If you find downloads for Flhash/codec - then going to their descriptions sometimes yeilds the link to source code...

Thanks!
I was able to track down the source for one of the tools - flcodec - by just searching on name (I was trying "source code" as a search term before). My real interest is BINI manipulation, and since there's a recent discussion of the BINI format I may be better off just going through that and reimplementing. At least I'll understand the format when I'm done.

I think there is a thread on the main page by HCL from last year, will look for you

Can't find, try this?
here

Edited by - Chips on 11/24/2004 9:53:49 AM

Oops - when I said "discussion" I meant that download exactly. Looks like bws has done a lot of helpful stuff.
Just found the original BINI code by Mario

Edited by - WatercoolerWarrior on 11/25/2004 4:39:44 AM

Edited by - WatercoolerWarrior on 11/25/2004 4:40:51 AM

Just FYI... most modders are using the FL SDK 1.3 as their "starting codebase"- we're not working with compressed INIs anymore. BINI is looking more and more like a legacy tool than anything else, these days.

That said... if you could write some tools to, say... find-and-replace values in a bunch of INIs as a batch routine... or a "smart parser" that would let modders do things like multiply the current damage of every weapon in the game by 2X, or whatever... that'd be super-useful.

If hacking/working with file format issues is really your thing, though, I would suggest that you add your brainpower to Hcl/Anton's quest for the Holy Grail- custom SUR file import/export utilities for FL. Or figure out how to decompress and edit ALE files, which are used for the special effects throughout the game (we can do a few crude things with them, but not much).

At any rate, our community can always use another engineering/coding mind working on the remaining mod issues- we modders need all the help we can get, to turn our visions into tomorrow's games

Thanks - that point about the 1.3 SDK saves me a LOT of work. I keep using my active FL files for testing the toolset I have to XMLify the INIs; I already have the SDK extracted to a fresh folder that I keep around, though, so it sounds like testing against that is the smart way to go.