I like the HT Editor - http://hte.sourceforge.net/downloads.html. It's console-based, which may or may not bother you, but it does exactly what you want (Ctrl+O changes the line length in hex mode, and you can scroll horizontally with the keyboard).

TSE Pro is even better, but not free (and kind of quirky to handle).

VileRancour wrote:

I like the HT Editor - http://hte.sourceforge.net/downloads.html. It's console-based, which may or may not bother you, but it does exactly what you want (Ctrl+O changes the line length in hex mode, and you can scroll horizontally with the keyboard).

TSE Pro is even better, but not free (and kind of quirky to handle).

Thanks, I'm going to look into this one!
I never worked with a console based hex editor before though so no idea what to expect of it

It's not working. Apparently the maximum line size is 32 and that's even less then XVI32 can do

I tried the newest version and the most recent 2.0 version, but both give me the same error

I'm gonna keep fiddling with it some more, but CTRL + O won't work above 32, perhaps I wasn't in hex mode or something?

edit: I somehow got it to work using a trial version of vedit.

HxD goes up to 512

I don't know if you know how to code, Tetrium, but sometimes the best solution when a hex editor isn't enough is to just write a quick bit of code in something like BASIC to read and edit the data in exactly the manner you wish. Many years ago I once wrote a quick program which could read in an NES ROM file, display the entire raw ROM data as individual pixels at high resolution, then using a crosshair mouse cursor I could point at spots in the raw code and instantly decode it as sprite data. Most of it just appeared garbled but this method ultimately allowed me to find sprite data in games which didn't have memory dedicated to sprite tiles. :B

aqrit wrote:

HxD goes up to 512

I need over 3 times as much though. I was using the trial version of above mentioned hex editor but it won't let me save, but at least I can view those Imperialism II maps properly..kinda 😁

Gemini000 wrote:

I don't know if you know how to code, Tetrium, but sometimes the best solution when a hex editor isn't enough is to just write a quick bit of code in something like BASIC to read and edit the data in exactly the manner you wish. Many years ago I once wrote a quick program which could read in an NES ROM file, display the entire raw ROM data as individual pixels at high resolution, then using a crosshair mouse cursor I could point at spots in the raw code and instantly decode it as sprite data. Most of it just appeared garbled but this method ultimately allowed me to find sprite data in games which didn't have memory dedicated to sprite tiles. :B

Alas, I can't code (I've tried 🤣)

I don't get it. Could it be that you just need something that more clearly tells you the start/end of a particular block of data? maybe you could try the split tool in HxD and deal with the exact-sized pieces individually.

Lo Wang wrote:

I don't get it. Could it be that you just need something that more clearly tells you the start/end of a particular block of data? maybe you could try the split tool in HxD and deal with the exact-sized pieces individually.

That's not the problem. The problem is that I can actually type in any width I want, but the programs simply will max out at the width of my screen resolution, which simply isn't enough.

So far I found 1 program which can do it, but I can't edit with that trial version so I just make a note of the addresses I want to change and change those in XVI32 😀

Try the "test drive" version of TSE Pro which I mentioned before - it's free for 60 days and lets you save and all.

There's a menu interface, but what you want is more easily done from the command line: "g32 -h -bX [filename]" will open a file in hex mode with a line length of X chars (I just tried "-b2048" and that works fine).
I've been using the same functionality to peek into graphics memory dumps, but that hardly needs such large values 😁

VileRancour wrote:

Try the "test drive" version of TSE Pro which I mentioned before - it's free for 60 days and lets you save and all.

There's a menu interface, but what you want is more easily done from the command line: "g32 -h -bX [filename]" will open a file in hex mode with a line length of X chars (I just tried "-b2048" and that works fine).
I've been using the same functionality to peek into graphics memory dumps, but that hardly needs such large values 😁

Downloaded, thanks 😀

As I'm not trying to edit the starter map at this time (I'm trying to figure out how Imp 2 works under the hood atm) I'll keep it as a backup in case I need it (what's the trial period do? What will stop working after it expired?)

what video card do you have ? do you have spare monitors if its a nv/amd card set up an eyefinity/nv surround display

Okteta are able to show 512 bytes in one line, actually I tried up to 8192 bytes: https://utils.kde.org/projects/okteta/

Tetrium wrote:

As I'm not trying to edit the starter map at this time (I'm trying to figure out how Imp 2 works under the hood atm) I'll keep it as a backup in case I need it (what's the trial period do? What will stop working after it expired?)

Dunno, but I assume the whole thing will. It'd be nice if more programs went the WinImage route for their trial periods (giving you actual X days of use, without counting 'idle' days towards the total)...

Probably not going to be suitable for your needs, but I had a similar problem so wrote my own hex editor. It's open source but only for Linux. There's no length limit (but also no horizontal scrolling so you have to resize the window and move it off the screen to get really long lines.)

But as others have said, this is the way to go if you want a particular feature. I wanted control characters to display with the same glyphs as they do under DOS, as you can quickly identify many file formats that way, which is impossible with those editors that just display dots for most characters. I also needed the ability to change the number of bits in a byte, as compression algorithms like LZW operate in units of nine to twelve bits, EGA tends to use four-bit units, B&W/mask images tend to be one-bit, and so on, so being able to show more/less than eight bits per byte really helps when trying to reverse engineer these formats.

Davros wrote:

what video card do you have ? do you have spare monitors if its a nv/amd card set up an eyefinity/nv surround display

That's a no-go and way too impractical for me. I'd need way more than 10k horizontal pixels 🤣!

I already found an editor which does what I want, but it's a trial and has a couple quirks in addition to wanting me to pay for the full product.
I can't write one myself, I'm actually kinda surprised noone simply made one as it's very handy. There isn't really any good reason to not write one that has virtually unlimited horizontal size, but this trial combined with XVI32 will have to do for now 😜