Ask the Experts / RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Hex Editing Tutorial

How to HexEdit in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3






Okay, I was just screwing around with a Hex Editor when I thought "Okay, what would happen if I used it on RCT3?" These are some of the results. You can make Looping Mine Trains, Inverting StrataCoasters (The Launch Section track makes TTD a complete possibility with the smoother uphills as well), or semi-realistic Intamin Inverting Coasters. Now, on to the tutorial.

1. Download a hex editor (I googled Hex Editor and picked the first result).

2. Navigate to My Computer/C Drive/Program Files/Atari/RollerCoaster Tycoon 3/tracks/coasters/(Any of the rides you want). Use the Hex Editor to look at the .common.ovl's in each folder. Leave the Unique.ovl's alone, screwing with them could be bad. WHATEVER YOU DO DO NOT MODIFY ANYTHING IN THERE AND SAVE - THAT COULD WRECK THAT COASTER ENTIRELY AND REQUIRE DELETION. We're going to do a tutorial in changing the Shooting Stars cars on the Corkscrew Coaster into Mine Train cars.

3. Take the Corkscrew.common.ovl and copy/paste it to the Desktop without modifying it. This will serve as our back-up copy in case something goes wrong.

4. Boot up the Hex Editor. Open the MineTrain.common.ovl with the hex editor and look at the MineTrain data in the upper left of the right column. It's just MineTrain, but you should memorize it.

5. Now open the Corkscrew.common.ovl and where it says ShootingStar in the right column, type over it (No insert key needed) MineTrain. On the left column, you probably saw the coding change. Take the rest of the coding in ShootingStar and change the binary into zeros (2 0's per binary... bit thingy). Make sure there are little squares right up until the square before "straight".

6. Save this data over the current Corkscrew.common.ovl and open RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. When loading the resources, if it stops at 40%, something went wrong so open the back-up file and try again. Make as many back-ups as you feel are necessary.

7. If it loads to the menu, go to a sandbox and open the Corkscrew Coaster. Build a design and change the Vehicles until you get to where Shooting Star was. The Mine Train should be there. If so, congratulations! You've just hex edited RCT3!


How to do others:
You can do longer names, but you must remove some track data. As you can see in one of the pictures, the curve in that Stormrunner costs $0 to build. Why? When replacing the StormRunner cars with TTD cars, we have to take the medium curve data out, so it costs $0. This is only my theory, I thought it would take it out altogether. Try at your own risk. Shorter names are the same as what we did with the ShootingStar-to-MineTrain cars, replace the binary with null coding that acts as spaces. I recommend not screwing with the track data personally, it could really screw up the game.

I was able to get the Impulse Cars onto an Inverted Roller Coaster myself, and that always is sweet. The train size limits still hold though, but those are pretty well reasoned.

So, thanks for reading this tutorial!

Sidenote: While experimenting with the Bobsleigh Coaster, I found the cars to sail off the track on all types of inversions because they aren't directly attached to the track.

Edited by ClockworkMyr, 20 July 2008 - 09:21 PM.

Wow, nice work. I gotta try this sometime.

--RCTCA--

And don't worry, it's not hard, I mean if I can do it, anybody could.

now take winhack and try to change things ingame
if you can download the TMK (theres a download link at doctor J's website) and make your own trainer with the pointers you found .

That's really cool! That was one of the things I didn't like about RCT3 - there were loads of possibilities with scenery since most custom objects were zero-clearanced, but there was no way to do RCT1/2 style hacks like merging tracks.

I take it this only affects your own game though, right? You can't send a park to someone else and have it look the same to them. Not that many people release RCT3 projects anyway - the ridiculous lag kills any project long before it's finished.

Right, this only will affect your game, so it's best to send a readme (That is, if you're lucky enough to get a supercomputer or complete a park) saying which tracks need modifications. What you can do is send full videos of the modded rides as well for a lag-free experience. And if you think this is a breakthrough, would you believe me if I said Custom Rides in RCT3 existed?

And if you think this is a breakthrough, would you believe me if I said Custom Rides in RCT3 existed?

Please explain!

http://vodhin.org/e1...-jumpinjack.zip to download.

Some guy named Belgabor somehow managed to crack the RCT3 code, which shouldn't have been too hard given the apparent ease in making so many diverse rides in the expansion packs.

A quote from Vodhin's RCT3 site:

Belgabor has figured out the codes needed to create a Custom Flat Ride for RCT3 and now releases his "test" CFR here for you to examine. Please keep in mind this download is an historical landmark in the history of modding RCT3, as it represents a major step forward in further customizing RCT3. The details of this breakthrough have not yet been revealed, but I suspect the Belgabor and the crew will be working to develop the needed components to bring ride importing into the importer.

It seems like it will be still a ways away before the importer supports rides- and then probably only flay rides at first. More testing will need to be done, and I'm sure progress will march forward - just give time for more developing.

As well as that, I was decieved into thinking custom track was also a possibility, but it turned out to be custom scenery.
(http://www.vodhin.or...CurvedTrack.jpg)

So yeah, RCT3 is starting to evolve tremendously.

Edited by ClockworkMyr, 24 July 2008 - 04:04 PM.