If I remember correctly, only brush, entity, mesh, and particle files need to be converted from BIN to TXT...everything else (gameplay constants, galaxy scenario def, etc) is already in a nice text format...

Or perhaps you are getting formatting problems from using something like wordpad (which can use tabs and endlines differently, perhaps?)...as Goa said, notepad is a better choice...however, I do believe some people use notepad plus or something like that, mainly because it shows you line numbers...

Well, there are multiple files with "DEF" in the filetype...GALAXYSCENARIODEF, REFERENCEDEF, ASTEROIDDEF, etc...I assumed they were referring to those, but that may be a bad assumption...

Did you get this mod from somewhere, or is this something you made?

Does the mod work if the .DEF file is gone?

from a quick search in the vanilla gameinfo folder here are several files of the namestructure Name.Namedata, and from my checking of several files at random, they ARE in PLAIN TEXT and would suggest using either notepad OR notepad++ to edit(if you really NEED to, and do not remember seeing any ods that did alter them).

harpo