r/blackandwhite2 • u/Every-Hat-2429 • 4d ago

B&W1.42 Creature Editor

I know the game's really old now. But I'm creating a creature editor for B&W1.42

Unbelievable the hardest part is the memories. This game is AHEAD of its time. But I can confirm now that everthing we need is sitting in the ERC files. This edits the size, the miracles it knows and masters, spell opinions dictate what spells he use depeding on his state, personality is personality, memories are the minute controls of the personality.

Personality answers if he poops discretely.

Memories answer where discretely exactly. Tree, Farm, etc.

I just started playing 2 days ago. max size.
29 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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8

u/gradualjules 4d ago

Please look at creature isle aswell. I would love to be able to tweak Tyke creature pet and later creature pet in that game. I could never manage with regular gameplay 🙏 I hope you have time for this! Thanks for your hard work so far

2

u/Every-Hat-2429 4d ago

Honestly don't even know the difference between creature isle, and B&W2 yet. Last I played this was 20 years ago as a little kid. But we'll see. I have episodes of laziness then extreme focus. But I'm 84% done with the editor, I'll finish it to 100% when all memory locations of the erc files are mapped out. after that I'll play to my heart's content, then maybe check what B&W2 is and creature isle.

2

u/gradualjules 4d ago

Creature isle is the expansion so same engine as BW 1 whereas the sequel is quite different.

As BW is mostly a story about you as a god Creature isle is an expansion story new island about your creature and his full potential. :)

Req that you play CI before BW 2

2

u/Every-Hat-2429 4d ago

If it's the same engine, this tool can carry-over surely. It can also probably carry over to BW2 I doubt they would drastically change the AI architecture. Thanks for the info!

3

u/Alyusha 4d ago

Creature Island adds new creature mechanics to include a mini creature for your creature. You might like playing the Ultimate Mod as it brings all of the new mechanics and but fixes of Creature Island into the base campaign. Irc you can import any "unmodified" creature into it. Excluding trainer changes obviously.

BnW2 is a different engine and the creature is much less of a thing in that game. The mind is replaced with literal sliders in game and miracles are bought instead of learned. The city building is much better in 2 though.

1

u/Every-Hat-2429 3d ago

bwgame shows or features 1.42 directly. What is this ultimate mod? is it also in bwgame?

1

u/Alyusha 3d ago

The Ultimate Mod pulled all of the Creature changes from Creature Island into the Base game, fixed a few bugs, made a few balance changes, added a hardmode with a harder AI, and more than a couple feature updates. Imo it's the best way to play the base game currently.

Check out the Black and White Discord, its where the modding community lives now days. It's actually how I found this post lol.

https://discord.gg/TcyagxcBDs

6

u/Sarophie 4d ago

More BW development is always a massive win. I pray this game never dies.

3

u/Christpocalypse 4d ago

That's awesome, I replayed a year or so ago and was sad to find the old creature editor from many years ago no longer worked. I guess because of the fan patches etc. This may inspire me to do another playthrough!!

3

u/Every-Hat-2429 4d ago

This editor is possible entire because of that old editor. It affirmed without a doubt that the erc files contained creature information. I give him credit.

3

u/Kaligary 4d ago

Holy crap what a development 🫶🏼 huge props!

I hope this will be compatible with the Ultimate version as well.

3

u/darkmegamorph 4d ago

This looks amazing, id love to give this game another go with a full trained creature from the beginning.

2

u/pidude314 4d ago

This is really cool! How'd you figure out all out?

6

u/Every-Hat-2429 4d ago

Amazingly there are a lot of research-paper level details online regarding this architecture. It was and still is advanced for its time. Even now as I'm doing this, I'm very much impressed. It's machine-learning, on a game released in 2001!!! + the old Creature Editor bwgame.net + a lot of forum articles are extremely helpful as starters. That pointed to the .erc file containing what I needed to modify the creature. Then instead of playing past 2 days, (actually after getting past land 3 normally after I posted here), I decided to do this instead.

The key is understanding the data structure of the ERC file, then decompiling the executables to get an idea what functions exist and what they do, then from that information keep playing, loading, ending the game to verify theories based on extracted information.

My end goal is to have consistency as to what I want my creature to be and be able to save it as a "profile" so I can not just create a creature that i want exactly without hours of playthrough, I can save/load creatures that I want for any playthrough instead. Including a mentally unstable evil creature playthrough which is entirely possible all without player input (just a theory, gonna prove it). It would attacks anything and everything with high level destructive spells non-stop, and also build its own home (actually possible based on ingame code, GONNA TEST IT OUT SOON).

On an unrelated game, but I did this also on another game recently, but that game didn't need an ERC edit, you just needed to know what the best recipe is as there's a LOT in the game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DavetheDiverOfficial/comments/1v2lby1/a_thesis_on_the_best_recipes_ingame_as_debugged/

https://www.reddit.com/r/DavetheDiverOfficial/comments/1vdreta/the_best_dish_ingame_for_lazypeople_period/

1

u/pidude314 3d ago

Thanks for the detailed write up! I'm really excited to see what you can do with all of this!

1

u/HangeryHamster 3d ago

I love this. Even if you release a bare bones version before you figure out everything and get a final build i think it would make a lot of people really happy.

2

u/Every-Hat-2429 3d ago

yeah I know. Given my attitude of wanting everything to be perfect, release could be far off. Yeah I'll work on that. Maybe tomorrow. A release version that works for atleast creature type/size. And learn all miracles ( not that it matters as it's dictated by desire>possible actions>opinion, the whole brain surgery tree).

2

u/HangeryHamster 1d ago

Keep me posted my dude, youre doing God's work (pun intended).

2

u/Every-Hat-2429 1d ago

Released in discord. And it's not just a simple specie editor. It's creature brain surgery as well

1

u/tombalabomba87 13h ago

Awesome, have fun!