FLPatch

Config-based patching plugin for Freelancer and FLServer which serves as a proof of concept replacement for most manual hex edits. Please keep in mind that this plugin performs patches dynamically. As a result, some patches that are applied this way may have no effect due to memory being read before the plugin gets loaded. In such cases, the patch will have to be applied using a hex edit instead. See the wiki page for patches that cannot be applied with FLPatch: https://github.com/BC46/FLPatch/wiki.

⚠️ Project Archived ⚠️

The method to apply patches presented in this plugin deemed to be too unreliable. Instead of using FLPatch, I would strongly suggest keeping copies of unedited Freelancer binaries and then using a tool like BwPatch to statically apply the patches based on a config file.

Installation instructions

Download the latest FLPatch.dll from Releases. Extract the dll to the EXE folder of your Freelancer installation. Next, open dacom.ini and dacomsrv.ini, and for both files add FLPatch.dll to the [Libraries] section.

Usage instructions

In the EXE folder of your Freelancer installation, create a new file called patches.ini. FLPatch will apply all patches specified in this file while either Freelancer or FLServer is running. Example patch:

[Patch]
module = common.dll
offset = 1234AB
type = f
value = 42

This will patch file offset 1234AB in common.dll and set the float value 42 at that location.

Patch parameters documentation

Name	Required / optional	Data type	Description
module	Required	String	Name of the binary file in which the patch should be applied. E.g. common.dll, freelancer.exe. For .dll files, the extension may be omitted, so e.g. common is also fine.
offset	Required	String in hex-format	The file offset, i.e. the patch location within the given module, in hex-format. Example: 1234AB.
type	Optional	String	FLPatch supports the following value types: Hexadecimal, 32-bit signed integer, signed byte, float, double. It suffices to specify these value types using h, i, b, f, d, respectively. Though it is also fine to e.g. specify signed byte by entering byte, or BytE (with upper case letters) as long as the string starts with one of the previously mentioned characters. The default value for type is Hexadecimal.
value	Required	Depends on type	Depending on the chosen type, a value of the corresponding type will be expected here. For Hexadecimal, a string should be given in hexadecimal format, e.g. EB 07 12, c9aee0. Spaces between the bytes are optional and both upper case and lower case-letters are recognized. For a 32-bit signed integer, an integer should be given which fits in the supported range. For signed bytes, values should be given between -128 and 127 (inclusive). For floats, a float value is expected (4 bytes). NOTE: Double values are retrieved as floats (4 bytes) and later converted to doubles (8 bytes). Hence more elaborate double values may lose their precision.

NOTE: The order in which the parameters module, offset, and type are specified does not matter, but value must always come last.

Debugging

To verify that a patch has been correctly set, the plugin offers the opportunity to view logged information about the whole patching process. This behavior can be enabled by adding the following to the patches.ini file:

[Options]
debug = true

On which exact line in patches.ini this snippet is added does not matter, but you may want this at the top for convenience. When Freelancer.exe is launched with the debug option enabled, the logging will be shown in FLSpew.txt. With FLServer.exe on the other hand, the logging can be viewed in the console (View -> Console). To disable the debug logging, either change debug to false or remove the added snippet.

Build instructions

Build the project using the NMAKE tool from Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (VC6 or Visual Studio 98) with the included makefile. This will output the FLPatch.dll file in the bin folder. Building the project using other compilers may require the code to be modified.