Requirement:FateEd requires the Microsoft .NET RunTime, which you can download here.
IMPORTANT: Always back up your game files manually. FateEd is not warrantied to work. If used carelessly, your Saved Game file (FFD File) may be destroyed. This will not harm your FATE installation, but could cost you days of hard game play. FateEd is as-is; use it at your own risk.
FateEd can display many fields in the file, including character attributes and skills, gold, steps taken, time in the dungeons, etc. Some fields are read-only simply because there's no point editing them, others are read-only because editing them would be rather dangerous (such as the spells in your inventory.) But anything you really need to change, you can.
The screen is comprised of four tab views. The primary one is mostly Journal data. The second has Skills and Attributes (strength, dexterity, Charm Magic, Dual Wield.) The third lists, but does not allow the editing of, currently configured spells. The fourth is the inventory of the primary player only.
To get started, click the Load button and navigate to your Fate installation\Save directory. Load an FFD file. The rest should be obvious.
Files are not modified until saved, which can be done either by modifying entries on the first two tabs (Journal or Skills) and then clicking "Save", or by modifying an Item Charm and clicking "Write". Note that Item Charms must be written immediately, and the file is then reloaded. This is due to complexity in tracking them and their locations.
The inventory is only of what the character is carrying. Your Pet has its own inventory, but that is not parsed here. Your storage locker also has an inventory, which also is not parsed here. To modify those items, move them into the character inventory and then run FateEd.
Many items have Charms or Curses. FateEd can modify charms and curses. It cannot curse items (there's no point and parsing positive numbers was hard enough), but it can uncurse them - changing a curse into a Charm by giving the Spell Effect a positive value. The Charm may also be changed. For example, you can easily change a "Drains Stamina 5 per Turn" to a "+40 Attack Magic Skill".
Some items should not be changed. For example, Fish Transformations, Healing Potions and Antidotes have hard-coded responses. Fate-the-Game may behave very oddly should these be set unexpectedly.
This is free hack-ware. There are likely some problems. Some are documented here.
The numbering system may be a bit off; there may be times when you try to insert a specific value and get back a different value. Please post about these on the support forum to the thread for FateEd. I'll need the following information:
Spells and Elementals are not editable. (Elementals are things like FIRE, ICE, SPIDER... modifiers to spells or charms.)
Latest version is 1.6, 9-July-2006. This added support for odd spell effects encountered primarily, it seems, by deep delvers.
Version 1.5, June 3, 2006 fixed loading of characters with odd types.
Both of these problems were found by users sending me their FFD files; I could not create them myself because I have not delved that deeply.
FateEd is written in C#, solely because I'm polishing those skills; it could just as easily have been done in C++ or Java. Most of the screen elements are created dynamically at runtime rather than laid out in Visual Studio. The FFD file structure is somewhat odd, consisting of many dynamic-length elements and some very strange numeric parsing. I wrote FateEd out of general desire to hack the character; when I realized how much elements move around, I realized a computer should do it for me. And of course that became my challenge/game. I may not have "retired" my character, but I have achieved an entirely more noble quest.
Enjoy it.