
                           

     DISCLAIMER!! ͻ
                                                     
      THIS UTILITY IS TO BE USED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!  
                                                     
      AS WITH ANY UTILITY, BACK UP YOUR SAVED GAME   
      BEFORE RUNNING!!                               
                                                     
    ͼ


SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION II

UNCHEAT UTILITY DOCUMENATION


This is a quick utility that allows you to remove the 
fact that you opened cheat mode from a saved game.  
It doesn't have any effect on gameplay.  It is useful
for hiding the fact that you cheated and maybe seeing
what your score would have been if you had played fair 
when you conquered the world on diety level in 3800 BC
with a population of 60 million and had already been 
reasearching future techs for the last 100 years.
                                                 
If you're like me and you don't like "cheat mode" on
the screen in red letters when your game is over and  
you would prefer to be able to cheat without getting 
caught and punished, here is the utility for you!

You can now open cheat mode, cheat until your fingers
get tired, run this utility and never be penalized
for it when the game is over.

VERY simple to use.

Copy the uncheat utility into the directory where 
games are saved.

At the DOS prompt, just type   
 
   uncheat filename.sav

where [filename] is the name of the game.  You must
type the [.sav] extension.  You can also specify a 
path before the filename is desired.

If you forget this, just type uncheat at the prompt
and a reminder will appear.

After running, you will get one of three messages:

filename.ext was not found.
    
    possible causes
    
    (a) uncheat.exe is in the wrong directory.
        Make sure uncheat.exe is in the same directory       
        as the saved game files.  Alternatively, you 
        can specify a path before the file name.  
        
        example: 
        uncheat c:\civ2\saves\mongols\gk_b2000.sav    
                                    
    (b) the filename was mistyped.
        Verify the spelling is correct.  Be careful
        you don't confuse the hyphen "-" with the 
        underscore "_" character for default names.
    
    (c) the [.sav] extension was ommitted.
        Make sure to include the extension.


cheat mode was not enabled.
    
    possible causes
    
    (a) cheat mode was never enabled.  There is nothing
        to alter.
    
    (b) cheat mode was enabled and then turned back off.
        Cheat mode must be enabled (the cheat options
        not grayed out) for this utility to work.  Try 
        turning cheat mode on again if you turned it off
        when you finished using it.


success!

    This means that you have opened cheat mode in 
    this saved game and the game has registered 
    your cheating.  This has been erased and the 
    game now thinks you've been playing fair.
    

I have used this utility and never had any problem
with it.  That is not to say you won't, so backup
your games first.  I wouldn't expect any problems 
though.  

I don't plan on writing an editor or making a 
version 2.00 of this utility.  If someone spots a 
glaring bug that causes your hard drive to be 
reformatted without prompting you, I might write a
version 1.01.  But if someone reports a bug that only 
occurs after some highly unlikely sequence of events 
such as when they use the utility in the year 0 AD 
when a wonder was completed in that year and there 
are only two civilizations left on diety level and 
now they can't find a settler unit, then I would
say that person is out of luck unless he backed up 
his game like he should have. After all, I warned him
twice in this documentation already.

Seriously, this game alters two bytes in the file, and
I don't expect any problems.  I tested it before I 
turned it loose.

For all you technical types:

Here are the bytes and changes made.  Byte locations
are rigid; they don't change locations with changes in
parameters such as map or file size.

byte 0x0f  If this byte starts with 0x3- then cheat mode 
           is disabled.  Opening cheat mode causes this 
           value to be incremented by 0x80 to 0xb-.  If 
           you then turn off cheat mode, this value is 
           returned to its original value.

           example 
                   before cheating byte 0x0f = 0x34
                    after cheating byte 0x0f = 0xb4

           If byte 0x0f's value is 0xb- then this utility 
           subtracts 0x80 from it.

byte 0x14  This byte is incremented by 0x10 when cheat
           mode is enabled.  If byte 0x0f's value is 0xb-
           then this value is also decremented by 0x10 
           when the utility is run.

           example

                      byte 0x0f           byte 0x14
   before cheating      0x36                0x14
   after cheating       0xb6                0x24
   utility action   subtract 0x80       subtract 0x10

I am curious what byte 0x14 is linked to in the saved 
file; somewhere it is compared to another byte and the 
result of this comparison is used to determine if any 
cheating took place. I can't tell, so I simply check 
byte 0x0f.  If you cheat and turn cheat mode off then
this utility fails to recognize it.

If you find out what byte 0x14 is keyed to, let me know!


Have fun and remember, if you use this to show off your
playing skill to others, don't overdo it.  Keep it 
believable.  I am curious how high of a score you can 
get with it, so if you get a truly astronomical score,
drop me a note.

Enjoy.

-Steven C. Schultz
sschultz@crl.com











