Making adjustments to custom maps while placing actors

[BlackRose]

Ok, so as the summer rolls in this year, i am finally able to begin work in the hacking community again. That being said, i have one question as a start.

You're placing actors in a custom map right? Everything is going fine, when suddenly, you realize that an area of the map needs to be modified in Sketchup (or whatever modeling program you use). Well, you've already placed and perfected the positions of several actors on the map, and making a modification and reimporting it would erase those changes. So my question is, is there away to save actor data, and after making minor adjustments to the map, paste it back in so that the actors automatically go to where you had them?

[DeathBasket]

Depending on what hex editor you're using there should be a function to write selected data to a file. That way you can store the actor data in another file and paste it back into your map file after you're redone it.

[BlackRose]

Ok well I have both XVI32 and Hex Workshop 4.2. If you wouldn't mind, could you just walk me through writing the data to a file when you get the chance?

[DeathBasket]

I'm presuming you know the actor data format. In XVI32 select the first byte of the actor data and then do Edit>Block mark. Do the same thing on the last byte and then it should be highlighted in red. Now go to File>Write block... and save it as anything.

When you want to put it back into the map go to File>Insert... and choose the file you saved it to. Be careful with that though because it will insert your data but not overwrite anything, so you'll either have to place it somewhere it won't affect anything else or just correct any pointers to other data after it that has moved.

[BlackRose]

Alright thank you very much Death i appreciate it, I'm going to take this opportunity to become more familiarized with the actor data format and pointers, etc.

[Secant]

Theoretically, if you include the same number of actors and objects in the new map, couldn't you just delete the existing data there by selecting at the beginning and end offsets before re-inserting it to the beginning offset? If so, that would save you the trouble of having to re-point anything because the data for actors and objects should be the same size, just different values.

[DeathBasket]

Yes, that's what I meant but it seems I said it in the wrong way (or not at all ).

[BlackRose]

Thanks Naxy, that does make it easier, gonna put it to the test when I finish up the map I'm working on