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Against Rome Modifier

This is a Windows Forms modifier for the real-time strategy game Against Rome. It is built with C# on .NET 8. Public builds do not contain original game data; the modifier builds its restore baseline from the user's own installation when an optional local Backup.zip is not present.

Maintenance Documentation

  • TechDoc.md: current Chinese technical specification (integrates the AI-agent handoff checklist, debugging history, failure cases, and verification steps at the end).
  • TechDoc_EN.md: current English technical specification.
  • docs/reverse-engineering/: file formats, offsets, patch bytes, evidence, and the local Ghidra workflow.

Project Origin & Author's Note

The author of this project is a devoted player who loved Against Rome many years ago. This tool was created with AI-agent assistance and is maintained as a research and personal modding project.

Core Features

  • Maximum-population switch for map team.dat files (1600 when enabled).
  • Reversible 20x capacity switch for every positive population-building wohnwer value in objdef.dau.
  • Reversible 10x building speed switch for construction, upgrades, and repairs in objdef.dau (shortens building build/upgrade times by 10, which automatically boosts repair rate, successfully runtime-verified in-game).
  • Reversible 10x storage capacity switch for town halls (Hau) and warehouses (Lag) in objdef.dau (successfully runtime-verified in-game).
  • Endless-mode AI Ultimate Mode, split into five independently selectable modules, which raises the mass-army spawn count to the vanilla script limit, recycles completed military reinforcement jobs for continuing waves, reduces the military reinforcement wait to 5 seconds, cuts four non-settlement party retreat deadlines from 10 minutes to 5 seconds, and preserves the two settlement cleanup fallbacks at 10 minutes so an old village and its palisades finish clearing before that team slot is reused, accelerates the confirmed one-object-at-a-time cleanup cadence from about 1.5 seconds to 0.1 seconds per object, raises the military-reinforcement unit threshold from 4 to 40, and transfers the whole reinforcement party into the village instead of retreating while retaining the original safety gate and bounded polling. Endless settlement templates also receive a reversible starting-resource boost; unsafe global CLAK production edits stay disabled.
  • Free construction, production, upgrades, and spell costs through ress.ini.
  • Unit stat editing for HP, damage, VW, AW, movement, sight, cooldown, range, and spell radius through objdef.dau and cl_script.ini.
  • Troop preset import/export through .artroop and one-click buttons to enable/disable all features.
  • Background execution patch for Against_Rome.exe when the game loses focus.
  • Option to scale the village construction/red-frame range to 3x through a synchronized Against_Rome.exe setter trampoline (successfully runtime-verified in-game, including the red dashed frame).
  • Optional embedded dgVoodoo2 integration that installs the bundled 32-bit D3D8/DirectDraw wrappers without overwriting unmanaged DLLs.
  • Automatic game path detection and one-click launch.
  • Save backup, restore, and history management.
  • Embedded technical documentation.
  • Local reverse-engineering workflow with a generated Ghidra function index and pseudocode inventory kept under ignored re_workspace/.

Technical Architecture

  • src/Program.cs: application entry point, DPI setup, and UAC elevation.
  • src/Core/GameLZSS.cs: game-specific PFIL/LZSS compression and decompression.
  • src/Core/TroopConfig.cs: known unit IDs, unit categories, field indexes, and balance rules.
  • src/UI/ModifierForm.cs: main UI layout and embedded documentation view.
  • src/UI/ModifierForm.Data.cs: backup loading, data inspection, TGA icon parsing, and display formatting.
  • src/UI/ModifierForm.Patches.cs: patch and restore logic for objdef.dau, ress.ini, cl_script.ini, Against_Rome.exe, and team.dat.
  • src/UI/ModifierForm.DgVoodoo.cs: embedded dgVoodoo2 extraction, managed installation, conflict detection, and removal.
  • src/UI/ModifierForm.SaveManager.cs: save backup, restore, and cache handling.
  • src/UI/ModifierForm.Presets.cs: actions to enable or disable all features.
  • src/UI/TroopPresetForm.cs: troop stat preset editor.
  • tools/Repair-LanguageBackup.ps1: validates and repairs a local language overlay backup after an interrupted or incomplete migration.
  • docs/reverse-engineering/: structured reverse-engineering notes.
  • data/game_schema.json: tool-readable file format and patch metadata.

Embedded Resources

  • Backup.zip is optional and intentionally not committed to GitHub.
  • If Backup.zip is embedded or placed next to the executable, it is loaded as the restore source.
  • If no Backup.zip exists, the modifier builds an in-memory backup from the user's selected game installation directory.
  • TechDoc.md is embedded as TechDoc.md.
  • TechDoc_EN.md is embedded as TechDoc_EN.md.
  • Game payloads are decoded as code page 1251 where required; project documentation is UTF-8.

Reverse Engineering Data

The project keeps reverse-engineering notes in docs/reverse-engineering/. The same facts are mirrored in machine-readable form in data/game_schema.json so future UI and patch code can avoid hardcoded indexes.

Current coverage:

  • SYSTEM/DATA_MP/DEFAULTS/objdef.dau: unit stats and weapon fields.
  • SYSTEM/ress.ini: construction, production, upgrade, and spell costs.
  • SYSTEM/cl_script.ini: villager delay, spell radius, and morale parameters.
  • MAPS/**/team.dat: population limits and banner version semantics.
  • MAPS/ENDL_*/SCRIPT/ak_level.bci: bounded AI Ultimate Mode patch with byte/save-state verification; long-running late-wave regression remains.
  • Against_Rome.exe: focus-loss background execution patch, runtime-verified village construction-range expansion, restore-only handling for the rejected legacy four-site range/red-frame candidate, and a full local Ghidra function inventory.

The generated Ghidra output is local research material, not original source. Unknown FUN_* functions are not treated as understood until the call path or runtime evidence is documented.

Development Environment

  • Language: C# 12
  • Target framework: .NET 8.0 Windows
  • UI: Windows Forms
  • Platform target: x64

Build Steps

  1. Install .NET 8.0 SDK and Visual Studio 2022.
  2. Backup.zip is optional for public builds. Keep it local only if you have one.
  3. Open AgainstRomeModifier.slnx or AgainstRomeModifier.csproj.
  4. Select Release and x64.
  5. Build the solution. Output is under bin/Release/net8.0-windows/.

Public Build Behavior

The GitHub repository does not include original game files. Users must own and install Against Rome, then select the game folder in the modifier. The modifier uses those local files as the clean restore baseline before applying patches.

The following content is intentionally local-only and covered by .gitignore:

  • 遊戲原始檔案/, Original game archives/, Backup.zip, and extracted game trees such as MAPS/, SYSTEM/, SAVE/, and ToEng/;
  • .codex/, .agents/, re_workspace/, build output, IDE state, dumps, logs, and private audit handoff files;
  • generated Ghidra inventories and downloaded analysis toolchains.

Small reproducible analysis scripts under tools/re/ are source material and are intentionally published. The bundled dgVoodoo2 files are also intentional: the upstream redistribution terms permit individual files to ship with a game or game mod; see ThirdParty/dgVoodoo2/REDISTRIBUTION.md.

dgVoodoo2 Integration

Enable the dgVoodoo2 switch and apply changes to extract the bundled v2.87.3 files directly from the modifier. No network connection or separate download is required. The modifier installs only the x86 D3D8.dll, DDraw.dll, dgVoodooCpl.exe, and dgVoodoo.conf. Uncheck the switch and apply, or restore compatibility/all settings, to remove files owned by the modifier. Existing unmanaged DLLs are never overwritten, and a user-edited configuration is kept.

Upstream source and redistribution terms:

Disclaimer

This modifier is developed for academic exchange and personal modding research. The intellectual property rights of the game belong to the original rights holders. Do not distribute original game assets or decompiled source code.