GCD File Format

GCD files contain starting character profiles. For more details, see "Resource Handling", section "Premade characters".

In addition to the 'theme' characters combat.gcd, stealth.gcd and diplomat.gcd, there are thee other files: demo.gcd, blank.gcd and player.gcd.

Presumably, demo.gcd was used in the demo, and blank.gcd and player.gcd were intended for creating our own characters (recall at the beginning of the game choosing the button "create character"). However, none of these files are used in the game.

GCD File Format

All offsets are listed in this table: Notes:

1. All offsets point to "big endian" DWORDs (4-byte numbers, lowest value = 4th byte).

2. Some values can be set higher than the maximum (SPECIAL, for example), but starting a game with them won't work. (not sure if this means an error/crash, or not having further effect beyond the max.)

3. Not all the maximum values have been verified; some are based on (fairly reasonable) assumptions.

4. When setting maximum values, remember that traits can affect stats and skills, and primary stats affect skills and secondary stats.

5. Those marked "presumably" are based on comparison with the SAVE.DAT file format (and also from studying PRO files).

6. Asterisks (*) mark secondary stats which are calculated based on primary stats and are not loaded from the GCD. I.e. they are here only nominally, and are not actually used.

7. If you tagged a fourth skill, the number of additional tag skill points becomes 99 (the default is 3, as you may recall). However, it's not possible to tag all the skills, because the restriction to three tagged skills remains.

If you play on a Mac, you can use the grammar on synalysis.net  to edit .gcd files easily.

Original document at teamx.ru (in russian)