Increasing SP Level Cap Beyond 38/40?

Wixelt

Hopefully another quick one.

I would like to increase the level cap in single-player, with a view to filling those levels with mod content in future. At present, i’ve learnt enough to know to do this using the ptough.ini and have gotten it from lvl 38 to 40, and that 40 is the normal hard limit for SP (multi-player being much higher because it uses levels differently) that the game won’t let you mod beyond just by changing inis.

I’m imagining that, since this is probably hard coded, it’s something i’d have to go into dlls with a hex editor to alter, but I neither know if i’m right or what file to look in, and am hoping this has been cracked already (the forum threads I found didn’t seem like it, but they were old-ish).

adoxa

Here and its followups.

Wixelt

Thank you for the direction. It’s been helpful to know how I should be going about this.

That said, I think my understanding of hex codes might be off, because i’ve gotten to Gold_Sear’s post at the end of the thread and can’t find the lines he’s referring to in content.dll with the hex editor i’m using.

adoxa

Are you seeing [c]A9 46[/c]? That means you’re still using 1.0 (1.0.1223.11); we generally only provide offsets for 1.1 (1.0.1254.11).

Wixelt

I’m seeing A9 D8, I think, unless i’m looking at the wrong section, but searching A9 46 doesn’t seem to get any direct matches. As far as I was aware, I had the 1.4 patch installed, which I thought included 1.1.

adoxa

No, neither the Unofficial 1.4 patch nor JFLP include 1.1.

Wixelt

Ah. That would explain the confusion, then. Will be hunting down the 1.1 patch shortly.

Wixelt

I’ve found the correct line now (as well as realizing I wasn’t looking for addresses correctly), so thank you for that, and have made the directed change to have a modded version of the content.dll.

However, now the game won’t load when I have the modded dll in place, going through the pre-menu cinematics before suddenly closing before it gets to the menu itself.

EDIT: Having made observations in FLSpew, it seems the game can’t find the new content.dll, and by observing the BIN folder as I uninstall the mod with FLMM, it apparently completely removes the content.dll from the normal files afterward… even when it was already there before the mod was turned on. I have no idea what to do with this information, though.

EDIT 2: No longer seems to be removing the file, now. Maybe it was just confused? Still can’t run the game, though.

EDIT 3: I’m actually starting to suspect this crash might not even be related to the content.dll, given I’ve removed it, reinstalled Freelancer just in case and run things again with the mod… and still gotten the crash out. Also, I grabbed FLScanII and it said something about a parsing error related to the SHIPS folder, but I can’t find what’s causing that, if anything, unless it’s something outside said folder making it unreadable.

Gold_Sear

Crash offset?

Wixelt

It’s really going to show how green I am in regard to modding, but I don’t know what you’re asking me for.

Gold_Sear

You might wanna read this, some of it might be outdated though. XP had that nice feature that when an application crashed, it showed the crash offset in the ‘Tell Microsoft about this problem’ window that popped up. In these days, you have to find the crash offset using EventViewer, if I recall correctly.

Wixelt

Not quite sure how to interpret it as far as the W10 version of the viewer goes, and i’m not even sure i’m looking at the right events (no references to a ‘Freelancer-Server’ found, and am only finding results for just ‘freelancer’), but I did locate this Application Error from around the time I was probably trying to run the modded game (though repeat attempts haven’t created any new error logs despite continued pre-menu crash outs):

Faulting application name: Freelancer.exe, version: 1.0.1223.11, time stamp: 0x3e401b79
Faulting module name: Freelancer.exe, version: 1.0.1223.11, time stamp: 0x3e401b79
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x001531ef
Faulting process ID: 0x255c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6563a5bb70e63
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\EXE\Freelancer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\EXE\Freelancer.exe
Report ID: bc5df5a3-7538-416d-832c-1f28116ce520
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

This is followed literally one second later by an error report log:

Fault bucket 326222296, type 1
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: Freelancer.exe
P2: 1.0.1223.11
P3: 3e401b79
P4: Freelancer.exe
P5: 1.0.1223.11
P6: 3e401b79
P7: c0000005
P8: 001531ef
P9:
P10:

Attached files:
\?\C:\Users\Will\AppData\Local\Freelancer\FLSpew.txt
\?\C:\Users\Will\AppData\Local\Temp\dxdiag.txt
\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERD5E1.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERD5F2.tmp.xml
\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERD601.tmp.csv
\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERD621.tmp.txt

These files may be available here:
\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppCrash_Freelancer.exe_44c1b8ced3e223d934a43c483f83442cf65e22a1_00000000_4e89c42a-49c3-4e58-9fcb-5bf73f370d0c

Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: bc5df5a3-7538-416d-832c-1f28116ce520
Report Status: 268435456
Hashed bucket: 59451ed260a60bd5e8b949da8f82ea38
Cab Guid: 0

adoxa

That address seems to be due to a bad solar in a system file.

[Object]
archetype = this_solar_is_not_found

```There should be a spew message: ArchDB::Get(_hash_) failed. Use CRCTool (GUI) or CreateID/WhatIs (CLI) to convert hash back to name.

Wixelt

No ArchDB in FLSpew, so i’m beginning to suspect that the error log I posted might actually be from what I was working on before the crash issue, as that involved solar objects. There’s no major errors related to Freelancer that are newer than it, though, so I can only assume the load crash isn’t creating error logs.

The FLSpew, did, however, contain the following in its final few lines:

E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Common\Archetype.cpp(132) : *** ERROR: Loaded 'Ship' has no nickname .. not adding to database.
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Common\Archetype.cpp(1643) : *** WARNING: [Ship] nickname = 0x0 value is not unique. Aborted second version.
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Common\Archetype.cpp(868) : *** WARNING: [Simple] nickname = 0x8bbbb587 value is not unique. Aborted second version.
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Common\Archetype.cpp(868) : *** WARNING: [Simple] nickname = 0xa06c930c value is not unique. Aborted second version.
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Client\main.cpp(556) : *** ERROR: Couldn't load content.dll! Error code 127
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Client\nn\NN_Chat.cpp(1362) : NOTICE:General:Channel add successful.
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Client\nn\NN_Chat.cpp(1362) : NOTICE:General:Channel add successful.
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Client\nn\NN_Chat.cpp(1362) : NOTICE:General:Channel add successful.
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\RPCLocal\RPCServer.cpp(62) : *** ERROR: Connect - failed to LoadLibrary(server.dll)
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\DALib\DALib.cpp(376) : WARNING:General:******* DA SYSTEM: trailing references *******
E:\FL\Scratch\Source\DALib\DALib.cpp(376) : WARNING:General:******* DA SYSTEM: trailing references *******

adoxa

No nickname and nickname of 0 are probably the same thing. The simples are [c]or_elite_dmg_star_wing_cap[/c] and [c]or_elite_dmg_port_wing_cap[/c]. Copy of Anubis?

Wixelt

adoxa wrote:
No nickname and nickname of 0 are probably the same thing. The simples are [c]or_elite_dmg_star_wing_cap[/c] and [c]or_elite_dmg_port_wing_cap[/c]. Copy of Anubis?

I do have one, yes, though I plan to replace the model if I ever get better at modelling. That said, the dupe’s been there for a while now and hadn’t been causing issues.

Wixelt

I think, after accidentally bricking my game files by accident several times trying to work it out, i’ve managed to narrow it down to one line from FLSpew for what’s probably causing this crash.

E:\FL\Scratch\Source\RPCLocal\RPCServer.cpp(62) : *** ERROR: Connect - failed to LoadLibrary(server.dll)

It’s not able to load the server.dll for some reason (my mod doesn’t have a unique server.dll to replace the basic one). I’ve double checked this by trying to load a server rather than start the game, and I run into an error there flat out.