Basic editing/inventory questions

[jnt62006]

Being a military man I have a real problem with a professional mercenary showing up for an assignment with nothing but his fingernails to fight with and no real opportunity to get his hands on some good equipment.

That being said...

1. Can someone provide a short tutorial on how the inventory editor works?

2. Is there a one stop shop for all this great equipment in the game?

3. If I use the Shop cheat is there a way to get rid of the "Cheater" title?

4. And most of all.... How do I open a .azp file?

Really enjoy this game, as I have the previous versions. Any help would really be appreciated.

Thanks

[Dr.Q]

If you play with the Blue Sun mod - which you should - your mercs luggage has only been lost in transit. Take Travis' taxi or go to Santa Maria yourself, do the drunkard's mission and you'll get a free merc, a car, and he might eventually remember where your luggage went. No need to cheat just follow the storyline

[MoreDread]

to open .azp files you need the .azp tool.
there was a link on strategyfirst .. the forums are down now.. i think R@S also posted one in here somewhere.

theres a total commander plugin for it which people say makes it easier to use.. but i just create batch files...
if you run windows' command line app you can just run the file and see all the options... like 'azp.exe x yourazp.azp' will unpack yourazp.azp

look around... if you can't find it after searching for an hour or so let me know and i'll upload it again.

i can't tell you much about the inventory editor, haven't really succesfully done anything with it myself.

one way to get items without the cheater name is to open the console and write cgl 14(might have to experiment with different values), then wait a bit until the game restocks the stores with items...
they will now sell alot of guns, addons, vests etc
you can alter your starting money in the outsourced ini in the ini folder... so that way you can get almost any item from the start of the game without beeing called a cheater. of course you can set your cgl back to 1 again after that .. but that makes it waaay to easy if you ask me...

+ you won't be able to buy ammo for most weapons.
you can however sell empty magazines and buy them back refilled.


btw.. when editing the inventory files you will notice that they indeed do contain items already, even tho you start with nothing.
it's like Dr.Q says... the starting equipment gets placed somewhere else, so your best bet is to just go along with the story and talk to paquito in santa maria

[Chortles]

Originally Posted by jnt62006

Being a military man I have a real problem with a professional mercenary showing up for an assignment with nothing but his fingernails to fight with and no real opportunity to get his hands on some good equipment.

That being said...

1. Can someone provide a short tutorial on how the inventory editor works?

On using the inventory editor, just create a separate shortcut ("7.62 Editor") that has the "-editor" modifier. (i.e. "drive:/Games/7.62/E6.exe -editor"); this program is used to edit the inventory files (".inv") in the InventoryINI folder for a given NPC's starting gear*. By default it's meant for the main roster (in "InventoryINI/Preset") but you can also use it to edit named and generic NPC inventories.

After loading an inventory file you'll see three columns: "Variants" on the left, "Stages" immediately adjacent to it, and "Templates" on the right, and a "Variant money" field under the Variants column. I haven't worked with the Templates column yet, but when working with the main roster you'll see a single "Template 1," on the Variants column; to change the merc's starting gear, click "edit variant." "New variant/template," "delete variant/template" and "To variants/templates" are self-explanatory.

Once you're editing a variant/template, you'll have a Shop screen with Cameron's face as a placeholder labeled "Test," a generic $1000000 (no actual money cost involved)... and 100 each of almost everything in stock. This part should be self-explanatory.

If you want a longer explanation, specifically about the "variants," read on:

**

Now, when working with generic NPCs (i.e. "BS_Soldier") the variants become more important; I'm guessing that "stage" = CGL, so there seems to be 16 stages. When you select a variant, you will see that several stages are greyed out, by default roughly corresponding to the variant number. (For example, with "BS_Soldier" variants 1-3 each have stages 1-3 "greyed out," variants 4-8 have stages 4-7, variants 9-15 have stages 8-11, and variants 16-20 have stages 12-16.) Likewise, each variant has a certain Variant Money range, i.e. variant 1 has 50-100, variant 2 has 50-150. My understanding is that in effect when an encounter with generic NPCs occurs, depending on your CGL they're chosen (at random/semi-random?) from the variants corresponding, and "variant money" is the given min/max amount of paper currency they might have on their bodies.

EXAMPLE: At CGLs 1-3 you may face a soldier wielding an Uzi and up to $100, but he might instead have a Walther P99 (in .40 S&W) and up to $150, or a "H&K MP5PDW" and up to $200. By CGLs 4-7 though they've got helmets and load-bearing vests and wield M1As, 870 Magnums, MP5/40 A4s, MP5A5s, and even MP5A5+M203 combos, all three of the latter using double-taped magazines... plus possibly more money on their bodies.

* I haven't pitted this against the beginning of BSM though.