Changing ghost names

[twipley]

Hey everybody! I've just discovered this game, and I'm in love. (laughters.) I like doing ironman runs of Diablo I on a LAN once in a while, but this ASCII game takes it to the root.

I've discovered dead characters can live as ghosts through the "bone" files. However, all of the characters which I created earlier had the same nickname. I'd want to change the ghost names.

a) I mostly just see squares and the ghost name in these bone files. Would I be safe modifying the names using a text editor?

b) Do the ghosts depend on any other file? Because I'm already thinking of cleaning up my folder (read: OCD caprices) and keeping only the ghosts, leaving the already-bulky game folder behind.

c) What is the morgue folder for? EDIT: testing has revealed the "scores" file depends on the related .txt files from the /morgue folder. Editing the "./saves/scores" file to change character names requires one to rename the related morgue files.

d) Is there any risk of incompatibility between the ghost names and the high-score holders doing it in such a manual way (e.g., if names are not the same)?

Thanks in advance! I've searched around but found no (expert) answers on most of these matters.

[twipley]

Has someone tested this yet?

On my side I haven't yet fell on any of my renamed ghosts, despite having travelled in the related levels many times. I have yet to determine if this is merely bad luck, or if something has been screwed up in the process.

EDIT: and I worry having cheated the system, without my will, by corrupting (disabling) these ghosts.

[neil]

1. Make sure your text editor supports binary files without mangling. If you are using vim, for example, you need the -b option.
2. Then, you can just edit the name if you don't change its length in bytes. It is UTF-8 encoded, so non-ASCII characters take more bytes than ASCII. Using a hex editor is probably the best way to ensure that you aren't changing the length.
3. Ghosts are stand-alone, so you should be able to drop them in regardless of what files are elsewhere. They don't depend on the scores file, nor vice versa.

The morgue folder stores end-of-game dumps, character dumps from #, and crash dumps. They aren't necessary: if you remove them, that just means that pressing enter on that entry in the high scores list won't show you the extra information.

[twipley]

[*] Make sure your text editor supports binary files without mangling. If you are using vim, for example, you need the -b option.
[*] Then, you can just edit the name if you don't change its length in bytes. It is UTF-8 encoded, so non-ASCII characters take more bytes than ASCII. Using a hex editor is probably the best way to ensure that you aren't changing the length.

Oh. Dang it. I was fearing that too, by entering names or other lengths. Now, is there any way of knowing which ghost files were corrupted in the process of changing half the names? Should I just leave them there and delete the ones which never get loaded, or would they get loaded anyway and screw things up?

I'd play it on the safe side. If that means deleting every modified ghost, then be it. Although if I knew a way to see if they are corrupted or not (as I do not remember the previous length of most of the names), I'd fix the issue as, on one hand, I feel deleting ghosts is cheating and, on the other, I'd love seeing the ghost of, for example, my first character ever, which died in the Orcish Mines.

[twipley]

EDIT: I've found a morgue-directory backup of mine, the files of which (fortunately) I had forgotten to rename the characters in their content, although I did in the file name. Do you think I would I be safe using the same text editor (XP's Notepad) to edit the names back to what they were?

And, if some remain corrupted in the process, do you think there would be any risk of harm being done to the game (for example, corrupting ongoing characters if the corrupted ghost files get loaded)?

[neil]

EDIT: I've found a morgue-directory backup of mine, the files of which (fortunately) I had forgotten to rename the characters in their content, although I did in the file name. Do you think I would I be safe using the same text editor (XP's Notepad) to edit the names back to what they were?

And, if some remain corrupted in the process, do you think there would be any risk of harm being done to the game (for example, corrupting ongoing characters if the corrupted ghost files get loaded)?

Morgue files can be edited however you want. It's only the bones files, in saves/, that are a problem.

I believe any corrupted bones files will just be ignored with a "Broken bones file" message. At the very worst, it will crash your game when you enter the level in question. If that happens, you can just delete that bones file.

[twipley]

I've found a morgue-directory backup of mine, the files of which (fortunately) I had forgotten to rename the characters in their content, although I did in the file name. Do you think I would I be safe using the same text editor (XP's Notepad) to edit the names back to what they were?

Morgue files can be edited however you want. It's only the bones files, in saves/, that are a problem.

Yes, indeed. In fact I was just saying, using these morgue files I will be able to map the bone characters to what they were at first.

[twipley]

Make sure your text editor supports binary files without mangling. If you are using vim, for example, you need the -b option.

Well, to answer my own question (and so that others can see it if they were searching for this info), editing the bone files using XP's Notepad does, indeed, damage them in a seemingly irretrievable way. This can be tested by comparing the hashes of the original file and the modified one: even if the ghost name is put back to what it was before, the file remains different from the unaltered one.