How to bring Runaways home ======================== This is particularly useful for people who cannot get their accedental runaway-pet back into Petz 5; the signboard thing doesn't always work, the registry hack method only works for Petz II, 3 and 4, and so you can't use the brain sliders to get your pet back. But you can change the necessary byte in a hex editor and get your pet back that way. This actually works for petz 3, 4 and 5. I cover Petz II in a separate howto, but include the info at the end of this one for completeness. IMPORTANT: Make sure you have a safe copy of your pet before you start this process. Also it's best to make sure that there are no other pets in the Adopted directory while you are working on bringing the runaway home. Now open the pet in the hex editor and go to file offset address 00000CE3 (if you've got your hex editor set to show the file offset in decimal numbers, then that address is 00003299). This byte contains the "energy" of the pet, and can never be greater than hex 64 as it represents a "percentage" number and hexadecimal 64 is decimal 100. The next few bytes contain the current state of the pet's fullness, fatness etc. So here's an example of a pet's data at this point. Please note that this is only an example; the numbers in this area of your petfile are almost bound to be different because your pet will be in a different state of energy, fullness etc. What I'm showing you here is how to see what bytes to look for; they start at 00000CE3 and each single number has 3 00 bytes before the next. Some of the actual bytes you're looking for will be 00, so you need to concentrate: 00000CE0 | 0000 0022 0000 0000 0000 0022 0000 0000 | ...".......".... 00000CF0 | 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 000A 0000 0064 | ...............2 00000D00 | 0000 0032 0000 0057 0293 D401 0023 0000 | ...d...W.....#.. and here's a breakdown of what it all means (as I say, remember that the actual numbers will be different in your pet): hexadec. dec. what it is --------- ----- ---------- 2200 0000 34 energy 0000 0000 0 fullness 2200 0000 34 fatness 0000 0000 0 sickness 0000 0000 0 catnipped 0000 0000 0 fleas 0A00 0000 10 horniness 6400 0000 100 neglect 3200 0000 50 age Right, this pet is a runaway -- its "neglect" is very high indeed, actually 100%. I think a pet can run away when that byte is 50 or more, but I've not tested what number it is when the pet first runs away. So, what you need to do is to change the "64" which is in that slot to "00" and change, say, the "00" in the "fullness" slot to "64". This keeps the checksum the same and is nice for the pet :-) Once you've done that, you can open the game and your pet will no longer be runaway. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For Petz II I have an html version of the following, on my "infobits" page, complete with screengrabs. But I include the info here too for completeness. Petz II Runaway petz full fix ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The old method, of bringing out the Runaway pet by putting its ID in the Registry, was not very satisfying, because the pet was still classed as Runaway no matter how happy you made it. And the method of bringing the pet into a later game only works for people who have a later game. This solves the problem entirely. You have to have some knowledge of editing .pet files before you try this, also as always you will make sure you have a safe copy of the pet somewhere first, won't you? This is pretty obscure, but if you concentrate you should be able to do the job. The byte you need to change is at address 840 (decimal) or, if you prefer hex notation, 348 (hexadecimal). In a Runaway pet, this byte is hex 01. Change that to hex 00. You will then have to compensate for the checksum; just increase a nearby number by 01. Save. Place your runaway in the Adopted Petz directory. Next time you open the game, you can bring out the pet. Happy homecomers! Carolyn Horn