Just a note as to my editing methods so that with any luck all that I go on about in
most of my tutorials or "howto"s will make sense.  

The method I use nowadays is to simply edit the external LNZ files which come with my
easy-edit packages.  I just open the LNZ into Notepad, edit to my heart's content,
and then make it downloadable for you as an overwriting file.  Non-hexers who want
to see them in their games just have to install my external-lnz packages from my
"For LNZ-files 'n' easy-edits" original catz and dogz pages.

What you'll see in my breed, clothes etc tutorials are extracts copied from Notepad.

For those who are interested in historical methods:
================================================
Before I made the external-lnz packages, I still used Notepad to edit the LNZ files, 
but I put them internally into the breed afterwards.

What I did was: open the breedfile into Hex Workshop (or some other true hex
editor -- not VIM, and _definitely_ _not_ Wordpad).  Search for the text string 
[Little one] and place your cursor in front of it.  Scroll down and select from 
there to the end of the .lnz section, which finishes with PFM_[V2.001] (c) 1997 PF. 
Magic, Inc.  Choose "copy" from the drop-down edit menu.  Now open a new, empty file 
from the drop-down file menu in the hex editor.  Place the cursor in it and choose 
Paste from the edit menu.  Save it as breed.txt.  Now open breed.txt in Notepad. 
This is the .lnz section of the breedfile (or .clz section of a clothes file),
which _is_ actually itself a small text file.  When you've finished editing it, 
you open it in the hex editor again, check that it's the same size as it was before, 
and then copy/paste it over the same place whence it came!

I edit some things directly in the hex editor of course -- non-ASCII stuff such as 
the byte, bitmap and name, but the shape and colour of breedfiles (the stuff that 
resides in the .lnz section, the stuff that "hex painters" or litter-makers  edit) I 
always do as stated above.  It's quick, it's simple, and it shows you the 
text-and-numbers .lnz files exactly as they were before the game-makers compiled them 
into the resource files.  I have no idea why so many people are desperately keen to 
edit the .lnz direct into the editor; seems crazy to me, because it means they have 
to be told each individual thing separately for each individual breed.  For 
instance, I put wingz on a dog file and from that I'd expect people to be able to 
take the wingz data and put it on another breed, altering it slightly to suit.  
There's no way I could picture most people managing to do that directly in a hex 
editor.

Pet files need to be edited in a hex editor, preferably one with a checksum feature 
such as Hex Workshop.  I have tricks for speeding up any large amounts of editing 
there, which I try to explain in the relevant tutorials.

Filmstrip sections (in Toyz etc) need to be chopped up and given bitmap headers in a 
hex editor, preferably Axe which lets you see the graphics.  And of course I need to 
use a paint program for editing the bitmaps.

NOTE as of early 2005 -- it seems likely that a new tool will be made available soon
for editing Petz 5 SPR files, also I hope one will be made for the older FLH/FLM
formats.  I for one shall be eager to use this instead of the laborious hand-chopping
methods of before!!

It is possible of course to edit breedfiles etc (_not_ petfiles!) in a modern-day 
Windows Resource Editor such as the one at 
http://www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker/ which is fine, as you get to see the 
.lnz file the way it's supposed to be and you don't have to keep the file size 
always the same.  If you are editing Oddballz or Catz 1 or Dogz 1, then the only 
Resource editor I know of that can handle their Resource files is the shareware 
eXeScope which you can get from http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA003525/Eindex.htm

Please don't ask me how to use the tools; whether you use a hex editor or a resource 
editor, I shall assume that you have practised a bit and know how to use it.

A note about Resource Editors:
-----------------------------
I'm cautious about recommending Resource Editors to people who are new to the whole 
scene, because I think such people could make a real mess of their files when they 
don't know what they are doing, and I'm not prepared to supply "aftercare" for them. 
Anyone who isn't able to check things in a hex editor is going to suffer something 
of a handicap when it comes to troubleshooting when something goes wrong, plus there 
are some things that you really _have_ to do with a hex editor.  But the day 
Resource Editors started to appear and do the job properly (a couple of years ago 
they weren't so good) was a real interesting day for me.  A Resource Editor is a 
fine addition to the hexer's toolkit -- but you need to use it carefully and be 
aware of what you are doing and why.

What an editor such as Resource Hacker does is, it recompiles the breedfile when 
you've finished editing any given section, thus allowing you to change the sizes of 
the parts you're editing.  This is what all Resource editors do; ResHacker is a 
particularly good one though because, even apart from being freeware, I think it's 
pretty much the only one that lets you edit directly into the file.  Others let you 
assign new .lnz files etc, but you have to edit them externally (in notepad etc).  
So as I say, Reshacker recompiles the files, which means that it moves things to 
suit itself and recalculates things in the header.  Because it rewrites the header 
with the new information, the game can find everything fine, as can any resource 
editor, so you don't need to worry about that.  As long as the resource editor can 
show you all the parts of the file without corruption, the file is basically okay.  
The reasons that I don't tend to use ResHacker much are:

1) as you will notice, a ResHacked file opened in a hex editor looks different from 
the original, because everything has been moved about a bit (this is what it does 
when it recompiles and saves).  This means that, if you have a lot of breedfiles (as 
I do) and you need to conserve bandwidth at your site (as I do), then the "patch" 
system won't make nice neat small patches from ResHacked files.  There are a few 
sites which use the patch system for distributing their files, for instance I passed 
the patcher on to places like Leaping Frog Cattery and the Petz Boardwalk when they 
were having troubles, and none of these places can use a Resource Editor without 
increasing the sizes of their downloads dramatically.  You understand, the patches 
just consist of the differences between the hexie and the original, and of course in 
a recompiled breedfile those differences will be very large as everything will be in 
a different place.

2) I got used to the hex editor/notepad method over the years and I can do my hexing 
about as fast as anyone can use the modern ResHacker, so I'm happy sticking with my 
oldfashioned ways :-)  

3) Resource editors haven't really been usable and reliable until the past year or 
so, and although I think they are just fine now, it does seem that sometimes people 
have problems with files corrupting.  If that happens, it can be more difficult to 
fix up than a hexed file.

Hope that helps clear things up a bit

Carolyn Horn