Cloning Objects in "Plainer English" by stljeffbb1

[stljeffbb1]

Hello everyone!

I first start out by thanking THE_ORZEL, lurbz, Sansal, Commander1980, Shadow9216, iambecomelife, Canaris, and everyone else who has contributed to the original cloning thread....armed with this info, I was able to figure out how to clone objects! It was a somewhat difficult process, and it has taken me the better part of three weekends to finally get a handle on the whole thing....I'm still a beginner at all of this, but I am happy that I was able to clone a ship (Fishing Boat), and I presume that the other files are similarly constructed, but I'm getting ahead of myself! Lets start out from the very beginning...



Yes, this is what I felt like when I first started....all of these new things to learn about....hex strings, hexadecimal numbers, 3D rendering programs, Alpha Channels, etc. etc. etc.....however, I can attest that this stuff is not that difficult to learn, and I will now help to show you with a step by step process on what you need......

First, you will need to get some programs, many of which are free!

For the nitty gritty hex editing, go to www.download.com and type in Hex Workshop in the search area (and also keep "software" as the default choice for which type of programs you want to look for). Download Hex Workshop 4.23.....

Next, for the 3D rendering part of things (because you may want to see you models before you try them in the game), follow this link: http://www.blender.org/cms/Download.13.0.html and get Blender 2.37, which is a completely free rendering program!

Finally, if you want to make texture edits, try either Saint Paint Studio at www.saintpaint.com and/or JASC Corel Paint Shop Pro 9 once again at www.download.com and then typing "Paint Shop Pro" in the search area. These are only trial versions, and you will have to buy them to continue to use them after their trial periods are up....

There is one more tool you will need, and that is the Lurbz DATNavigator tool that was made by Lurbz himself and will give you much of the information you will need when cloning....get this at http://cursos.usal.es/~felipe/dc/datconvert.zip

In addition to the above programs, you will also want a text based editor like Notepad or Microsoft Word.

OK, assuming you have downloaded all of these programs, and can at least open them, lets begin with some basics about hex string ID's, the essential material that will be manipulated in cloning objects....

:|\

It is not too important that we know exactly how these things work, as most of us are hacks (said in the most endearing terms)anyway, we just want the end product to be good, and we figure this stuff out by trial and error....however, for the uninitiated, the hexadecimal number sequence goes like this:

0=0
1=1
2=2
3=3
4=4
5=5
6=6
7=7
8=8
9=9
A=10
B=11
C=12
D=13
E=14
F=15

(for more about hexadecimal stuff, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal)

Hexadecimal is used because it is easier for the computer to understand, and I'll just leave it at that

In SH3, hex string IDs are used to help map out where the program will get its info.....items in SH3 are cloned by slightly manipulating these hex string IDs to make different pathways for the game to follow when retrieving information. For example, those turrets on the KGV don't just appear out of nowhere! the game has to know where to fetch them from so they can be rendered in the game....

The hex string ID in SH3 will almost invariably contain 16 digits made up of eight groups of two like this:

6A 34 02 D2 E3 11 79 CC

The beauty of the editing we will do is that:

1) We only change the first two and last two digits
2) It does not matter what we change them to! Although there are some things I avoid and I will describe why later
3) I don't know exactly how this works, but it works!

....OK, lets start figuring out how all of this works!

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