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.             SAVE GAME FORMAT FOR EYE OF THE BEHOLDER ]i[
.             
    Written (and researched) by Predator for the interests of public  .
                                 sanity                               .
                                                                      


THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE FREELY BE CUT APART, CHANGED, 
UPDATED, KILLED, TRASHED, RE-DISTRIBUTED IN WHATEVER WAY YOU LIKE. IF 
SOMEONE MAKES A SAVE GAME EDITOR FROM THE INFORMATION IN THIS FILE, 
PLEASE REMEMBER TO GIVE APPROPRIATE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT WHERE DUE!

As I promised in my previous document on Eye of the Beholder 2, yes, 
what all of you EOB 3 players have been waiting for, the information on 
how to edit your save games!

EOB 3 uses a different save game structure to EOB 2 for no apparent 
reason, even making the game play slower than EOB 2. I have been able to 
figure out this new format to the best of my abilities and it should be 
correct.

You may also want to refer to a previous document by me which details 
how the save games for EOB 3 are structured (which save game files do 
what, etc). In fact, that very document should be included in this 
archive as EOB3SAV.NFO since this document will probably end up getting 
distributed more widely than that one did.

If you want to edit your save game, it is always a wise idea to back up 
the game that you will be altering. Often, just on erred byte will cause 
the game to crash so a backup is wise.

If you are going to alter the game, you are going to have to modify the 
items_*.bin file, the other save game files for your save games only 
hold stuff on where you are in the level, what you have done, etc. Don't 
try and alter these because you will probably find that they are just 
too complicated to figure out. So, to edit say your first save game you 
are going to have to edit items_01.bin. If you were going to edit your 
second save game it would be items_02.bin, you get the picture

To edit the game you will need a decent Hex editor, one that I find the 
best and use for editing most save games is the Hex Editor part of Xtree 
Gold, you'll probably find it the best too. You'll also need some 
knowledge of hex and how it operates, if you don't well go and read up 
about it! This document may be a little wrong in some instances (though 
I hope not) because every save game will be different, so often you will 
have to experiment for yourself. If a byte isn't where I say it is, 
chances are that it is somewhere nearby....

Each main heading in this document will be in order of where it will 
appear in the items_*.bin file, so the first heading will be the first 
thing to look for after the characters name you are going to alter. 

Oh yeah, here is a chart of common Hex/decimal values if you haven't got 
a scientific calculator, a calculator is recommended though for more 
complex numbers. If you haven't got a hand-held one, there is a nice one 
that comes with Windows 3.x, that is just as good, make sure though that 
you switch it from standard to scientific mode though. More instructions 
on this are found in the Window's dox and online help.

Decimal		Hex	Decimal		Hex	Decimal		Hex
01		01	11		0B	21		15
02		02	12		0C	22		16
03		03	13		0D	23		17
04		04	14		0E	24		18
05		05	15		0F	25		19
06		06	16		10	26		1A
07		07	17		11	27		1B
08 		08	18		12	28		1C
09		09	19		13	29		1D
10		0A	20		14	30		1E


Hope you find this document useful, if not well bad luck.

BTW : For the ignorant -  A byte is one hexidecimal value, eg:AF

                           -=<> Predator <>=-
                      06.07.93 (my birthday, yay!)

WHERE TO START 
--------------
Load up the items_*.bin file that you are going to be editing and scroll 
through it until you come to the character's name and the character that 
you are going to edit. At the start of the items_*.bin is a whole lot of 
stuff that you don't need to worry about, you just need to be concerned 
with the information under the character's name. If you can do this, you 
are half-way there in being able to edit your characters! 

FACES and CHARACTER TYPE
------------------------
When you have found the character's name, look across until you come to 
the first set of non 00 values, there should be two in succession. These 
will be the character's face (as it will appear during the game) and the 
character's character class (mage, fighter, thief, etc). Changing the 
character's class is sometimes very useful when you get to some points 
in the game where you require a certain character to do something. 
Changing the face has no real value to game play, but it does allow you 
to change your face to some of the NPC characters which you can't 
usually do. You can also have a male face on a female character and 
vise-versa though this is really only for novelty(?!) value.

example of face and character type bytes: 02 3A
					 1st 2nd byte

The first byte controls which class the character is and can be changed 
to another class if you want to. Here are a list of the classes and 
their hex values:

00 - Fighter     06 - Fighter/cleric            0C - Fighter/cleric/mage
01 - Ranger      07 - Fighter/thief             0D - Ranger/cleric
02 - Paladin     08 - Fighter/mage              0E - Cleric/mage
03 - Mage        09 - Fighter/mage/thief
04 - Cleric      0A - Thief/mage
05 - Thief       0B - Cleric/thief

If you change from a single classed to multi-classed character, make 
sure that you place the level for the other class(es) after the level of 
the character's first class (see the section: character level). If you 
don't, the character will have a level of 0 which will mean that that 
other class is basically useless. The best thing about changing a
character's class is that you can have multi-classed humans!

The second byte in this sequence controls which face the character has 
during the game. Here is a list of some of the better faces or unusual 
ones and some of the NPC faces which you can't usually use. It isn't all 
of them since there are quite a few of them, try experimenting for the 
faces that you like....

Male faces:

3A - Knight with red plume
4C - Dwarf - helmet and black beard

Female faces:

3C - Woman with long red hair

NPC faces:

4A - Lizardman
50 - Pixie looking face
54 - Mysterious looking wizard with grey face and purple hood

CHARACTER LEVEL
---------------
Following the face and character type bytes is the bytes that allow you 
to change the level of the character. If the character is multi-classed 
the level for each of the other classes will follow the first byte. 
Change this value to anything you like, though too high a value may 
crash the game. Around level 18 (12 in hex) is about all you will need 
to complete the game easily. 

HIT POINTS
----------
Hit points are the next series of bytes that you will find after the 
character level. It takes the form of two bytes seperated by a 00, 
current hitpoints and total hitpoints. I think the first one is the 
current hitpoints and the second byte is the total hitpoints for the 
character. Edit them both to around FE (254 hitpoints), which is all 
that you will need against even the most toughest of opponents

EXPERIENCE POINTS
-----------------
After hitpoints there seem to be two bytes which appear to do nothing 
(well do nothing when changed). Ignoring them, after that will be a 
series of around three bytes for experience points. When changing the 
experience points you will need to put them in half reverse order for 
them to work properly, eg: 60000 XP (EA 60 in hex) would actually appear 
as 06 EA. It is a bit hard to explain, so just enter the right hex 
values for the digits and then re-arange them so the game reads them in 
the order you want them to. For multi-classed characters, the experience 
for the other classes will follow the experience for the first class. 
For a single classed character, after the experience will be a series of 
null characters, FF which is where you can add experience if you change 
the character to multi-class.

STATISTICS
----------
All of the character's statistics such as strength, intelligence, 
dexterity, etc follow the characters experience points. Each statistic 
takes the form of one byte for each value. After the strength statistic 
there is an extra byte for percentage strength, changing this to 64 hex 
(100 decimal) is the maximum that you can have. You can change all of 
the values to either 18 (0C in hex) or 21 (15 in hex). 18 is what the 
game will allow you to have normally, 21 is what the game allows you to 
have through special spells, items, etc. Having 21 for the character's 
abilities may crash the game at some points so 18 is recommended.

ITEMS
-----
Sorry folks! It appears that you can't (easily) edit the items in the 
Eye of the Beholder 3 since they use a completely different structure to 
EOB 2 which seems too tricky to figure out. It appears that the game 
uses pointers (you will know what I mean if you are a programmer), to 
determine which items a character has, though I could be wrong. Anyway, 
I'll try and examine the save files for knowledge on how to edit the 
items, but until I discover the format it looks you will have to be 
content with fiddling with the statistics only. If I do, I'll post an 
updated version of this doc.....

WHERE TO FIND THE PREDATOR!
---------------------------
If you have any queries or have any trouble I can be reached at the 
following as Gordon Craick. If someone figures out the format for the 
items in the game it would also be greatly useful if they could 
enlighten me on the subject......

Internet: pred@cloud.apana.org.au

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