Probably a Pandora’s box, but it might be useful if you want to mess around with a gunship.exe and you don‘t like hex-editing:

OLD LINK REMOVED

If you’re at all familiar with my work, it should go without saying that the program is poorly documented and not properly tested. It should be safe enough, though, if you just want to make a few simple edits like changing a vehicle’s weapons, or changing the number of vehicles in a platoon. You can also do other entertaining and inadvisable things like making a flyable tree armed with 300 RPGs, if that appeals to you. Changing a platoon’s Side, or adding non-flyable helos to flyable helo platoons is a little more complicated and, as mentioned, there’s an appalling lack of documentation, so be prepared to be frustrated if you want to do anything very complicated. Also be prepared to Crash To Desktop if you enter inappropriate values in some data fields.

This program couldn’t have been made without the voluminous information discovered and shared by fng2k, Psyklik, Will Baldwin, et al.

EDIT:
In the mangler's Acknowledgements blurb, there's something similar to what's written above here. However, it's difficult to over-emphasize just how heavily I relied on other people's work. The following line will be added to the Acknowledgements section if I ever update the program:

"The majority of field labels are taken directly from fng2k's gunship.exe spreadsheets, and most descriptions are based on work done by Psyklik."
END EDIT

Happy C-ing TD!

Samovar6

Thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to do some simple weapon editing and the program makes it very easy, great work. Thanks again.

Monkie

I'll add it to your page on my site.

@Flyboy: Thanks, Mister.

@Monkie: You’re quite welcome. Glad it worked okay for ya‘.
You mentioned in another thread about a flyable platoon composed only of Hueys. If you used loadUH1.exe to create an .exe with the flyable Huey, the non-flyable Huey, and the Longbow in Platoon 142, you can use the mangler to switch that Longbow to another Huey. Just change the 56 in Vehicle3’s slot to a 64.

There’s high weirdness involved when sticking non-flyable helos in flyable Platoons, as you’ve probably noticed. You can place multiple non-flyable helos in a flyable Platoon, but only Vehicle1 will become flyable-- and that’s only if that particular Platoon is listed first in the mission.txt file. Once you teleport out of such a helo via the F9-->F11/F12-->Shift+F1 procedure, Scotty can’t beam you back aboard if you want to return to it. If the only flyable Platoon on your Side in the mission.txt file is one of these altered beasties, attempting to go to the pre-flight arming screen will crash the game. If you have another “normal” flyable Platoon on your Side in the mission.txt, you can visit the arming screen, but it won’t let you actually change anything. And, on top of all this nastiness, clicking Fly Again after ending a mission using one of these altered flyable Platoons will crash the game. You can’t even pop back to the Main Menu to choose the same mission again. (Well, you can, but the game will crash before loading the mission.)
Welcome to the wacky world of GS modding!

Thanks for the info, I'm slowly learning some of the can's and cant's and enjoying the game at the same time.

Monkie

Some minor changes were made to the editor.
A line was added to the Acknowledgements, and there is more information on GroundObjects.
The latest version of the program can be downloaded from here:

OLD LINK REMOVED

Now THIS is some seriously brilliant work.

Had you only been good enough to have built this thing lo these many years ago, I would not be looking forward with bitter dread to the last minutes of my life, when all I will be able to think of is the endless hours I spent at 2AM mucking about with code I had no understanding of. And wishing I could do it all again with your Mangler at hand, and your rare wit to keep it all fun.

Sammy boy, this app is the cat's rat, and you should be as swelled up with pride over it as Harry Potter's Uncle's Sister. Seriously - sim modding is like any other kind of carpentry. You can compensate for a lot of cluelessness with good tools. Such as exhibit A here.

As for the field labels: I actually got them from a sympathetic member of the original MPS developer team, so those are the actual incomprehensible data names they used.

Thanks for building it and sharing it. I have an hour or so to play today, so first I will do what any modder would do: attempt to make a Hellfire missile with a nuclear warhead.

What could go wrong?

Hi, fng2k,
Embarrassment is running neck and neck with pride...

In earlier versions GSmangler, there are bugs in both the Edit Weapon and Edit Sounds windows. In the Weapon window, it's impossible to use a value of -1 for the Object3D#.
The Sounds window won't accept a value of -1 for either of the Vehicle Movement Sounds.

I can't recall any childhood trauma associated with -1, so I'm gonna' blame those problems on the Sterno & Stoli shooters that I've recently taken a fancy to.

Any version of the editor dated prior to 16JUN09 is not recommended for human consumption.

New bug-reduced version here:

Updated updated GSmangler

PS Just kidding about the Sterno. NEVER drink Sterno unless you're completely out of Lysol. Please enjoy alcoholic beverages responsibly.

Thanks for the update Samovar6. I used -1 for the animation of the Rockeyes and it works prefectly now.

Very cool, Monkie. I may try to replicate your process.

Try the Fastmovers Counterattack mission sometime and see how it changes.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_m79Q5bQ4eE