Hi!

Do you mean that you want to edit the ale files?
If so, I can only say that this is not possible. Ale files are in a special code, which until now noone could decode. We would nee the sourcecode of the game for this, which we do not have. So, if you want to make new weapon effects, you can only do simple beamspears in the beameffects.ini, but not totally new ones, as noone is able to edit ale files.

If however you mean to edit the engine_ale.ini and weapon_ale.ini, you can do this, but you cannot change very much with this (only colors and something like this). But I have to say that I do not know so much about this and also do not know anything about the CRC numbers.
But here are definitely some people, who can help you and will probably also post here soon.

For the encryption: I know only one mod, which has encrypted ini files. This is the TNG mod by Reynen. However, his inis can still be decoded with some decoders and therefore are not totally secure.

But is it really necessary to encrypt your files? I think that not many players will try to look into the ini files to see, where the jumpholes are and also many players do not even know what the coordinates mean.
Besides, if someone really wanted to find out where these jumpholes are, he would definitely get it somehow.
So, why do you want to work so hard to get them encrypted, although it is not really useful? Just a suggestion!
If you still want to encrypt them, you could also try to find out, how the TNG team encoded their files.

I hope this helps!

Here is what we know about working with ALEs:

1. You can change which TXMs are being referred to by a given ALE, by changing the entries. For example, you could alter this:

[VisEffect
nickname = br_empmissile_drive
alchemy = fx\weapons\br_empmissile.ale
effect_crc = 438976852
textures = fx\beam.txm
textures = fx\planetflare.txm
textures = fx\sarma.txm
textures = fx\storm.txm
textures = fx\smoke.txm

To be like this:

[VisEffect
nickname = br_empmissile_drive
alchemy = fx\weapons\br_empmissile.ale
effect_crc = 438976852

... which would result in a missile drive that doesn't put out any smoke and is considerably less "showy". The engine flame effect will still show up , though, because this ALE's core particle effect (br_empmissile.ale) is that dynamic particle effect.

You can do a lot of very interesting things with this. For example, you can attach smoke.txm to an ALE that normally doesn't produce smoke, and then it will produce some.

But... but... but. There are some limitations:

1. When making custom FX, we cannot make new ALES. Nobody knows how just yet. We've looked at it a few times, but it's still unsolved, and don't even ask how the CRCs are derived- we don't know, and probably won't ever know. What might happen is that we might be able to hack existing ALE files to produce new results, such a new colors for the particles, etc.

So every fancy effect you see in FL mods are the result of mixing/matching ALE references, which in tern refer to TXMs. The ALEs determine the dynamic behavior of the TXMs, and the effect_type entries can also determine certain aspects of that behavior. If both the ALE and the effect_type both effect a certain behavior, the ALE overrides the entries in the effect_type... or just doesn't work.

2. Some combinations of ALEs won't work. Period. They just refuse to render, or render only one of the ALEs. No, we don't know why.

3. Some combinations of ALEs and effect_type won't work. Again, we don't know why.

4. Many people don't know this, but you can attach sounds to Effects. Just add snd_effect = "whatever my sound is called in Sounds.ini". Pretty useful for adding all sorts of secondary noises to your mod. For example... you could make a missile sound that had a full second of no null in the recording before the sound started... then put a delay on the missile's Motor of one second. Give it a decent muzzle_velocity, so that players get to see it "ignite" and then have the motor's sound cut in... pretty neat stuff. You have to use tricks, though, because snd_effects start the second whatever "object" is being called is created, whether it's a laser blast, engine noise, or whatever.

I've played at lot with ALEs, but not as much as some of the early modders like Accushot or Chips have. You can do a lot've very cool things with them, but you also have to be aware of their trial-and-error qualities, and be patient about trying things out.

At any rate... we cannot make new ALEs yet, but we can do a lot of very cool things in the meantime.

As for the second part... hiding the locations of the invisible Jumpholes... well, what you could do is re-encrypt the INI files. At least one mod even used a different encryption schema somehow... but it didn't take very long at all before somebody decrypted it again, because FL's INI encryption wasn't designed for security- it was mainly designed to make the files compact, so that the game would fit onto a single CD-ROM.

So, um... basically, I think you're going to unable to garantee the security of any data that the client machines have to download as part of your mods. I don't really get why people would make a mod for public play and then get obsessed about "secrets" anyhow. 99% of your players will follow the rules, and won't bother to search through your INIs for the "secrets"... and the 1% who won't are the same people who are willing to use cheats and do other bad things... just ban them

I understood what you said, i think, and the problem of the encryption is solved (the invisible jumphole are for a admin system and even if players find it they'll be blasted with the security system of defense i put in place).

For the engine.ale i'll find another way to in replacing with effects of others engines

For the .ale what i want exactly to do, is making a liberty cruiser maingun which fire a red blast and which has a "charging period" like the cruise-engine, in other words i want to click fire then the weapon charges with visual effects and then the blast (i'm thinking of mix the content in engine.ale which refer to cruise-engine and the .ale of the weapon)

I'm keepin' an eye on you !

The effect_crc is the nickname of the object converted to a UTF id. You can see this by punching in the name of an effect into the latest CRCTool. ALE files use a modified UTF file structure from what I can tell, which is why it is harder to understand them. An extension of the UTF Edit code should allow you to view the data in an editable format. As far as who could accomplish that.. I couldn't say off-hand but I will keep it on my list of things to do.

Check out the latest beta's of the Freelancer S.D.K. 1.5 and Freelancer Explorer v2.x