Sword of Aragon Save Game Hacking Guide v.0.5 written on June 19, 2001 by The Demonic Gerbil/Elisha Feger (elizibar@hotmail.com) Copyright 2001 Elisha Feger 1) Introduction 2) Worldwide Variables 3) Cities 4) Units + Heroes 5) Deeds 6) Sword of Aragon Links 7) Version History + Credits ----------------------------------------------------------------- Part 1 - Introduction For those of you've never heard of Sword of Aragon (why you would be looking at this guide, I can't say, but anyways...), Sword of Aragon (referred to as SoA from here on in) is a game for the IBM PC made in 1989 by SSI. It's a hybrid Wargame/RPG that places you in the role of the new Duke of Aladda after your Father's death at the hands of a horde of Orcs. Your goal: Reunite the long shattered continent of Aragon. For those who want to find a copy of the game, it can be found on many Abandonware sites (just go search for it) and it can also be gotten on the _Twenty Wargame Classics_ compilation put out by SSI in 1995. You might be able to find said compilation in the bargain bin of a store somewhere. This guide was put together mainly because I couldn't find one anyone else had put on the Internet. Right now I've only experimented with the aragon.hs* files, because there's really no need to edit your troops or anything else. The aragon.hs* files cover your cities, your cash, and even some surprise things like the amount of Attrition on any given turn. There are three other files that go with each save game, and I'll try to give some coverage for all 4 in the text below. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Part 2 - Worldwide Variables There are somethings in this game that always ticked me off, like Attrition. Well, I did some snooping in the save game files and found it there (among other things). Things like the "Movement" variable and "Attrition" are what I'm going to be calling "Worldwide Variables" as they affect every square on the worldmap. Go into the directory where SoA is installed. If you saved a game in slot "A", then you will see several files named aragon.h*a, where the "*" is either "i","r","s", or "t". Use a text editor (Windows Notepad, MSDOS Edit, etc.) and open the file named aragon.hsa (if you want to edit a save game for a slot other than "A" replace the "a" in the file extension with the letter for the slot). Looks good, huh? All that nice straight ASCII text. None of the values in the file are stored in Hexadecimal format, so things are pretty easy to mess with. The first 3 lines of the file should look something like this: Line1: 6,5,14,6,20,8 Line2: 0,0,1,0,2,2 Line3: 80673,425,5199.101,13948 I haven't experimented with the first line of text very much, so we'll skip that and go to the second line. The third number on the second line (1 in this example) is the "Movement" variable. Change this to 0 if you don't want any movement penalties in this particular turn. The fourth number is the "Attrition" value for this turn, so you can set it to 0 and still be able to move your troops without any casualties in a winter month. Some notes on the "Movement" variable that I've found: If you set it to -1, the game starts to act kind of strange. If you set it to 0, you get the default movement rates. And if you set it to -10, you can basically go from one side of the continent to the other without any trouble (although this is kind of glitchy - your troops won't show up in the square you moved to, and many encounters won't occur on the square they're supposed to, but sometimes they do happen). The third row's numbers are the following (from left to right): Your Money,Your Score, Your Income for the Month, Your Maintenance for the Month. Your Money can go up to 999,999 (usually when it goes over that I get a Stack Overflow error and the game quits back to DOS). There's really no reason to bother with the other three values on this line unless you just want to give yourself 500 points and act like you went through the game and did everything just right. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Part 3 - Cities Cities are stored in the same file as the Worldwide Variables. So, if you want to edit the game saved in slot "A" open up aragon.hsa (for other saves, replace the "a" in the extension with the letter from the slot you saved the game in). Ignore the first three lines of text (for what they are, see Part 2 - Worldwide Variables) and get down to where it says something like: Line1: "Aladda",7955,955.5 Line2: 0,59,137,167 Line3: 10,7290,1278,124 Line4: 70,0,607 Line5: 23,-2,1,-4 Line6: 0,0,811,2 Line7: 500,0 Line8: 42,60,45,2315,80,0,2315,232 Line9: 4,100,12,368,350,0,368,37 Line10: 13,250,15,1672,280,0,1672,167 Line11: 18,250,21,2977,300,0,2977,298 Line12: 10,200,13,2223,400,0,2223,222 Line13: 9,250,10,0,800,0,0,0 Line14: 80,500,80,0,1000,0,0,0 Line 1: The first thing you'll notice is that the first field is the city name in quotes. This makes life very easy for us and shows that the programmers weren't sadistic fiends after all. :) The next two fields are the city's population and the income you received from it this past turn. Line 2: Unknown, Morale, Loyalty, Health. None of these really matter, but you can up them if you want. Line 3: Tax Rate, "Store", "Trade", Recruits. The most important one here is Recruits. Just think, now you don't have to pay the price (in GP and Morale) to get fresh bodies for your army. Just give yourself 4000 recruits in Aladda at the start of the game with 999,999 GP (see Part 2) and you won't have to worry about the battles being difficult for the rest of the game. Line 4: Haven't experimented with these yet. Line 5: Population Change, Morale Change, Loyalty Change, Health Change. Nothing important here. Line 6: Change in Tax Rate?,Change in "Store", Change in "Trade", Change in Recruits. Why bother. Line 7: No clue... :p Line 8-14: These lines are for your developments. Line 8 is Agriculture, Line 9 is Lumber, Line 10 is Mining, Line 11 is Manufacturing, Line 12 is Commerce, Line 13 is Structure, and Line 14 is Fortification. The two fields to worry about here are the first field and the third field in the row. The first is the current level of development and the third is level of the resources. The rest of the fields don't matter too much. High levels for Developments coupled with high populations tend to make the game crash out with a Stack Overload error, so don't go too overboard. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Part 4 - Units and Heroes [Under Construction] The units and heroes that make up your army are stored in the aragon.hr* files (where is * is the letter from the save slot you want to modify). Due to lack of time and need (come on, the game is easy enough with lots of hacked cash) I haven't bothered to break out the hex editor and try to decode the structure for these files, but I might some day. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Part 5 - Deeds If you want to mess around with what the game says your Deeds are (under the Information selection on the menu) you can edit the aragon.hi* file for the appropriate slot and change things to whatever you want. The end of line is signaled by a "|" (called a pipe) and the game puts "||" between the various deeds you've done (in effect just putting two carriage returns in to start a new paragraph). ----------------------------------------------------------------- Part 6 - Sword of Aragon Links The Unofficial Sword of Aragon Page: http://soa.virtualave.net/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Part 7 - Version history + Credits Written by The Demonic Gerbil/Elisha Feger (elizibar@hotmail.com) Inspiration to hack SoA (along with the location of the money) by wasted@algonet.se (which was posted on The Unofficial Sword of Aragon Page) If you want to put this FAQ up on your webpage, just ask me and send me your URL so I can check you out. Version 0.5 - June 19, 2001 -First real version -City Section and Worldwide Variables fleshed out pretty well The End