What Hex Editor(s) do you use / would you recommend?

EDIT I’ve renamed the topic title from “A good free (or cheap) Hex Editor?” because maybe there isn’t one and I want to know what y’all use.

Hello,

Delving into the old files again to do me some modding

Last time that I looked into the code files, I was lucky to have some version of Hex Workshop. Unfortunately I lost that. Could someone recommend a good* free (or, second choice, cheap) hex editor?

*With ‘good’ I mean: for the purpose of easily and conveniently adjusting/applying the Dev’s Limit Breaking 101 Techniques kind of stuff? Iirc, in Hex Workshop I could go to an offset and then use a popup that could render its value in all kinds of (alpha-)numericals, i.e. integer, single and double signed etc. (so, it was easy to find and adjust things like “Freelancer.exe, 91605, 3000i” (the min size of universe map stars)). In programs like HxD and Frhed, that particular functionality seems absent; I can find the offset, but the values can only be rendered and adjusted in hex (which is beyond my knowledge and probably my comfort zone, especially when I know it can be so easy).

Thanks!

Thanks! That’s better than the ones I tried (and it didn’t show up in the first few hist at google)

A question about this though. How can I use the Value Editor to edit integers? E.g. the size of stars on the universe map:

Freelancer.exe, 91605, 3000i, min size of universe map stars ~adoxa

When I go to ofset 91605 (0x091605) and use the Value Editor, I see all these options:

Closest to my layman’s eyes is the “± COMP (int/Float)” option, but it renders a value nowhere near 3000. I have, some time ago, already scaled down the size, but the value should still be somewhere in the same league, and I could be mistaken, but “2.31605146357648666E18” is not some fancy way to say “2316”, is it? (I must have scaled down to somewhere around 2000-2500; I likely would have picked a neat number like 2000 or 2500.)

So, how to proceed? (In Hex Workshop, this was a no-brainer. Iirc, I could actually see the values mentioned in your -and others’- scripts in the DEV Limit’s thread.)

Gold_Sear wrote:
@Moonhead
Hey, glad you’re back!

I never ‘officially’ departed, but the hiatuses often last months. This time, my interest was rekindled because I enlisted in Star Citizen — which still isn’t much besides some mini-games, some nice vistas and two spaceports shopping malls where you can run around. I really hope it’ll at one point be the same experience as the freeform (post-storyline) Freelancer!

Gold_Sear wrote:
I would say it’s the Long Word ±, afaik this is the way FL stores signed integers.
On a personal note, I use ICY hexplorer (version 2.6) which is free and, to my opinion, good as in your definiton.

Thanks!!

Also, cool you fixed the non-horizontal tradelane issue!! I might be needing that for my ‘Vedic India’ based systems (a silly idea but one that I had in 2003 or so, when I just learned the basics of adding systems, and why not?)

Laz wrote:

Moonhead wrote:
EDIT I’ve renamed the topic title from “A good free (or cheap) Hex Editor?” because maybe there isn’t one and I want to know what y’all use.

I use Hexplorer, https://sourceforge.net/projects/hexplorer/ . It’s pretty easy to use. You jump to offsets and edit their special values and other such stuff.

Thanks! Btw I hadn’t yet downloaded the ICY hexplorer, so I now downloaded both of them — and unless something went wrong, they’re actually the same program, is that right?