How to edit a Broodwar replay file?

vitika

15 Posts

February 27 2025 02:11 GMT

Hi guys,

Just wondering if it's possible to reverse engineer the replay file? At the very least, can we change some basic metadata like Game date, map name, player name etc.?

I tried to open a typical .rep file with a HEX editor like HxD but it just shows gibberish. Maybe I have to choose a specific encoding?

LUCKY_NOOB

Bulgaria1533 Posts

February 27 2025 10:43 GMT

To what end?

Xeofreestyler

Belgium6775 Posts

February 27 2025 12:35 GMT

yeah buddy why would you wanna do that

[image loading]

iFU.pauline

France1694 Posts

February 27 2025 19:00 GMT

Maybe it is for your Starcraft Resume?

In the age of AI, I don't even know if it is still relevant to ask a technical question on a forum.

Nirli

Bulgaria381 Posts

February 28 2025 06:39 GMT

He's playing with fire, that guy. Next thing he's gonna say is that Ghosts are good units!

Zergxhx

China191 Posts

February 28 2025 06:49 GMT

I will change the name of every opponent I defeat to Flash

Ilikestarcraft

Korea (South)17733 Posts

February 28 2025 08:50 GMT

On February 27 2025 11:11 vitika wrote:
Hi guys,

Just wondering if it's possible to reverse engineer the replay file? At the very least, can we change some basic metadata like Game date, map name, player name etc.?

I tried to open a typical .rep file with a HEX editor like HxD but it just shows gibberish. Maybe I have to choose a specific encoding?

I never edited a replay file so take what I say with a grain of salt. If this was me, I would first look into replay parsers online and see if they have writing features. If they don't then I would try to read the metadata of interest that you're looking for in the replay through the parser. Once you can read it, you can try to see how/where it was read and see if you can hex edit the values in the file as a starting point. Though I'm not sure if replays have a checksum that will corrupt the replay if you edit it that way though. In that case you will probably have to reverse engineer how the checksum is calculated and modify it accordingly to your edit.