UniWS can be downloaded from HERE
The goal of this post is to explain the syntax UniWS uses in its patches.ini file so that others can create their own entry without first having to figure out how it works. This explanation assumes you are already familiar with hex editing. The explanation will not to tell you how to figure out what hex edits to make, only how to use UniWS to make them.
UniWS is an automated hex editor. Once you figure out where to make edits to a file, by providing the correct paramters to UniWS it can make these edits for a person without them needing to use a hex editor.
Header Section
Code:
[Apps]
version=1.03
a0=Dungeon Lords
a1=Empire Earth II
...
version: Specifies which version of UniWS this patches.ini file is for; this must match the version of the app to be used. Since UniWS is no longer being developed, this will always be 1.03
a#: These entries determine the the list of games available in the
Game dropdown in UniWS.
Basic Edits
Code:
[Need for Speed: Underground 2]
details=Patches any game version, but only works on a cracked SPEED2.EXE13101310Select the 640x480 resolution in game to use your custom resolution.
checkfile=speed2.exe
modfile=speed2.exe
undofile=speed2.undo1
sig=80020000C701E0010000
sigwild=0000110000
xoffset=0
yoffset=6
occur=1
Here's what each setting means:
[game name]: This identifies a group of settings for a game. The name in brackets must match a string provided for the
a# setting in the header section to be used. All settings under a bracketed entry are treated as part of the same entry until the next bracketd entry.
details: Text note that appears in the "Important Details" text box in the UniWS GUI. For line breaks in the display use the carriage return/line feed ASCII values: "1310" Do not put any
actual line breaks in the description except at the end.
In the example: Note that you might see the
details message on more than one line in the above example. This is merely because of the forum formatting.
checkfile: UniWS looks for the presence of this file in order to verify that the user has selected the correct directory for the game. Typically you would use the name of the file you need to modify, but it may be the case that the file you need to modify has a generic name used by other applications. In this case you should use a different
checkfile that is unique to the game you are modifying.
modfile: The filename of the file you need to modify.
undofile: UniWS has the ability to undo the edits it makes to the
modfile, it automatically saves the information necessary to undo the changes in the
undofile. This may be any filename of your choice; the precedent is to use the
modfile filename with a .undoX extension where X is the number of the edit (only important when multiple edits are made). The undo files will be placed in the same directory as the
modfile.
sig: This hex string is used to uniquely identifies where the edit is to be made. UniWS will search the
modfile for a match to this string (also dependent on
sigwild, see below) and place the internal "edit cursor" at the starting position of this string. Must be a set of bytes (one byte is two hex digits, so in other words, it must be an even number of digits in length). There is no practical upper or lower limit on the number of bytes in the
sig. The string need be only as long as required to uniquely identify the string you need to edit in the file.
sigwild: Bit flags that indicate whether a particular byte in the
sig string is to be treated as a wildcard when locating the matching string in the
modfile. 1 indicates a byte is a wildcard, 0 indicates it must be matched exactly. You must have a
sigwild flag for all bytes in the
sig string, even if you have no wildcard bytes.
In the example: The 5th and 6th bytes (C7 01) are wildcard bytes - their value doesn't actually matter, they are in the
sig string merely as placeholders to indicate the number of bytes between "known" strings. This means that UniWS will search the
modfile for the hex string "80020000", followed by any two bytes, followed by "E0010000".
xoffset/
yoffset: Appropriately enough these specify the offset,
in number of bytes, from the beginning of the
sig string where to write the user defined resolution value.
xoffset specifies where the width value is written,
yoffset the height value. The offset is 0-based, so the first byte is 0, the second byte is 1, etc. UniWS will always write 1 word (2 bytes) starting from the offset for a resolution value.
In the example: The user entered width value will overwrite the 1st and 2nd bytes (80 02) in the
sig string; the height value will overwrite the 7th and 8th bytes (E0 01).
occur: The number of occurrences of the hex string to be edited in the file. UniWS will update this number of occurrences of the hex string sequentially, starting from the beginning of the file.
Advanced Edits
Code:
[Star Wars: KOTOR (800x600 interface)]
details=(removed for brevity)
checkfile=swkotor.exe
modfile=swkotor.exe
undofile=swkotora.undo1
sig=3D20030000EFEFEFEFEFEF58020000
sigwild=000001111110000
xoffset=1
yoffset=11
occur=1
;interface mods
;1024
p1modfile=swkotor.exe
p1undofile=swkotora.undo2
p1sig=3D00040000B329EFEFEFEFEFEFEFEFEF3D00050000EFEF3D40060000
p1sigwild=0000000111111111000001100000
p1xoffset=1
p1occur=1
p1setx=0
;comment: Semi-colon merely designates a comment, anything after a semi-colon until the next line break will be ignored.
p#setting: When you need to make multiple hex edits for a game, you merely add an additional group of the settings described above and give them a prefix of
p#,where
# is replaced with an appropriate integer for additional sets. Note that each modification set must have it's own
modfile (even if it's the same) and
undofile specified. You can modify more than one file for the same game by specifying a different
modfile. An additional
checkfile should
not be specified. As far as I know, there is no limit to the amount of edit sets you can have.
setx/
sety: A hardcoded value to set. When provided, UniWS will replace the x or y words in the hex string with this value instead of using the value from the resolution that the user enters.
Last updated: 3/28/08 14:14
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