Evil Genius Chat

[StrikeFear]

If any of your minions have ever left a briefcase lying around, never to be picked up again, and thereby preventing your from, say, demolishing the room it's in...

Summary:
You'll need to edit your saved game and remove the offending briefcase.
You'll also need to remove references to that briefcase in the "memories" of agents who have seen it.
You'll put a henchman next to the briefcase to help locate the correct position. You'll open your save game, and using the location of the henchman, and the entity description id of a briefcase, you'll delete the "declaration" of the briefcase's existence. You'll also search for the entity id of that briefcase to find other references, and remove those.


Info:
The entity description id for a briefcase is:
EntityDescriptionID=10001

Steps:

(Put a henchman next to the briefcase so we can identify it)

1. Load your game. Move your EG or a henchman to the location of the briefcase. Have them stand right next to it. Note the name of the character you have moved to the location.

2. Save your game. ie "FixBriefcase"

3. Open the file for the game you saved in Notepad or Wordpad or something. Saved games are found in:
...Evil Genius\DynamicResources\Layouts
ie FixBriefcase.lay

4. Search for the name of the character you moved next to the briefcase.
Looking up from the name, locate the line that looks like
Position=195.500107,126.499901,0.000000
Note that location.

(Find the offending briefcase)

5. Now search for this line:
EntityDescriptionID=10001
You are looking for briefcases. You'll likely only find a small number. Find the one whose position coordinates are very close to that of your character. Find the line for that entry that looks like:
EntityID=1742688
Note that number.

(Delete the offending briefcase)

6. Delete this entire briefcase entry. Mine looked like this:

[Trigger]

Would it be possible to edit the briefcase description to make it movable? If so, that would be an easier and more permanent solution.

[China Shop]

It'd be nice to be able to simply order a minion to move the briefcase someplace else, but enacting a command like that would likely break the briefcase forever (it would never, ever arrive where it's going).

As far as removing references in minion memory goes, I'd have thought the game would have included an error handler for that kind of thing, since without one the game's very fragile... oh, wait.

[Fox_King]

There is a way, all you have to do is pause and un-pause bulding the room then the job of ading the item will be refreshed!

[Bandmasterflash]

My scientists have left a research canister on the floor which has been there for ages. I've had a fiddle with the save game as described, but I don't know the name the game uses for the canister object. Anyone know, cuz I'm frustrated!!!!

[gordy50]

i does unfortunately not understand all that... but it hasnt happened to me all that often anyway. if its a research canister then i just have to make sure that the base is powered up and it will be gone in 10 mins, but if its a briefcase then if its not removed then ill just let a thief steal it and have him shot outside... its not so beautiful but it works

[Hyndis]

I've yet to have this happen to me.

Research canisters are only dropped if there's a line at one of the research machines. As soon as one project is done, a science minion will come by and pick up the canister. Sometimes if I have a big backlog where everyone wants to use the machine this can take a while but it does get done eventually.

Same deal with briefcases. If all of my minions are busy with something briefcases will tend to pile up on the ground all over the place. But once the problem is taken care of, they'll pick up all of the briefcases and either return them to the strongroom or buy whatever items I had ordered. This happens if I have some combat which draws in construction workers, or I try to build a whole bunch of stuff all at the same time.

I have yet to have such an orphaned item in my base. Ever. Sometimes it might take a few minutes for a minion to be free to pick it up again, but they will clean it up.

[Haggisfarm]

i have had a research canister sitting around my base (island 1) in my science lab for about, oh, say 5 hours, and NO CHANGE! i have one set of reasearch that that canister went to that never even begun, just sat there saying it was in progress, then when i stopped the project, the canister remained there for two more hours, i will be soon moving to island 2, so it won't be a prob. long, but i was hoping to know what to do in case this happens again

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

Well the first thing you do is make sure you still have at least 1 of the thing that;s being researched built. That can often be a problem people overlook, they get a newer better piece of equipment and destroy the other one forgetting that it's currently involved in research.

[Haggisfarm]

no, i got about, 12 of them, its the hell pit trap thingy, the one where you fall in to the hole and get burned up

sadly, though, about 10 minutes after i started this post, i canceled the reasearch, then started it back up, and a scientist got ahold of it and, the prob. is gone...

Figures...

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

Oh well so long as the problem is solved I guess.

[Haggisfarm]

yup

[omnimutant]

This does not seem to work for research canisters all it did was crash my save game file.

[Shark]

next time you want to handle something, be sure to back up your savegame... and i guess your game crashed because the canister wasn't really orphaned but rather misplaced (it was still involved in researching but noone cared to pick it up)

all researches will be done sooner or later...

[omnimutant]

Well it had been quite a few hours. I figured dumping it would get it going again. No biggy. Was one First island anyway so not that hard to recover.