A glitch in the timeline

September 7, 2024

A glitch in the timeline

Once again it appears we need to realign the naming of our PIC file formats. Luckily it’s only a small one this time around, and with it we also add a new title, or rather a port of a title to our list. This is the first time we’ve added a non PC title that supports the PIC format, though I do believe it has been used on other platforms as well. This all happened a couple of days ago so here’s how it went down.

September 5 2024 11:41 AM

Hey, a chap in a discord for old MPS colonization mentioned a until now uncracked format, namely the CIV 1 for PC98.
another PIC format
PixelWings

you mean the one I already decoded?
oh wait that was RRDX, but was related to PC98
CanadianAvenger

yes indeed
PixelWings

I wonder if it’s not the same as the RRDX format
CanadianAvenger

I am trying to get an example PIC
it could be
if so, then some people gonna be very happy.
PixelWings

if it’s not, it’s likely pretty close
and if it’s PIC, I’d be happy to add it to the book of knowledge of course
CanadianAvenger

I thought so!
I have a little trouble finding the pc98 version, I have asked for example files

got one

exciting
PixelWings

“H8” seen that before

in the hex viewer looks to be RRDX

let me try decoding it
CanadianAvenger

cool
The game has a very japanese graphic style compared to the US version, at least in its icons and sprites
PixelWings

same as RRDX
CanadianAvenger

Wow! That is good news indeed!
Scratch another game for you!
PixelWings

so that’s Civ 1 on PC-98?
CanadianAvenger

Yep!
PixelWings

cool, will need to make a note of that and differentiate the PC and PC-98 versions then. (PC version is PIC90)
CanadianAvenger

later that day I noticed the release date, and realized the implications.

so today’s PIC discovery potentially has implications… Civilization for PC-98 was released in ’92
(before RRDX)
and thus PIC93 should be renamed to PIC92
CanadianAvenger

And that brings us to today, where we finally get around to correcting the record.

Hear ye, Hear ye
Let it be known that henceforth PIC⁹³ shall now be known as PIC⁹¹

So with that proclamation made, this is how things sit now.

Game Title	Release Year	Asset Date	Format Version	Notes
F-19 Stealth Fighter	1988	May 88	PIC⁸⁸
Sword of the Samurai	1989		PIC⁸⁹
F-15 Strike Eagle II	1989	Jun 89	PIC⁸⁸
Knights of the Sky	1990		PIC⁹⁰
Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon (PC)	1990	Feb 90	PIC⁸⁹
Sid Meier’s Covert Action	1990	May 90	PIC⁸⁹
Silent Service II	1990	Jun 90	PIC⁸⁹
Lightspeed	1990	Jul 90	PIC⁹⁰
Hyperspeed	1991	Jul 90	PIC⁹⁰
F-15 Strike Eagle II Desert Storm	1991	Mar 91	PIC⁸⁸
F-117A Stealth Fighter	1991	Aug 91	PIC⁸⁸
Gunship 2000	1991	Sep 91	PIC⁸⁸
Sid Meier’s Civilization (PC)	1991	Nov 91	PIC⁹⁰
Sid Meier’s Civilization (PC-98)	1992		PIC⁹¹	New Entry (PC-98 port)
Darklands	1992	Jun 92	PIC⁹⁰
F-15 Strike Eagle III	1992	Sep 92	PIC⁹⁰
Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon (PC-98)	1991		PIC⁹¹	New Entry (PC-98 port)
Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon Deluxe (PC)	1993	Jun 93	PIC⁹¹	previously recorded as PIC⁹³
F14 Fleet Defender	1994	Feb 94	PIC⁹⁰
Magic: The Gathering	1997		PIC⁹⁰

I wonder if there are other MicroProse PC-98 titles out there using the PIC⁹¹?

Do you wanna build a snowman?

These name changes can get confusing and we are approaching the official release of the code, so at this point I’m going to freeze the names of the variants and just manage any anomalies with caveats going forward. This will be easier to maintain, and prevent further confusion down the road.

By Thread

File Formats, MicroProse, PIC File Format, Reverse Engineering

Posted by:

canadianavenger

Timeline

4 responses to “A glitch in the timeline”

Bobblen

September 9, 2024 at 3:10 am

Just wanted to say how much I’m enjoying this exploration of the old Microprose graphics formats. I’ve done a bunch of graphics mods for various versions of Civ 1 and had long hoped to do something with the unique PC-98 high res graphics (I was the guy who was talking about this with PixelWings earlier), so I’m delighted that it matches RR Tycoon Deluxe and you’ve got it working.

Reply
canadianavenger

September 9, 2024 at 11:39 am

Glad you’re enjoying it and getting some use out of my work, that’s the real payoff for me. Thanks so much for following along. I’m working on the concluding chapters for the PIC formats right now, and should be posting them in the near future. If there are any other formats you want to see discussed or reversed, feel free to drop me a note.

Reply
Bobblen

September 10, 2024 at 3:42 am

Thanks, happy to throw a bunch of games at the decoder once it’s ready for a bit of testing. As for other targets, it looks like you’ve already been supplied with the majority of the back catalogue!

Most of the other Civ 1 ports have already been figured out elsewhere. Mac & Windows (and CivNet & Colonization for Windows for that matter) uses a different Microprose format, possibly a successor to PIC that they call ‘GIF’. It’s also LZW compressed, but there’s an open source tool on CivFanatics that can handle it fine.

Amiga AGA and Atari ST use the famous LBM format and can just be opened in a decent image editor. The odd one out is the first Amiga Civ, the ECS version. As far as I’m aware, that’s never been figured out so might be worth a look. The payoff is a bit lame, the same graphics as DOS with less colours, so maybe there are more interesting things to look at.

There’s also the PC-98 rabbit hole. I must admit I don’t know alot about these ports, as I’m not fluent in Japanese and was only willing to struggle against that for Civ, but there does seem to be quite a few others.

MicroProse – NEC Retro

Reply
1. canadianavenger
  
  September 10, 2024 at 1:03 pm
  
  That is interesting about the GIF format. PIC of course used LZW, as did the official GIF by Compuserve. I wonder if it’s not just a rebranded PIC variant, or perhaps a headerless Compuserve GIF. (there are slight variations in the LZW implementation) I may have to dig into that, just as a point of interest.
  
  As for the early Amiga version, even if there is no payout for new assets, it may be interesting to still decode the variant. We can talk more about it offline, if you like. I would need some assets to work with. Give me a shout on Discord, I use the same name there (PW can also get it to you)
  
  I’m no PC-98 expert either. I don’t read a lick of Japanese, but I was able to extract what I needed out of a few Japanese documents via the diagrams, and luckily they used Arabic numerals so was easy to parse out values. Coupled with that were several English webpages that gave some detail, like Wikipedia. – I was quite surprised to find that Civ1 used the same format as RRDX. Though thinking about it, it makes sense as this would have been after the development of Railroad Tycoon for PC-98, and the Japanese unit likely would have reused the format with any other titles around that time.
  
  Reply

Ouch my eye!