Vercettus command line utility

Intention

The intention of this small tool is to read Vice City savegames and write them to a .yaml file. You can modify that yaml file and then have this tool apply the changes you made to the original savegame file.

This is currently in development and I don't know how far I'll push it. So far, you can edit the car generator section and apply your changes to the original savegame. Car generators are responsible for respawning cars, helicopters and boats at certain predefined locations in the game.

For example, I placed an apaci on the roof of the estate :-) (Helicopters seem to count as cars, for all data structure intents and purposes)

You can modify the existing car generators and add a few new ones, until the few extra bytes available in the savegame file run out. You can change the locked and alarm flags and set the colors of the cars. You can also fiddle with the coordinates.

Steps

BACKUP your savegames!

Export the savegame to yaml:

vercettus -c "C:\path\to\your\savegame" -o sg.yaml

edit sg.yaml

Apply your changes:

vercettus -i sg.yaml -o "C:\path\to\your\savegame"

Couple Notes

It is recommended that you apply the .yaml file to the same savegame file you generated it from. While it is possible to apply it to a different savegame file, this may cause unanticipated results. For example, each car generator has a "next generation time" timestamp stored on it. Now, if you were to generate a .yaml file from a pretty advanced game state and to import it to a lesser one, your in-game timers may be much smaller than the ones set on the cars, leading to the car generators to not work until you wait a lot of time. You have been warned.

More notes

• Patches welcome! :-) I'd also like to hear from happy users.

• This currently only works with the PC steam edition of the game.

Even more notes

This utility would not have been possible without the stuff found at various websites, most notably https://gtamods.com/wiki/Saves_(GTA_VC)

Excerpt of a yaml file:

---
- []
- preamble:
    last_mission_passed: "Hog Tied"
    w_year: 2020
    w_month: 7
    w_day_of_week: 2
    [...]
  car_generators:
    process_counter: 1
    generate_even_if_player_is_close_counter: 0
    active_car_generators: 131
    generators:
      - vehicle: Deluxo
        coordinates:
          x: -1022.5999755859375
          y: -868.5999755859375
          z: 12.21500015258789
        heading: 175.0
        primary_color: 65535
        secondary_color: 65535
        force_spawn: true
        alarm: false
        lock: false
        min_delay: 0
        max_delay: 10000
        game_timer_when_car_is_generated: 61
        vehicle_index: -1
        is_on: false
        recently_stolen: false
      [...]