Well now that the RAID data has been recovered, and a new one is up and running, we can get back to some of the regular programming around these parts. Seems with my ADD and jumping around between a number of different formats, though mostly all from MicroProse, I’ve left some loose ends of unfinished work. I think it’s time we start wrapping up those loose ends, especially with regards to the MicroProse PIC file format. This post is mostly intended as a recap of what we’ve covered so far, to see what is still outstanding.
(more…)July 2024
Post Index
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Up! Up, and away!
This post is just a follow up to my previous post about there being some unexpected downtime as a result of a RAID failure. Well I have good news, the RAID data has been recovered, all 6TB of it. A new Open-ZFS based RAID is up and running in its place, as well as a proper backup strategy. So now even if the RAID goes down, my recovery time will be quicker and less stressful. So with that we should start getting back to some of the regular content we had in progress here already. Though as it is still summer, the frequency of posts will still be lower than what it was prior to the RAID failure. I’m going to do my best to try and make 2 posts per week, so we’ll see how it goes. Thanks to all those that reached out and offered support, and to those that subscribed to the blog to keep up to date. I have quite a few new formats queued up on the bench, so once we wrap up with the current batch we will get going on those, should be some exciting discoveries to come.
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Running on empty
In my last post we left of having successfully decoded the PAK and EGA image formats used by Electronic Arts with 688 Attack Sub. In this post we will reverse the process allowing us to convert an input image into the format. This post will mostly concentrate on the EGA image format, as there really isn’t anything to do with the PAK image format as it was just raw image data. The EGA format is more interesting in that it uses a form of RLE compression we had not seen until this point with the formats we’ve looked at so far.
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Attack of the subs
A little diversion while I wait for parts to arrive for my RAID data recovery and rebuild. Fingers crossed we don’t end up in a whole series of reverse engineering the Drobo BeyondRaid Filesystem format. (Though that could be fun for sport, AFTER I’m back up and running) Today’s target comes as another request. This time it’s 688 Attack Sub from Electronic Arts. Looks like there are a couple of different image asset files, PAK (and an accompanying PAL file), and EGA. So let’s dig in and see how far we get.
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Unexpected downtime
Things will be a bit slow here on the blog for the next little while. Firstly my RAID appears to have died, it’s an issue with the logic board, and not the drives or the data, so I can get it back one way or another. I’m working on getting a new NAS or DAS RAID box along with a doner unit that is the same model I have so I can use that to recover my data onto the new RAID box. All my content and notes are on it, so until I get it back up and running the posts I had planned on will be delayed. Secondly it’s summer and I want to get out and enjoy it a bit before the cold returns. I live in Canada where the summers are short, and the winters are long, have to take advantage while I can. And finally, I’m also preparing to sell my house, and I need to devote more time to getting that done. (patching, panting, decluttering, all that fun) This blogging thing has taken up way more time than I had planned, though I am enjoying it and plan to continue doing it… but priorities have to prevail. So for all these reasons things will be a bit quieter around here. I will still post but not as often as I have been the last few weeks. Though until I get my RAID up and running it will be even quieter than I had planned. Hope you all stick around, subscribe to the blog so you get notifications for when I do post, and I will be back with a lot more regular content in the near future, probably around the September time frame, but hopefully some good teasers before then too.
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Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in
After wrapping up with the SSI-IMG format yesterday, I’ve been struggling to come up with what to blog about next. My brain isn’t quite ready to jump back into the PIC format. Then I got a message…
any chance of this amiga “.img” getting converted with your tool?
Would love to extract the bitmap of this splash screen.And so the adventure begins. Just when I thought I was done with the SSI-IMG format.
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The space between
I couldn’t let it go, or at least my brain couldn’t. After decoding the SSI-IMG file format for the EGA/VGA assets I had planned to leave it at that. The dark corners of my brain, however, decided that I was going to have to decode the CGA variant as well. As a result this post will be about diving into the CGA framebuffer, and applying it to what we see in the CGA version of the IMG file format.
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Thunderbolts and Lightning
At the request of one of my readers here, I was asked to look at another graphics asset format. This time it’s the IMG format used by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) with their 1989 release of Red Lightning. I honestly don’t know much about this game, and all I have really is the one asset file that was sent for me to look at. The goal here is to be able to read and write this format, to facilitate modding of the game. With that said, let’s see what we can find out, and help make it happen for our reader.
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A new sub in the barn
Well looks like the break from the PIC file format didn’t last long. My last post we were wrapping up with the decoding of the MicroProse CAT file format when we stumbled upon what appears to be a previously unseen sub-type of the PIC89 variant of the PIC file format. I had actually suspected that this sub-type might exist, back when we were exploring the PIC89 variant (then referred to as PIC90 for reasons covered here), but had no assets to support that theory until now. Lets dig in and see what this mystery sub-type holds for us.
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The CAT is out of the bag
After practically melting my brain figuring out the LZSS compressor over the past several days, it’s time to take a break from the PIC file format for a post or two, and focus in on another file format from MicroProse. Namely the CAT file, found with games such as Silent Service II. The file seems to be some sort of archive that contains other asset files within. Lets dig in and tear it apart to see what we can learn from it.
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Ouch my eye! 