
Patcher				Copyright (C) Moose O'Malley, 
--------			December 1996.

Patcher for Windows 3.1, 3.11, 95, NT.

Patcher is a utility that enables you to modify a file
according to the parameters and values held in a special patch 
file.

For example, Joust, that comes with Williams Arcade Classics,
can be modified to enable the famous Pterodactyl Bug 
by applying over 180 modifications to the Joust.EXE file.

Also, many other games and applications can be modified and 
improved by applying changes to the EXE / COM files.

Clearly doing these modifications by hand with a Nibble Editor
would be extremely time consuming and error prone.

Patcher enables you to overcome these problems by automating 
the process.

To modify a file, just have a Patch (text) file which has the same
name as the file being modified, but with an extension of
.PAT.  For example, for JOUST.EXE, have a JOUST.PAT text patch file.

The Output file would in this case be JOUST.EXP.  Which you can 
then rename to .EXE and run as normal.

The format of the Patch file is 3 Hexadecial numbers (with $
prefixes) : the Offset, the Old Value, and the New Value 
seperated by spaces as follows :

- $11856 $20 $49
  $11857 $99 $4E
  $11858 $67 $43

But, as long as there are spaces between the $ prefixed numbers,
then many other combinations will work as well, and
any labels in between will be ignored, such as :

- Offset $11856: From $20 To $49
  Offset $11857: From $99 To $4E
  Offset $11858: From $67 To $43

- Offset= $11856   Old Value= $20   New Value= $49
  Offset= $11857   Old Value= $99   New Value= $4E
  Offset= $11858   Old Value= $67   New Value= $43

would all work fine as well.

If the Old Value does not match the value at the specified
OffSet, warning messages are displayed.

Lines starting with the characters ";", "!", or "#"
are assumed to be comment lines and will be ingored.

Counts of Characters processed, Patches Processed, Patches
Successful, and Patches Mismatched are mainted during the
Patch process.

Developed using 16-bit Delphi.


Sharware Information :
----------------------

This is NOT free software.

This product is shareware.  

This means that you can try out the software for evaluation 
purposes without charge for a period of 21 days to enable you
to decide whether to purchase / register it.

If you use this software after the 21 day evaluation period
a registration fee is required.  See the Registration Form
in the file register.txt.

Unregistered use of this software after the 21-day evaluation 
period is in violation of U.S. and international copyright laws.

If you do not purchase / register the software after the 21 day
trial period, then you must delete it from your system.

In order to encourage me to develop this software and keep 
developing other software, I encourage you to do the right 
thing and register the software.

I could have easily have made the programs nag you to Register, 
or expire after 21 days of use, but I do not like this approach.

From April 97 on, however, some of the new functionality being 
added to my programs will be available for Registered users only.
I tried to avoid doing this, but now I have been forced to do 
this to try and encourage some Registrations.

I live in the hope that if people use the programs, then they 
will register them.

Registered users will receive FREE upgrades of the program for
the life of the program.  i.e. as long as I keep improving the
program, registered users will get this new / additional 
functionality for FREE.

To Register, please complete the Registration Form in
the file register.txt.


Ammendment History :
--------------------

Vers    Date        Description
1.1     01-Dec-96   First Public Release.
1.2     09-Jan-97   Enable Double Click on FileName box to select file,
                    and add in Input File and Patch File select buttons.
1.3     27-Jan-97   Add in Registration functionality.
2.0     07-Jul-97   Save settings automatically on Windows 95 shutdown 
                    (Registered Users only).
                    Start Minimised if set in Shortcut / settings
                    (Registered Users only).  
                    Improve application startup - size and position 
                    form before user sees it.
                    Add in Menu items for viewing my Shareware Catalog, 
                    the Readme file, and the Registration Form.
2.1     11-Jan-98   Fix a long standing but very elusive problem
                    to do with "DateEncode" errors which occured
                    on some machines under some conditions.
                    Once I could replicate the error, it was
                    reasonably straight forward to get a workaround
                    for what was another bug in Delphi.
                    (3,131 lines of code.)


If this program was not downloaded from my Home Page, then
it is most likely an old version.  The latest version of this 
program is available from my Home page and its mirrors.

Moose
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 EMail         : Moose@rocknet.net.au
 Home Page     : http://www.rocknet.net.au/~moose/
 Mirrors       : See above Home Page.
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