Just had a major moment of realization thanks to the people doing the Chinese translation, and it might fix this ancient problem with anti-virus programs corrupting saves. I was saving variables as both strings and binary to the save files (*GAM), depending on variable type. This made it impossible to open saves with notepad.
The latest test branch now saves and loads everything as a string, and the saves are now plain text that can be edited with notepad. As a bonus, somehow the files are smaller. I used to think notepad couldn't open saves because they were too big and notepad was too stupid. Now I know better, and I'm gonna update Warlord with this soon also.
I still haven't had time to install anti-virus programs and test if they still fuck it all up, but I do know that now translators and modders can edit the *.GAM save files with notepad and search+replace whatever words or item descriptions they want.
I also included 4 new commands to edit the HUD labels for "Chapter", "Respect", "Info", and "(none)". All the globals.bsl scripts now have those 4 extra commands to set the HUD labels.
Gonna keep this update in test branch for another week or so to make sure nothing gets fucked up. To opt in to the test branch, right-click Brigand in Steam, go to Betas tab, and choose "Test" from Beta Participation. If you have a save that you are working on or attached to, back it up or just don't opt in to the beta.
It does take a couple extra seconds to save and load (because it has to convert variables to strings and back), but it makes modding so much easier, and I have a food feeling anti-virus programs will not fuck with my game or my brain anymore, so it's worth it.