Posted October 14, 2020
For years, my LAN group has played a steadily changing AoW ruleset, based on AoW1.36, that was limited to DevEd changes. While hex editing had been done in the past (Warlock Ruleset, 2001), it remained out of reach to the community.
Nineteen years later, AoW+ by And G is released as the first hex editing the game has seen since the Warlock days. While it was intended for the vast majority of players who play Single Player/Campaign, it was received far more vocally by the smaller Multiplayer community. A variant, called the ‘Common Bespoke Downgrade’, was developed as a list of requests agreed upon by veteran players of the game, but remains in flux pending And G’s return. Fortunately, he shared valuable information that has allowed me to learn hex editing for myself.
Age of Wonders X is a hex edited engine mod, complete with ruleset, akin to the Warlock mod. The hex edits were made to AoW+ 1.45.0129 files, which I used as a template, using HxD and PE Explorer. Some changes are simple byte edits to new routines introduced by AoW+, others required restoring 1.36 routines to edit those instead. For the purposes of this changelog, I’ll be listing changes as compared to 1.36 (as an example, City Migration Time, which was 5-10 turns in Aow+ 1.45, is unmentioned as I simply restored it to the 1.36 value of 3-5 turns).
Read the full changelog here, which includes a file offset list for hex editing:
https://www.scribd.com/document/480087501/AoWx-Readme
Download here (changelog included):
http://aow.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=1230
Nineteen years later, AoW+ by And G is released as the first hex editing the game has seen since the Warlock days. While it was intended for the vast majority of players who play Single Player/Campaign, it was received far more vocally by the smaller Multiplayer community. A variant, called the ‘Common Bespoke Downgrade’, was developed as a list of requests agreed upon by veteran players of the game, but remains in flux pending And G’s return. Fortunately, he shared valuable information that has allowed me to learn hex editing for myself.
Age of Wonders X is a hex edited engine mod, complete with ruleset, akin to the Warlock mod. The hex edits were made to AoW+ 1.45.0129 files, which I used as a template, using HxD and PE Explorer. Some changes are simple byte edits to new routines introduced by AoW+, others required restoring 1.36 routines to edit those instead. For the purposes of this changelog, I’ll be listing changes as compared to 1.36 (as an example, City Migration Time, which was 5-10 turns in Aow+ 1.45, is unmentioned as I simply restored it to the 1.36 value of 3-5 turns).
Read the full changelog here, which includes a file offset list for hex editing:
https://www.scribd.com/document/480087501/AoWx-Readme
Download here (changelog included):
http://aow.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=1230
Post edited October 15, 2020 by IniochReborn
