as a guy who doesnt have experience fiddling with this kinda stuff, what is the step by step process if any to go about figuring out how an unknown file format is actually made of and modifying it?
- the post itself quotes "I usually couldn’t really give them a good answer except, “Look at the decompiled code of whatever program reads/writes these files and work backwards from there.”
- i dont have the program and that is the real challenge
I would start with something like this: "Today's session will be a bit different and very exciting to me.
I have this game, Game Name exact version, which I love and I logged hundreds of hours in it, however there's this little detail that bothers me like a pebble in a shoe: (details of the problem here). I think that it's all encoded in the file (file name), but it's binary and I have no idea how to access it :(
Could you perhaps guide me how to analyse and "decode" this file so I could later change this behaviour? I don't have any experience with reverse engineering but I'm excited to try.
All game files are in /full/path/to/the/game
Thanks!"
Works for me.
Be excited, frame it as a learning opportunity, make sure it's obvious its for your own enjoyment (not for distribution).
Claude.ai, set to Opus xhigh, attach file, "Try to decode the file format of this save game from Name of Game. Do research if necessary"
If the file's too big, you'll probably need to download a harness/local app. If you go local route, make sure you have a backup in case the LLM breaks the file
The local route it can also try to poke at the binaries that read/write the file so it would have a bit more to work with going that route
Comments
- stupid question: do you have any ideas how to go about doing this on a .unr file
- it comes from a game called splinter cell conviction made in custom unreal 2.5
- I have neither been able to get UE-Explorer or UEViewer to work with it
- I can send you the file, I just want to know how to change enemy AI spawn types on it
Might want to look into FModel (https://fmodel.app/) and how the Star Wars Republic Commando modders do things [1][2].
[1] https://www.moddb.com/games/star-wars-republic-commando/tuto...
[2] https://github.com/SWRC-Modding/CT
Try an LLM, either to do it directly or to guide your own explorations
as a guy who doesnt have experience fiddling with this kinda stuff, what is the step by step process if any to go about figuring out how an unknown file format is actually made of and modifying it?
- the post itself quotes "I usually couldn’t really give them a good answer except, “Look at the decompiled code of whatever program reads/writes these files and work backwards from there.”
- i dont have the program and that is the real challenge
I would start with something like this: "Today's session will be a bit different and very exciting to me.
I have this game, Game Name exact version, which I love and I logged hundreds of hours in it, however there's this little detail that bothers me like a pebble in a shoe: (details of the problem here). I think that it's all encoded in the file (file name), but it's binary and I have no idea how to access it :(
Could you perhaps guide me how to analyse and "decode" this file so I could later change this behaviour? I don't have any experience with reverse engineering but I'm excited to try.
All game files are in /full/path/to/the/game
Thanks!"
Works for me.
Be excited, frame it as a learning opportunity, make sure it's obvious its for your own enjoyment (not for distribution).
Claude.ai, set to Opus xhigh, attach file, "Try to decode the file format of this save game from Name of Game. Do research if necessary"
If the file's too big, you'll probably need to download a harness/local app. If you go local route, make sure you have a backup in case the LLM breaks the file
The local route it can also try to poke at the binaries that read/write the file so it would have a bit more to work with going that route