Steam Force Save (TWEAK)(NO HACKS/MODS)(FORCE SAVE FIX FOR STEAM USERS!!)

[Davo]

This tweak no longer consistently works, as of the March 2017 Patch. An updated Force Save mod, which does work with this patch, can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6101


Old OP, for archival and/or those who don't have the Patch:

Spoiler: show

As this is a tweak, and not a traditional mod, there is no download.
To install it, you need to make 2 simple edits to 2 different .txt files in your Spore GA Data folder(Untested on Core Spore)...


Open ..Electronic Arts\SPORE_EP1\Data\Config folder...

Open ConfigManager.txt
Add boolProp disableValidation true on a new line at the bottom of file and save it.

Open Properties.txt
Add property disableValidation 0x055d7ca1 bool true on a new line at the bottom of file and save it.

Launch Spore, Enjoy!
This mod removed the save block on my game without any mods. I just launched the editor, and hit save, which saved a spine fine.

This tweak also works on Origin and Retail Spore. Untested on GoG Spore, but it probably works there too.

[CamBen]

I wonder if this could be used to save an adventure without a captain.

[holysick145]

Oh my god this worked Thank you so very much!

[Davo]

holysick, do you have steam?

[holysick145]

Yes i do and i bought my spore on steam, and most mods never work, and force save has never worked for me! Until now!! Thank you.

[Davo]

no thank you! i have been waiting for someone to respond on the steam issue! this makes me happy!

[NicoliBonsai]

You sir, are the best person ever to exist. Thank you.

[Klutz1]

Thank you so much for this. None of the force-save mods worked on steam, but this little editing did.

[Kazarr]

The strangest thing happened when I tried this. When I clicked the bright green "save and exit" button for a modded creature, the screen turned black for a while. Then a crash message showed up. I'm sure the file editing had the desired effect though, because I can see the modded creature in the My Spore Creations folder.
When I went back into Spore, the game suddenly refused to log me in. Any subsequent attempts at logging in manually resulted in the game telling me that the Spore servers were having a problem.
Could it be that in saving a modded creature, the servers have concluded that I'm using a cracked version of the game and have banned my account/closed down access to online content for me in some other way?

EDIT:
The issue seems to have resolved itself, actually, but it's kind of curious that it showed up in the first place.
Regardless, thanks for imparting us with the knowledge of this edit! Now I can finally play around with Dark Injection and a few other cool mods.

[haden671]

This smallmmodification actually works very well. I just got done testing it on my steam version of spore ga and it does in fact work. I saw that some people have problems with clicking save and exit, and then it crashes. To prevent this from happening at all, click the the save button, not save and exit, and then once the up to 10 minute process of the game saving your complex creature Iis finished click cancel to leave the creator. As I said it may take up to 10 minuts to save, but all in all, it works. thanks Davo!

[CamBen]

the save and exit crashes because the sporepedia card crashes. This is because of the "editor swatch" files, which are invalid. Removing thoses files from creatureeditorextralarge fixes the issue.

[X-Strain]

Hi, this is my first post on this forum.
Before I say anything else I wanna give a brief background of my Spore experience. For the past month I have gotten spore on my PC and played around with it. I was ready to uninstall it cause it was boring when I discovered mods...Davo's mods that is. I stalked every post and every mod until I found Dark injection.
I have core spore and that is it. So I thought what the heck, I'll try it and see what happens. I installed the mod and to my delight found it working. Some parts were missing, I guess because I don't have GA installed, but I don't care. I spent hours creating an incredibly detailed creature until I hit save and got the error: "This creation cannot be saved."
Obviously I wanted to throw the computer out the window, but I remembered something about a Force Save mod. Of course, that didn't work.
So I was ready to tearfully say good bye to Spore and Darkinjection, when I saw this post. I figured: " Ah, what the heck." And to my amazement, it worked. This method of force saving works (at least for me) on the core spore with out GA, and I did not get this version of spore from Steam.
Thanks to Davo and whoever else helped him work on this website and these hacks.
So my little tirade is over.
Thanks for listening, haha.
X-Strain

[Davo]

Nice. Thanks for the time!

[X-Strain]

Ur welcome!
I'm so glad to see that this forum is still alive. I bought Galactic adventures and reinstalled everything and the missing parts appeared, btw.
Now I am just trying to get an unlimited complexity mod that actually works. I am going to try the 2013_DI_NC.package to see if it works with my spore and the force save thing.
I'm so glad you still read the forum Davo, too many times a forum will be started, and everyone else who joins will give a request or question and the admin or founder never replies. Thank goodness you do!
X-Strain

[Davo]

i do read everything posted on my forum, i may not reply to everything, but i do read, now that doesnt mean i remember haha.

[Kurros]

Uh, Hey.. How does one exactly edit the code? Like add a new line?
I'm pretty good on computers, but that's just fixing a computer's physical body.

I know nothing of coding or what not, if anyone is online, can't you help someone out?

[emd]

Yes, you have to add a new line and write the things in red of the post.

[Rogue_Jaeger]

I don't know what happened but I cannot even get into the file you listed to write this in. Allow me to explain EVERYTHING. I apologize if this turns into a giant text bomb.

In 2010 I bought Spore from the official site. Then I got C+C, updated/patched, then I got GA, updated/patched. Then I started adding mods. Just a few. The infinite parts size mod, galactic code no break, unlimited SoL, unlimited trade routes in space, unlimited spice, infinite colony packs/terra foaming tools, bot parts, ultimate turret on planets, and I think there was one more but I forget what it was.

However this does not matter because the computer which I originally had Spore on gave up to ghost. So I got a new computer. Re-downloaded Everything and re-installed everything in the order of Core Spore>C+C>GA>patch 1.5 at that point. Then I put all my mods back in. Everything started freaking out and not working.

I figured the patch update probably meant some of the mods wouldn't work. So I took several out. Still didn't work. I took ALL of them out. STILL didn't work. So I uninstalled everything. Then reinstalled it. STILL didn't work. I COMPLETELY removed the game from my computer [manual uninstall I found the steps on how to do that online] then attempted to redownload it again...my computer crashed during the download.

So I gave up at this point. I went through my computer and ripped out everything to do with spore using the manual uninstall I found seeing as I managed to get Core Spore to download before the computer crashed but it didn't work properly.

Later I purchase Spore from Steam. I downloaded Core Spore, CC, and then GA. [EDIT!!!! When everything was downloaded from Steam I DID NOT receive any messages upon starting the game, either Spore or GA, about patching] I am still using my original login email as when I was prompted to register, the game would NOT allow me to register. It just kept giving me this message about the email/username I was putting in was not found on file. So for the hell of it I used the old email/username from when I first bought spore. It worked! I was able to log in and play the game! However something really weird happened. I no longer had any content from any of my buddies and there was nothing in any of the sporecasts I subscribed to. So I unsubscribed to each sporecast and then resubscribed and I did the same thing with all my buddies. This mostly worked to bring back the content. There is however three buddies I have that for some weird reason I can't get the content back from even when I resubscribed to them unless I go and manually download each creation from them. Weird.

Speaking of content I was able to get back all but 8 creations of mine when I searched for my creations. The 8 creations I cannot seem to get back is bugging me. I never deleted them from spore or from my original game. They are still shared but for some reason I can't get them back even though I can view them when I search for them. Talk about weird.

Moving on then. I started to mod Spore again. I mostly play in GA but I still wanted a few mods for Core Spore should I decide to play all the way through at some point. Here is a list of the mods I currently have in use.


DavoFlightModMoon
82496-Galacticcodenobreak
81217-unlimitedcolonypacks
67181-infinitepartsize
46722-unlimitedSoL
2012_Davos_Unlimited_Complexity_Boundless_Editor



And this is where the mods are located for me

Program Files (x86) Steam SteamApps common Spore DataEP1

I wanted to download the Dark Spore Injection but after reading that it would not save and that Force Saving doesn't work on Steam I looked this topic up. When I went into the location and folder specified to edit the code I keep getting a message about my computer not being able to read the file. So I tried opening it up with word and note pad...neither of those worked all I got was a ton of crazy looking symbols, not actual lines of text like UBBC or anything that I'm remotely use to looking at like HTML.

So I tried searching online for something that would display the file in, for lack of a better term, plain English so I could edit it. I found one thing [or so I thought] downloaded it and that didn't work either. It still displayed as all this other crap. So I ripped that program I downloaded out [and all the other crap that piggybacked with it] and tried again, and again, and again. Nothing. I repeated the process of ripping out these file readers that didn't work and now all I get is this message saying my computer cannot open the file period.

I AM set as the Admin account on my computer and all the files are unhidden.

Also I did NOT re-install the Bots Part mod.

I have no clue if I did anything that could have possibly screwed up my computer or the files and that's why I can't get in and edit the file to allow force saves or if I have something placed weird...I just don't know.

I really would love to have the Dark Injection and be able to save creations.

And this is probably a stupid side question but I am going to guess that the Fire FX and Fire Spit mods would NOT be compatible with the Dark Injection mod. I haven't installed those yet but I wanted to.

Also, is there such a thing as a mod to allow captain parts in the creature editor? I've seen videos on youtube of people building creatures [Rebecca1208 and Dragonio3 mainly] with captain parts in the creature editor.

I hope I have provided enough information to figure out what is going on here. I appreciate any and all help in advance. Thank You.

[CamBen]

For file editing, I do not recommend Microsoft word or notepad. Use a non lame program like notepad++, XVI32, or a different code/hex editor. They ensure that the file doesn't get corrupted as easily.

Also, DI allows captain parts to be used on animals.

[Rogue_Jaeger]

I appreciate you getting back to me on this, thank you.^^

I will readily admit I am a total neophyte when it comes to mods and coding. All I know involving the subject is bits and pieces I figured out by watching some of my friends work on mods or coding for websites and that's it. Everything else was strictly trial and error for me. Needless to say there was A LOT of error.

I'm just petrified if I don't do this correctly its going to make the entire game unusable let alone wreck my laptop and I DO NOT have the money to replace the game let alone my laptop should something screw up. >>

Alright then, I will download one of those programs you mentioned and HOPEFULLY my laptop will be nice and actually agree to read the file then we can go from there. Regardless of whether this works or not you can expect another post from me saying what happened.

Once again thank you.


EDIT!!!!!!!

Okay I got notepad++ and I was looking over the code. Is THIS the area where I'm supposed to slap in the first thing? [Add boolProp disableValidation true on a new line at the bottom of file and save it.
] At the end of this particular section or literally ALL the way down the end of the code?

#############################################################################
# MRT
#

boolProp MRT 0
if ( $numSimultaneousRTs > 1 )
boolProp MRT 1
endif

############################################################################