TDU Savegame Hacking

[Sambo]

Ok, so I want to hack my TDU savegame. Mainly because I sold my Alfa Romeo 8C by mistake and now I can't freekin' buy it again!! There are 2 approaches that I can think of to fix this. 1) hack the savegame to make it appear as if I haven't bought it yet, or 2) hack the savegame to make it appear as if I haven't won the 'tour of the island' race yet (which unlocks this car). The other approach was to modify the car itself to be a 'non reward' car, but that's a different kind of hack.

Firstly, are there any pre-existing tools out there to hack TDU savegames (not just money hacks etc)? I've looked for quite a while but can't find any.

Secondly, I've used the TDUDec tool to decrypt my savegame, but to be honest, it may as well still be encrypted because I sure as hell can't make a lot of sense out of it!! (attached). Is there any easy(er) way to interpret / hack this or am I going to have to do it the hard way (do something in-game then compare save games)?

Any assistance greatly appreciated :D

[Sethioz]

i took a quick look into my playersave and as i tought, it is game data and it is not really in editable format.
it is very rare if game uses 'readable' format in save. usually game's save is always a mess, because this is the way that game maps the save. however if you do find right place, yes you can edit them.

I remember there was some guide how to edit resident evil 3 savegame. it was mess too, but they found the right place in HEX. also i did same in colin mcrae rally 05, however it was lil bit easier there. there was certain bytes that controlled the unlockable things and yes i used just the method you mentioned. i made a change, saved and checked the file.

to make it easier for you, make a .bat file to decrypt it and use fullpaths, so it decrypts it to your desktop or wherever you work with your files. then run tdu in window mode, make a change, decrypt, open it in hex and check for changes.
actually you can use Tsearch too. it is VERY good method btw.
i never tought about it before, here's quick guide:

1. make .bat file that will decrypt file from your savegame/ folder to your desktop
2. use XVI32 to open that decrypted file (xvi32, because it is very small)
3. now open Tsearch and open XVI32 as process
4. search for unknown
5. now ingame, make a small change (like buy or sell car) and save (i think it autosaves)
6. decrypt the file again by replacing the one you had on desktop (tdudec should replace if file exist or asks, replace it)
7. in xvi32 either reopen the file or refresh it if possible (xvi32 should ask you - file has changed, reload ?, say yes)
8. in Tsearch, search for "has changed" on 1 byte.

now it should only list you the changed bytes and i don't think there's many of them.
what i can think of, if you buy car, then the following things should change:
- taken car lot (where your previous car went)
- car you are driving (equipped car)
- play time
- money
maybe some small changes, but that should be main stuff, then you can convert those bytes into dec and see what are the values. for example to find money (you can just make more sense out of it like this).

NOTE: this is only a theory, i have never tried it, but im sure it will work fine.

[Sambo]

Ok, tried that, but I'm not getting any good results.

I've attached the 'before' and 'after' save game files (you should be able to evaluate these without having the game running). Basically I completed a 'collection' challenge by purchasing my 3rd Chevrolet and gained 10 rank points (from 400 to 410). I followed your suggestions and also tried searching for 'has increased by 10' in 2, 4 & 8 byte sizes, however there were no values in these search results which were at 410.

BTW, I think we need to be searching on more than 1 byte values because the total possible range for rank is 0-1000 and 1 byte only gives you up to 255. I also tried your original search suggestion with 2, 4 & 8 byte values, but there were just too many results. Also, I tried searching the original save file for 'exact value = 400' and then I was going to load the modified save file, search for '410' and then look for common addresses. However, there are still too many values returned via this method (~1000) and I can't find a way to export the results in plain text in order to evaluate them with another application.

Maybe it's easier just to find a pre-existing rank trainer? I've looked but I haven't been able to locate one as yet :_(

[Sethioz]

nah you did it wrong, you did too much. you only need to sell or purchase car, not race. there will be too many changes.
however i got it down to 261 results on 4 bytes.
XVI32 has changing addresses too, so you would have to do lot of 'not changed'. for example i opened .400, then i did unknown and switched between .410 and .400 for few times and left .400 open and did 'not changed'. i did that few times. right now im down on 261 addresses.

problem with rank points, might be that they are not same in save file as they are in game. in game they maybe 410, but in save file they might be something like 420894892332. i do not know how savegame works in tdu. as i said, in most games it does not make sense, unless you are developer and know how it is mapped.
i got it to 240 actually, but manually picking out 0s (zeros), because obviously it is not 0.

i also came up with the % search, but it didn't work as i wanted. Tsearch is stupid in that area, because it does not have the option "increased by %" or "decreased by %". i know the exact %, not less or more. basically you can do "less than by %" and then "more than by %" which should give the result, but its not same as exact %.
so i tried that 10 % of 400 is 2.5%, i tried to do "less than by 2.6%" and then "more than by 2.4%", but didnt work on 4 bytes. however ive messed up in Tsearch before too, where first try is same as second, but i fail in first.
sometimes i just mislook things and think it was correct.
you can try and see what you can come up with.


ok enought of blabla, i was just saying what i found out in Tsearch. i have better method, which will get you results 100%.
there are about 50 addresses in total that change.
simply use HEX workshop's compare feature. it opens 2 files simultanously and highlights the differences (not all, but like search, cliking 'next' key shows next difference).
so you simply change the differences back and see what did what.

there is one part that is very confusing, the part where in 400 it says that "LAMBORGHINI COLLECTOR", but in same place in 410, it says "CHEVROLET COLLECTOR".
did you bought a chevy and got it unlocked ? it might be the last news, but if you did not bought chevy, then its really weird.
however there's not many differences, so just try replacing them from start. Im quite sure that the places you are looking for are at beginning of the file.

[Sambo]

Unfortunately the only way to change rank is to do something like buy a car (to complete a collection challenge) or do a race. Buying a car was the challenge with the least save game changes that I could find.

I thought about changing the differences, but it's pretty hard to know what to change (how much) and it would be easy to corrupt the save game by doing this.

In any case, I had a thought about 'unlocking' the 8C, I swapped the car ID number with another Alfa and now the 8C is considered an unlocked car and I can buy it again! :D So problem solved really!

Thanks for all your help with this tho! I really appreciate your time!

[Sethioz]

well you wanted to get your Alfa back at first, not to change rank points, but i meant replace it back, not put your own values. you just replace differences in 410 with 400 file again. just part by part. as i said theres only about 50 of them in total.

it would be very, very helpful if you could map the savegame for others.

as about id changing, im quite sure that in carphysics, there was field that controlled if car is 'special' or normal. i just know that i saw it somewhere, but not sure if it was carphysics or not.

[Sambo]

as about id changing, im quite sure that in carphysics, there was field that controlled if car is 'special' or normal. i just know that i saw it somewhere, but not sure if it was carphysics or not.

Yeah, I thought so too. Considering that I changed only the ID in the physics file and the car became unlocked, there must be a list somewhere else which lists IDs and designates them as 'special' or 'normal'. I had a bit of a look around to see if I could find the list, but was unable to.

simply use HEX workshop's compare feature. it opens 2 files simultanously and highlights the differences (not all, but like search, cliking 'next' key shows next difference).
so you simply change the differences back and see what did what.

you just replace differences in 410 with 400 file again. just part by part. as i said theres only about 50 of them in total.

I sort of understand what you're saying here, but I'm not 100% sure how to identify where the 400-410 differences are using this method. I can't seem to find 400 in hex when I do a hex search on the savegames; I'm searching for '01 90', is that correct??

[Sethioz]

no. what i mean is that 400 is not 400 in savedata. as i said, it's probably something like 89328942 this.
theres under 100 differences. start replacing the strings and see what changed.

so only way is to replace random differences and see what effect it has. try monitoring all the obvious things like: time, challenge done/undone, selected car, bought cars, news..etc.