SEGA GENESIS SHADOWRUN SAVE STATE HACKING GUIDE
version 1.00
by Crowley 6/16/2001

This guide will give instructions on how to change the graphics, name, race
and profession of the 'runners in the game, mainly superficial stuff. It
will NOT tell you how to alter the stats, money, deck cyberware or inventory.
This is partially because I do not wish to make a guide to cheating and
partially because the right bytes can be easily located and altered by anyone
with little experience with hex editing.

Please feel free to copy and distribute this guide as you like, but please do
not alter the contents within. This will be in all likelihood the first, only
and final version. If you have anything to say about this guide, you can
contact me via [email protected]

To make any use of the instructions provided here, you need a Sega Genesis/
Megadrive emulator, a ROM image of Shadowrun and a hex editor (preferably one
that can work with both characters and hexes). Also previous experience with
hexediting won't hurt. This guide has been tested on Genecyst, KGen98 and
WGens, but I assume it will work with the save states any other emulators.

A WORD OF WARNING: Always be very careful when hexediting. I recommend making
a backup copy of the file you are about to edit (or, in this case, save to a
different slot). And here's a little tip I use: when you start to hexedit a
file, first take note of the size of the file. If you notice that after you
are done, the file is smaller or bigger than when you started, try to locate
where there is a byte missing or one too many, and fix it. If you cannot do
that, reload the file discarding changes and try again.

USE THIS GUIDE AT YOUR OWN RISK! Hexediting can really mess up the file you're
working with if you're not careful. I will not take responsibility of any
damage that may be caused.

CHANGING THE NAME:

Ok, let's get started. Open the save state with a hex editor, and search for
the name 'Joshua' on the character side. (I'll use Joshua as an example, but
you can edit any other 'runner (in your group) with virtually the same
procedures, just refer to his/her information.) On the hex side it will look
like this:

20 20 20 4A 6F 73 68 75 61 20 20 20 20

The 20s are blank spaces. The six hexes between them spells out Joshua.
Replace these bytes with something else if you want to change the name. Use
the hex value 20 for blanks. I will not go into much detail here. Just
remember to make sure that the name + blanks is 13 bytes in lenght, no more,
no less.

CHANGING THE PICTURE:

The first four hexes before the name (including the blanks) should be
00 04 00 07. These are coordinates that are used to determine what part of
the picture of the 'runner is used for the small picture that is shown on
the right-hand side of the main game screen. The two hexes before the
coordinates determine the actual picture that is shown in the status screen
of the 'runner. There's one more byte we need before we change anything. The
44th hex before the name controls the color cycling of the picture. It has
only three possible values: 20, 40 or 60. We'll need to change the picture,
the coordinates and the cycling value. The table below shows values you need
to change the picture. I only know how the change the picture to that of
another 'runner. I will use their names as a reference. If you want to know
what they look like, find them in the game or experiment with these values.
Using values other than these will result in garbled images.

                       Picture         Coordinates             Cycle
Joshua(samurai)         20 FA           00 04 00 07             20
Joshua(decker)          22 3A           00 04 00 07             20
Joshua(shaman)          21 9A           00 04 00 07             20
Petr Uvehr              24 BA           00 14 00 03             60
Stark                   28 7A           00 08 00 09             60
Walking Bear            25 5A           00 14 00 05             60
Ricky                   22 DA           00 14 00 01             20
Winston Marrs           23 7A           00 04 00 0B             40
Ilene Two-Fists         26 9A           00 04 7F 00             20
Freya Goldenhair        27 3A           00 04 00 07             40
Rianna Heartbane        27 DA           00 04 00 0A             20
Trent Delisario         24 1A           00 14 FF 01             40
Phantom                 25 FA           00 04 00 04             20

Let's say, for example, that we have Joshua as a samurai and we want to
change him to look like Winston Marrs. The first six hexes before the name
would look like this: 20 FA 00 04 00 07, the first two defining the picture
used and the following four being the coordinates. We'll have to replace the
picture hexes with 23 7A to get the picture we want and the coordinates with
00 04 00 0B. To get the right colors we still need to change the 44th hex
before the name from 20 to 40. Now just save the changes, start the emulator
and load!

CHANGING THE SPRITE:

Now Joshua may look like a troll in the status screen, but that little guy
running around Seattle still looks like a human in a red vest. To change
that, we need to alter the 73rd hex before the name. In Joshua's case, it
should be 03. Here are the values that can be used along with rough
descriptions of the respective sprites:

03 - standard sprite for Joshua (human in red vest)
04 - troll/ork punk
05 - lone star/guard
06 - a woman dressed in body armor
07 - ganger/eye-fiver
08 - ganger/halloweener
09 - trenchcoat and a hat
0A - a woman in normal(?) clothes
0B - dwarf/civilian
0C - hellhound
0D - gargoyle (NOTE: makes the 'runner jump around like one)
0E - hellhound

Values other than these will result in weird sprites, such as explosions
and fire.

Also note that the color cycling affects some of the colors in the sprite.
For example 20 results in a blue trenchcoat, 40 in green and 60 in light
brown.

CHANGING RACE AND PROFESSION:

The bytes which define the race and profession of the 'runner are the 54th
and 55th hexes after the name (counting from the last blank space)
respectively. Here are the values for these:

RACE:                   PROFESSION:
00 - human              00 - mage
01 - elf                01 - shaman
02 - dwarf              02 - samurai
03 - ork                03 - decker
04 - troll

When you change the race the attribute maximums will be adjusted accordingly
(elves can have quickness 7 etc.). The only thing the profession really
affects is the ability to use magic (only mages and shamans can do it) and
magic items.

ONE MORE THING:

If you edited a shaman, it may be appropriate to ditch that totem. The totem
is always in the last inventory space, so go to the 9th hex after the name.
Gator totem is marked as 2A, Rat is 29 and Bear is 2B. Now just replace the
totem with 00, and there you have it.


This document is copyright 2001 Timo Takalo

You are viewing proxied material from gopher.endangeredsoft.org. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.