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Let's start by setting up the environment. First, you will need the tools listed below.

Install WinMerge first. It is an invaluably useful tool that allows a thorough comparison of two files, folders, and the actual contents of the folders. Additionally to being free, WinMerge is extremely powerful, and may even browse through the content of archives, should you have 7zip installed (more information available on their website).
Let's breakdown the interface together:



1. Click the "New" button to start the wizard and easily go through a file/folder comparison. I'll let you discover the rest of the tools, as they can be useful.
2. These 2 bars indicate the differences between the documents. An orange bar means that there is a difference between the two, while a gray bar indicates that there is a difference with spaces. Note that you may use this to go at a specific point in the documents.
3. The interesting part... This is of course the actual documents displayed side by side, with the differences being coloured. Note that the documents are synchronised to scroll together.
4. A useful bit to note once again. This line will display the actual number of differences between the two documents.


That should be all that you need to know about WinMerge. Close the program for now, as we won't be using it straight away.


Now to install Process Monitor. This tool allows to list every single file accessed during a period you want to study. Unfortunately, there are always a thousand processes running on Windows XP (even more on Windows Vista).
Here's a little breakdown of the interface for you:



1. Click the "File > Capture Events" button to start registering the actual 'events', these being any file/disk/registry access.
2. This funnel icon will popup a very interesting menu, detailed in 3., that will enable you to filter out the events displayed.
3. On to the filtering. Of course, finding the bits that the game or Worldbuilder accesses would be a nightmare with all the events going on. Therefore, one will often filter out the results using the following arugments:
"Process Name=game.dat THEN include", "Process Name=worldbuilder.exe THEN include" and "Path=<yourpath> THEN include", <yourpath> being either the BfME install directory or the BfME AppData directory if you are running the game using a -mod"
4. This will display all the events, and their actual details. Focus on the process name and the Path, as you shouldn't be able to make much sense out of the rest.

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