Editing With the MS-DOS Editor

[Iconoclast]

This kind of skill won't be of much use, but I think it's kind of neat for those who are interested. It demonstrates that you do not need the C++ sourcecodes for DLL files to edit them (depending what you edit and how much you know about editing binary).

One of the uses for an MS-DOS editor is editing the properties (version info, title bar, etc.) of an application or DLL. In this case, we will be working with a DLL.

Try the No Sound plugin. If you have Project64, it should come with an audio plugin titled 'No Sound'. So, open your Start menu, and select the Run command (which, if you are using Windows XP, should be on the right pane of your Start menu). Type 'EDIT' (case-insensitive), and press Enter.

The MS-DOS editor comes up. It works similar to Notepad for Windows, but it can also edit binary (byte-simplified, without the 0s and 1s). In this editor window, choose the Open command from the File menu. Look for the file 'No Sound.dll' in the Plugin subfolder of where you have Project64 installed, select the file, and do not click OK yet. Check the "Open Binary" option, and set the Line Width to 77. Now click OK.

Rather than navigating through all of this garbage, use the Search feature. Press F3 or choose the Find... command from the Search menu. Search for "No Sound," and click OK. The first result that comes up is No Sound.dll. We don't want that; that's not the name of the plugin. That's just the name of the file. Press F3 to repeat the search, and the second result is "No Sound by zilmar _ No Sound". THAT's what we want. The "No Sound by zilmar" is the About property. When you go "Options/Settings..." in Project64, set the sound plugin to No Sound and click "About," this is the value that comes up. You can edit that value. The "No Sound" part on the right of the result is the name of the plugin that shows up in an emulator displaying its name (ex. Project64). You can name it whatever you want, but you must not rename it to anything longer than 8 characters long; that'll screw up the binary margins. If you rename it to something less than 8 characters long, replace the unused characters with spaces. The name must be 8 characters long, no longer, no shorter (unless you replace the last few characters with spaces to make it look shorter).

When you're finished having fun, choose the Save command from the File menu. Hope you made a backup! On the other hand, if you modified it correctly, you should have no problems.

Just a little tidbit I thought you all might find in handy. Flash won't let me change the title bar description of my compiled EXEs, so I have to edit them with the MS-DOS editor.

[pizzaman]

Pretty interesting dude, but I didn't get a couple of things.

Like the line width of 77. What makes the difference? How can I edit an application? Like Project64. And how can I make the title( Writing in the Blue rectangle ) different?

P.S. Is there any way I can change the PJ64 picture? I would really like to customize it.

[Iconoclast]

Originally Posted by pizzaman

Pretty interesting dude, but I didn't get a couple of things.

Like the line width of 77. What makes the difference? How can I edit an application? Like Project64. And how can I make the title( Writing in the Blue rectangle ) different?

P.S. Is there any way I can change the PJ64 picture? I would really like to customize it.

The easiest way to change the icon of Project64 is to download an icon editor and open the EXE to edit its icon. I recommend ArtIcons Pro.

The line width sets the margins of the editor. Try opening a file (with a small file size!) with the "Open Binary" option checked and the line width set to 5. Now open it with line width set to 60. The right margin expands.

To change Project64's application title (Project64 Version 1.6), look for a similar method as you did with the No Sound plugin. Only, instead of searching for "No Sound", search for "Project64 Version 1.6."

Or at least that's what you NORMALLY would do. In this case, it won't work. Probably because Project64.exe was compiled in a certain way. With some emulators, however, you can still edit their application title (in the blue rectangle, like you said). It'll work with the Namco System 22 emulator, Viva Nonno; I know that. The application title of that emulator was originally vivanonno, but I was picky with grammar, so before I burned it to CD, I edited it and changed it to Viva Nonno. This will probably work with some other emulators, but not with the way Project64 was compiled. You would need the C sourcecode for that.

[pizzaman]

Funny. Viva Nonno means Live Grampa.

But I didn't mean edit the icon of PJ64, I mean edit the actual pictures in it. Like when you install it. The PJ64 picture that comes up.

And how do you edit the text? Like File, Open, Exit, ect.

[Iconoclast]

Originally Posted by pizzaman

Funny. Viva Nonno means Live Grampa.

But I didn't mean edit the icon of PJ64, I mean edit the actual pictures in it. Like when you install it. The PJ64 picture that comes up.

And how do you edit the text? Like File, Open, Exit, ect.

Again, Project64.exe is compiled in a special way, so it's difficult to edit the text. It won't directly appear in the binary, so I can't answer that any better than you can.

You would probably need to learn how to edit binary of images and look for it in the Project64.exe file. Either that, or it is externally in another file I don't know about.

You can edit the text of the menu options, however, in Project64, but only externally. Try opening the English.pj.Lang file in the Lang subfolder of where you have Project64 installed to edit it with Notepad. Navigate through the file a bit, and make changes to the menu option names. When you save the file, make sure you select English as your language (since you edited the English language file) in Project64.