arkprofile file merging

[Timens]

Hello

I played Ark in a Nitrado server a few years ago (in 2019) with some friends before stopping. I had kept a copy of the server on my personal PC. I decided to rent a new one a few months ago, on a new map. Today we want to reuse my old backup on this new server, simultaneously with my current progress.
Player character data is stored in an "arkprofile" file. My concern is that I now have 2 of these files for each player on the server, which means I can't switch between characters in-game.
I would like to merge these two arkprofile files into a single one, but I'm having trouble because these files are written in hexadecimal. Can someone give me the steps to follow?

Thanks for any help you could bring me

Timens

[Pipinghot]

3 hours ago, Timens said:

I would like to merge these two arkprofile files into a single one, but I'm having trouble because these files are written in hexadecimal. Can someone give me the steps to follow?

I've seen posts for fixing individual, specific issues with characters by editing the profile file, but I've never seen anything, anywhere, that gives enough information to do a complete edit like you're trying to attempt. Unless someone posts a big surprise in this thread, I think what you're asking for has never been documented by anyone. Not on youtube, not reddit, not these forums. I'm pretty sure that your only option is to make a backup copy of a character file and then use trial & error to start manually editing the backup file to try to accomplish your goal.

Having said that, since you have admin rights on the server the idea of editing profiles seems like a waste of your time, it would be a whole lot easier to use some admin commands to effectively do the same thing.
* You can grant XP to characters until they're whatever level you want.

* You can spawn in bosses then kill them with admin commands to unlock the tek engrams associated with those bosses. Then, as long as the characters you wish to "promote" are nearby you can use "cheat kill" to kill the boss you just summoned and all of the characters will get credit and unlock the engrams for that boss.

 

[Larkfields]

You don't need to spawn the bosses in - you can use a command to give the boss fights to players...

https://arkids.net/command/defeatboss

 

[Timens]

Thanks very much for your quick response, even if it is negative, it helps.
I'm a little surprised that no one has ever attempted to transfer a local character to a server this way.

You suggest keeping only one character file and recreating those from the other file, that's it ? I don't know if I could properly recover my dinosaurs and it may cause problems with the tribes as well. It's still a possible alternative solution.

I'll see what is possible with admin commands

Thank you (both) again

[DirkInSA]

5 hours ago, Timens said:

You suggest keeping only one character file and recreating those from the other file, that's it ? I don't know if I could properly recover my dinosaurs and it may cause problems with the tribes as well. It's still a possible alternative solution.

Yes - as above - pick one of the two toons that you have and delete from the save game directory the one you don't want. And when you transfer to that now "unpopulated" server use admin commands to Take Tribe ownership, Take Structures, Take Dinos.
If there were multiple Tribes on the other map, you may have to allow those guys to also do this trick.
So for e.g. you want to keep the "structure" of the most recent map. In the old map's directory remove all the .arkprofile files. Then transfer to that map from your new map, and use admin commands to take ownership of the tribe and stuff that used to be yours.
And if someone wants to do it the other way around (i.e. keep the toon from the old map), then delete that particular .arkprofile on the new map whilst keeping it on the old map.

The profiles are named by the persons steamID so that is  how you know who is what.

It is possible to hex edit the profile files to (for example) change the SteamID (owner) of the profile, or the in game toon name and so on. But again as above it is kinda a stab in the dark, and in all events tribe membership and etc. is recorded in a different file(.arktribe). I have not tried editing that file directly to alter the owner and internal player ID's of members to the tribe (although I expect it is possible), because it is much easier to simply fix it with admin cheats.

As a last comment, you might have kit in the inventory of the "old toon" that you want to keep. So best to "play" on the old map at least once so that you can put your kit in a box before deleting him.

[Pipinghot]

19 hours ago, Timens said:

I'm a little surprised that no one has ever attempted to transfer a local character to a server this way.

People transfer characters all the time, what they don't do is try to merge characters by editing the hexidecimal files on the server.

The game is fundamentally designed so that each account can have only one character on each server/map, having more than one arkprofile for a single account on a single server is exactly what ARK is designed to prevent.

If, for example, you play on the Official servers you could have a character on The Island, one on Center, on on Aberration, another one on a different Island server, and yet another one on a different Center server. You could also move those characters from server-to-server. If you wanted your character from Island #1 to move over to Island #2 you would first have to move the character on Island #2 to a different server.

You just can't have two characters on the same map at the same time.

19 hours ago, Timens said:

You suggest keeping only one character file and recreating those from the other file, that's it ? I don't know if I could properly recover my dinosaurs and it may cause problems with the tribes as well. It's still a possible alternative solution.

I'll see what is possible with admin commands

There are tons of admin commands that let you do a lot of stuff - add or remove people from tribes, assign tribe ownership, take ownership of buildings & dino's for a tribe.

 This is a rough idea of what you would do:

1) Choose which character you want each person to play on that map.

2) Make each of those characters a member of the tribe you want to have active on that map.

3) Assign ownership of all structures on the map to that tribe (the "TakeAllStructure" command).

4) Assign ownership of all tames on the map to that tribe (the "TakeAllDino" command).

 

You will probably want to spend a bit of time looking at all of the possible admin commands to see if there are other things you want to use them for.

[Timens]

That's what I finally did, I kept my old character who will travel through maps because we haven't gone far on the new server yet. Thanks again for your kindness

[GrumpyBear]

22 hours ago, Timens said:

Thanks very much for your quick response, even if it is negative, it helps.
I'm a little surprised that no one has ever attempted to transfer a local character to a server this way.

You suggest keeping only one character file and recreating those from the other file, that's it ? I don't know if I could properly recover my dinosaurs and it may cause problems with the tribes as well. It's still a possible alternative solution.

I'll see what is possible with admin commands

Thank you (both) again

You can give yourself all the imprints you had w/ a different character on your dinos.    If the GMs can do it for us on official, I'm 100% sure you can make any char you want owner of everything.  There's commands to add yourself to a tribe, to give yourself ownership of animals and structures.