Railworks America

What's the difference between .proxybin and .proxyxml ? And why does a .bin file need to be told to read a .proxyxml even though the file is really a .bin and it reads it anway?

This is sort of a who's on first question. The bin file contains the information for the object. The xml file is not needed for the object to function. You need to have or make a xml file so you can make changes. Then you need to run the xml through serz to make the change to the bin file. I hope that's clear.
Buzz

As Buzz indicated the XML is not required - it's simply something that gets exported along with the object when using the Blueprint Editor.

It is a little more complex than that.
This is what I observed, feel free to correct me because my memory is often wobbly:

In most cases, if there is both a .bin and a .xml, the system will read the .xml and not the .bin.
It may check the dates and use the latest one, I haven't tested that.

Many games that have scripting capabilities do this (for instance, the numerous games that use Python scripting).
Usually the official scripts will be compiled or archived (.bin for RSC content, .pak for games using Python) for performance reasons, and the user can decompile/decompress the content and make modifications, and then the game will automatically use the modified content in preference to the original.

In short, your blueprints should reference only .xml files, and you may compile your .xml files into .bins or not, at your convenience. The game will decide what file to use.

He's not referring to bins and xml in general but more about the proxybin and proxyxml that are used for sound configuration.
As said above. You can edit the proxyxml and convert to proxybin by use of serz.exe. The proxybin in turn is read by the sound.bin.
Lost yet?

Totally Where both files are present with the same name I've just been editing both the .proxybin and .proxyxml so there are essentially the same using RW_Tools, just incase. Seems to work.

I have serz on my dektop and if you just drag the xml file to it it updates your bin file.

I'm pretty sure you don't need to edit both.

^^ Right. Just edit the proxyxml and then drag it to the serz.exe and it will make a new proxybin.

Will it overwrite the existing .bin or do I need to delete it first?

It will overwrite a ...bin if one already exists.

GaryG

One of the benefits of using RWTools is It will make a backup of the BIN when you save your changes.