Lame Medabots game and how you can make levels for it!

[Insectoid]

I got this funny little game from McDonalds several years ago (When I thought it was cool, because it was a game). I just recently found it and stuck it in my computer. My first thought: I can make a better game than this! My second though: I wonder what I can do with this? So I clicked 'explore' and soon found that all the levels are text files. I then set about interpreting what everything in the code does, and can now change the layout of a level. Completely pointless, but fun. So, I copied all the files and zipped them up, as well as a brief explanation of how the level code works and a backup level folder.

Don't worry, I checked the disk for any copyrights and whatnot (all I got from Mickey D's was the disk) and all there is are trademark copyrights, so it should be okay to post this. Also, this game is no longer made, so if a few more people get to play it, it only promotes the companies (Fox and McD's) more.

I would have liked to see the game code its self, but it is hidden in the EXE. If only I could decompile it...

I just thought this was interesting and that perhaps someone might like to screw around a little with it.

[CodeMonkey2000]

You can use 2d tiles to design a level, an do efficient collisions. And map editing is easier too, can can make you own editor.

[DemonWasp]

Also, you can decompile EXE files, it just tends to be pretty difficult, unless they compiled with debug information, in which case it isn't so bad. Chances are, though, that they'll have done a "production" compile without the debug markers necessary to decompile nicely. Worth a try, though.

[Insectoid]

Codemonkey, That sounds interesting. The only files I can read on my computer (from this game) are the EXEs and TXTs. Collisions are automatic. I suppose I could make an editor in turing, but there is a mystery character that my computer cannot read (the box).

[Zeroth]

Try opening the file in text mode in python, and printing the ordinal value of the character out.

By that I mean:

code:

f=open('something.exe', 'r') lines=f.readlines() for line in lines:      print line      for char in line:           print ord(char),

PS: Can someone tell me how to specify which language is used in the code tags? This is annoying me greatly. Thanks!

[DemonWasp]

@insectiod: ASCII characters are stored as single bytes (which have the range 0-255), but there are only 128 ASCII characters (0-127); anything above that displays as a box. There is also Extended ASCII (which uses the additional bit to give 255 symbols: 128-255), but many computers don't have that font set installed.

You could just use Turing to do the same thing as Zeroth suggested, using the ord and chr methods (see the help, I'm sure you can figure it out yourself).

@Zeroth:
[ syntax = " language " ] [ / syntax ] , minus the spaces of course