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[Sprite] Terminator Rampage Resources

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 5:30 pm
by Zero X. Diamond
Well, it's a day late, but you guys can consider this my Christmas gift to you. I took a break from the particularly difficult rips that I've been working on to something a little easier to deal with. It took a lot of slamming on my enter key to get everything since the program I used had pretty much shit for a batch ripper (didn't help that the game had a proprietary graphics format that had to be converted to BMP by said program as well), but the end result is good enough that I'd say it was worth giving myself carpal tunnel. So without any further delay, I present you with a mostly complete rip of Terminator Rampage, the game Bethesda made before they worked on Future Shock or Skynet. (Speaking of, I've seen a couple weapon rips from Future Shock, but has anyone done full rips of that or Skynet?) What's included in the pack is as follows:
  • 321 static objects
    396 textures
    14 MIDI songs
    77 WAV sound effects
Unfortunately, the enemies and weapons are stored in a different way than the static objects and the program that I was using has no idea how to open them. On the off chance that Bethesda reused these formats in the later games which I've seen some rips from, these are CFA, DFA, and SET files. Should anyone know of a way I could crack these open, I'll be able to get you some nice weapon and enemy rips, the former being the reason I'd grabbed the game in the first place. If not, I'll just shelve that little project for later. Anyhow, as was the case before, I have some nice preview images for you all.

EDIT: CFA, DFA, and SET files have been ripped. 7 enemies, 8 weapons, and tons more textures and sprites are now in the archive!

Image
Image

Grab the pack at the link below!

Terminator Rampage Resources

Keep watching this thread; I've got two other rips currently in progress and a number of them that I hope to get underway soon!

Re: [Sprite] System Shock Resources

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 5:56 pm
by Snarboo
Zero X. Diamond wrote:Also, just for future reference, what do you call a thread with multiple types of resources from one source? Is it [Project]? That's what it looks like by the rules, but that seems... I dunno, unfitting. But none of the acceptable tags seem to particularly fit either.
That's exactly the tag I used for the Obscure FPS Resource project. I'd say it's safe to switch the tag over to [Project] if you want to host more than one set of resources in a single thread.

Re: [Sprite] Terminator Rampage Resources

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 5:59 pm
by Snarboo
I attempted to rip Terminator Rampage's weapons years ago by taking screenshots of the game. It was one of my first attempts at doing so, and was very amateurish. I not only played the game in the wrong resolution, stretching the sprites, but I was unable to capture all the frames of animation for each weapon. The game also had very few cheats, with the "give all weapons" command only giving you the weapons but no ammo for them. I had to scour the levels for pickups just so I could rip the weapons.

I've since lost the resources I had from it, but if they could be ripped more cleanly or without the hassle of using an image capture program, it would probably be for the best. You should probably upload the resources that you couldn't convert in a separate resource. Someone who is intrepid enough might be able to convert them eventually.

Re: [Sprite] Terminator Rampage Resources

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 6:15 pm
by Zero X. Diamond
Well, my registration over at the XeNTaX forums went through late last night and the first post that I made was looking for some help decrypting the formats of the files that I couldn't convert already. If all goes well, I'll have not only the rest of the Terminator Rampage graphics but I'll also be able to get the graphics from Terminator 2029 (many of which appear to be stored in similar [or the same] formats). While it wasn't an FPS and didn't even feature free rotation, 2029 had some excellent graphics that'd do wonders for level design. So here's hoping somebody gets back to me about those!

If I don't hear anything on that soon though, I may do as you suggested and post a pack of unconverted files here and see what can be made of them.

Re: [Sprite] System Shock Resources

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 9:03 pm
by Zero X. Diamond
Oh, well, if that's the case, I might switch back to an all-purpose resource thread. I was thinking it'd be the less cluttering option, but I didn't want to break the rules and it kinda seemed like nobody was interested in the thread once I changed the name of it from what it was. But if I really can do it that way, is there any way the Terminator Rampage thread could be merged back into this one?

Re: [Sprite] Terminator Rampage Resources

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:40 am
by Gez
Zero X. Diamond wrote:On the off chance that Bethesda reused these formats in the later games which I've seen some rips from, these are CFA, DFA, and SET files.
Bethesda has a history of reusing file extensions for completely different formats. The .bsa files in Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire and Morrowind are all completely different in nature. (Oblivion and Fallout 3's bsa files are similar in their principle to Morrowind's, but still not compatible. They're not completely different, but still different enough that different tools have to be used.)

That said, it might be possible that the tool used to view Arena resources could be used for T:R as well. If I remember things correctly, it was the same engine. (While T:FS and T:SN used respectively the same and an improved version of Daggerfall's engine.)

Re: [Sprite] Terminator Rampage Resources

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:40 pm
by Zero X. Diamond
Unfortunately, WinArena appears to be hard coded to only work with Daggerfall: Arena due to the fact that it renders a demo game world for you to explore. However, you've just given me another major clue in cracking these formats because sure enough, the program that can open Rampage's BSA can also open D:A's BSA and inside are a number of similar formats. For example, the .IMG files are the same format, which in turn leads me to believe that the other unknown files probably are as well. According to WinArena's readme, the .CFA files contain creatures, .CIF is some sort of animation, the .INF files I'd figured were levels were actually containers of texture, sprite, and sound loading information, and so on. If I could somehow insert the Terminator Rampage files with the same extensions into the Arena BSA, I could do a dump from there... I'd have to repalette the TR images since they'd all output garbagey looking in the Arena palette, but still, it's something.

If nothing else, this is a major break on the conversion front since WinArena has the source code included with it. SOMEBODY will be able to figure this crap out now.

EDIT: In fact, if I knew how to work in C++ better, I could maybe do it myself. Looking at the code, it's got a decent amount of comments and explanations of what different segments of the code are for. There are filenames I'm recognizing and the like, but sadly I haven't got much of a head for coding... I work mostly by trial and error, which can be infuriating with this kind of thing.

Re: [Sprite] Terminator Rampage Resources

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:51 pm
by Gez
Zero X. Diamond wrote:If nothing else, this is a major break on the conversion front since WinArena has the source code included with it.
That's the only reason I linked to it. I know the tool itself cannot be used directly.

(And it's TES: Arena and TES: Daggerfall, not "Daggerfall: Arena". :P)

Re: [Sprite] Terminator Rampage Resources

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 3:04 pm
by Zero X. Diamond
Whoops! I am an idiot. That is completely correct and it just now struck me. My bad!

Looking further, now I'm really wishing my code skills were better because I've found the functions that go into ripping the DFA and CFA files. Apparently they are RLE compressed and muxed, whatever that latter portion means... the first being one of the few ways that BMP files can be compressed, I think. (Apart from putting them inside a compressed archive, I mean.)

EDIT: AHA! I may have found a bassackwards way of getting the files! There's a program called BSA_F-EX that can extract and reinsert all of the files in a BSA. With any luck, I should be able to make a copy of Arena and insert Terminator graphics into it for extraction by either just straight up adding them or by replacing current entries, depending on how the program works. In either case, all it should take then is a simple palette swapping and I should have everything.

Since I've got it now, by the way, would anyone care for a full rip of Elder Scrolls: Arena? Don't believe I've ever seen a rip of that around here.

EDIT #2: Slowly but surely I am getting this prepared. Here's how it works: the files from Terminator Rampage all had to be hand renamed to files within the BSA of TES:Arena of the same type. BSA_F-EX is then used to slowly and painstakingly import the TR info one by one. (And by painstakingly, I mean it; it resets your view after every single file [you can't batch import] meaning that you have to try and remember the last file you did every single time.) However, the good news is that WinArena can still open with the edited BSA, meaning that all I'll have to do once this pain in the ass is through with is dump them and apply the Terminator Rampage palette to the images. (Hopefully.)

EDIT #3: SUCCESS! It took even more finagling than grabbing System Shock's resources, but I have finally managed a world first: rips of Terminator Rampage's enemies, weapons, and compressed textures. Using the above method, I was able to rip the graphics perfectly (without even needing to do a palette swap). I should have them available by tomorrow at the latest; I can't upload them as they are presently due to the fact that they're currently animated GIF images and sheets of half TR textures and half Arena textures. Once I split everything up, I'll add them to the pack. Examples below to show you I'm not pulling your leg!

Image Image

REMEMBER, YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST!

Re: [Sprite] System Shock Resources

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:07 am
by wildweasel
Your thread runneth over. =P

Re: [Sprite] Zero's Resources

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:17 am
by Zero X. Diamond
Thanks a lot, ww. I've got a lot more coming so I didn't want to clutter everything up now that I've figured out how to handle a multi-resource thread.

Re: [Sprite] Terminator Rampage Resources

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 5:00 am
by Recurracy
Zero X. Diamond wrote: Image Image
Dayum, those look pretty cool :D

Re: [Project] Zero's Resources

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:05 am
by Xim
They actually look a little odd, but if that big ole' robot has full rotations it'll be cool to just see in some mods. It still doesn't look that great though.

Re: [Project] Zero's Resources

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 12:58 pm
by Zero X. Diamond
And of course, unfortunately, the giant ass robot is the only enemy that doesn't feature rotations! Really is a shame because it's a pretty wicked looking machine. Anyhow, I just got up a bit ago and I'm about to start ripping the GIFs to individual frames. Should be done within the hour, so keep watching this thread!

Re: [Project] Zero's Resources

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:55 pm
by Captain Awesome
You truly are righteous, my man. :D