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Disclaimer: I'm using this walkthrough, just hoping to clarify terms and how it works / what is necessary in order to properly package your file. u/weasel1453 you are a proper legend for figuring this out in the first place and I'm deeply appreciative. This is just my effort to lay it out in as simple terms as possible.
To start with, you'll want to back up your server's files. Multiple times. Be thorough. Messing up here will wipe what you have, and frankly I had a big scare where I thought I'd lost everything. If you're using Gportal for a dedicated server use their manual backup to be able to easily and completely restore what you've got. It saved my ass.
If you are using Gportal to host your server, you really need to get something like FileZilla or another FTP client. Instructions and download links are found here. You'll find all the information you need for connecting on the Status page, and everything copies with a simple click - IP, Port, etc. You could use the online file manager, but I find it to be much too slow to be worth it, when FTP will let you manage your files much more quickly and efficiently.
To modify .SAVE files, you will need a hex editor. I use HxD, which you can find here.
To re-zip the file afterward, you'll need a zipping software that can convert into .gz. I use 7zip, which you can find here.
Once you've handled that, get your latest save or autosave: it'll be nested somewhere like save-data/saves/v3/(world name: mine is 'dedicated'). You should see a list of .save zipped folders, as well as ServerGameSettings.json, SessionId.json, and StartDate.json. Here's what it looks like hosted on Gportal:
A screenshot of Gportal's file manager, in the save file folder.
And what it would look like on FileZilla:
A screenshot of FileZilla, showing the folder hierarchy as well as a list of autosave zips, but cut off at the top to avoid showing FTP server information and password.
Download your most recent save, unless you're hosting it on your computer - in which case just copy it elsewhere for your backup, then extract it.
You'll be left with a .SAVE file in the extracted folder. Open that with HxD.
A screenshot of the top of the .save file, in HxD.
It'll look intimidating at first. Just ctrl+f or hit 'search' at the top to search for the name you want to replace. (You'll likely find multiple instances of it; I don't know what determines how often the name occurs.) Keep your search in the text-string tab (default, the far left one) and hit 'All' on search direction.
Say here we want to replace 'Agape'.
A screenshot of hex code, highlighting the name 'Agape' and the hexadecimal to which it corresponds to on the left. Above and below are the names of other characters in the server - Megara and Dina.
If I wanted to change it into a name with the same number of letters, that would be easy; Raven, for instance, would only need me to replace the letters of Agape. As you type, the new letters will replace the ones that are already there (don't worry about the 00 bits after the name, they appear to be spacing in the data), as well as changing the hex to the left to match, making the process neat and tidy.
If you want to change the number of letters in the name, that's a bit more complicated. Let's replace Megara with Meg, if she's feeling like nicknames.
The bit that comes in the second space before the name refers to the number of letters in the name. You'll need to replace it with the proper hexadecimal - which is fairly straightforward between numbers 1-9, and then 10 is 0A and so on. Here is a hexadecimal converter.
A screenshot of the hexadecimal for 'Megara', preceded by the bit indicating the length of her name.
To change her name from Megara to Meg, you want to change the 06 to a 03 to reflect the number of letters in her name, and then change the letters you've removed to 00.
A screenshot of the hexadecimal for 'Meg' as well as the plaintext to the right. Altered bits are in red, and the name itself is highlighted to bring attention to it.
Alternatively, to lengthen a name, you simply change the preceding bit to indicate its new length and proceed to overwrite the following 00 bits. Here, I am changing the name 'Dina' to 'Xedina'.
A screenshot of the hexadecimal for 'Dina', alongside the rest of the row of bits, and the plaintext to the right. The name itself is highlighted to bring attention to it.
A screenshot of the hexadecimal for 'Xedina', as well as the plaintext to the right, alongside the preceding bits indicating its value. Altered bits and letters are in red.
Once you have every instance of the name you want to alter changed - and search several times, both backwards and forwards, as I've found the search function can be finicky - then you can save your file.
From here, put it into 7zip, and set the archive format to 'gzip'.
A screenshot of the GUI for 7zip; the file 'AutoSave_1925.save.gz' is being imported.
And now you can replace the most recent save file on your server or personal world! You'll have to test from here; I had errors for the first few hours I was trying, until I found that it was the issue of the file zipper I was using before 7zip (I had been using a zip-to-gzip converter) that was corrupting or otherwise making my files incompatible, resulting in my server crashing and giving me this error:
[2024-05-18 02:15:51] Client version: no bootstrapper found [2024-05-18 02:15:51] Loaded store 'install' from 'D:\home\sid_1474979\vRisingLaunch\config\config.vdf' successfully [2024-05-18 02:15:51] Failed to read store 'userlocal' from 'D:\home\sid_1474979\vRisingLaunch\config\localconfig.vdf.tmp'
I am by no means a technical expert, but if anyone else has issues with it, I'll do my best to help!

I went for an old 70s rusted rally car look with a tattered black vinyl top. Super happy with how it turned out. Funnily enough the 1960s Dodge Division logo on the front fenders was the hardest part, i under estimated how hard it was to make custom logos as opposed to downloading pre made ones lol. Whole thing took around 5 hours to complete.
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