This includes attributes, traits, facial coordinates, how tolerant the character is with the player, bodytype and clothes, and pretty much everything else that PROEDIT has to offer. PROFEX allows editing most of a character's data by hand. This demonstrated a way in which players could still use PROEDIT to change character data, but had a second system at their disposal to override one of PROEDIT's functions with an easy-to-use XML.Ī year later, I decided to use the same technique to externalize everything else that PROEDIT had to offer. So now, if you want to change your merc's starting gear, you can open MercStartingGear.XML in notepad and add whatever items you want. To avoid complicating things in the future, ChrisL decided to write a new system that reads XML data for what mercs were carrying by default, circumventing PROF.DAT in that respect.
Load-bearing items had numbers near 1000). However, PROEDIT (which was designed for JA2 Unfinished Business) could not cope with the high item numbers required (you could only equip characters with items of index numbers 0 to 320 or so. We needed a way to have characters come pre-equipped with load-bearing equipment to avoid the game crashing. Probably the first step towards making PROEDIT obsolete came during the creation of the New Inventory system. The discussion, of course, never died, because the limits of PROEDIT are still a problem. Several attempts were made, and one attempt reportedly even went very far before someone's hard-drive crashed and the project crashed with it. It is impossible to edit PROF.DAT by hand (ok, you can do it with a hex editor, but what a mess!), so even if systems were developed for more freedom with characters, we were always limited to what PROEDIT could and could not do.Įxternalizing PROF.DAT has been a hot topic for several years. Unfortunately, while JA2 1.13 grew better and more complex over the years, our only way of changing character details was through PROEDIT which has never been updated. When a new campaign is started, this data is loaded into memory and serves as the basis for merc growth and character behavior. This file contains all character data in binary format. PROEDIT reads and writes a file called PROF.DAT. For years it has allowed us to edit attributes, character traits, and many other details about every named character in the game. JA2 Wildfire came packaged with the original game's source code, and also included some important tools such as PROEDIT - a program that allows editing character profiles. 3.4 But I liked PROEDIT! It was simple to use!.3.3 What can PROEDIT do that PROFEX can't?.3.2 What can PROFEX do that PROEDIT can't?.