[Resource] Obscure Games & Acknex Resources *REUPLOAD*

[Snarboo]

I don't think it used the Shadowcaster engine having played IM Meen. While it shares a few similarities, it's more like an in-house Wolf 3D style engine with textured floors and such. Otherwise, it's missing all the features that made Shadowcaster unique, and I don't see Simon & Schuster licensing a relatively obscure engine.

[Gez]

Yes and no. The floppy version of Shadowcaster did not use compression, but the CD-ROM version used something for several entries (but not all of them). The compressed entries in Shadow CD start with a RLE0 signature, though I guess if it is the same engine (not proven) and they use the same compression system (not proven either), then they could have decided to just compress everything and do away with the signature.

SLADE3 can read Shadowcaster/CyClones archives and graphics, so I guess this at least can be checked quickly.

[Zero X. Diamond]

That quickly answers that: the resources won't open at all in SLADE3.

[Ceeb]

The guy in question (he's ShinDarkFox here but I haven't seen him in a looong time) had the tiles from the first map and the fist graphics ripped, but told me the sprites were in an odd, compressed format. I dunno what good that would be to anyone.

[Ethril]

Good lord, no. Keep I. M. Meen away from Doom, he's simply far too ridiculous to fit in. Even 1337man doesn't know what the fuck.

( )

[Ceeb]

As he put it, he was using the resources for a serious jokewad (a la CIF3).

ShinDarkFox: and then an army of Meen attacks and the audio is flooded with GOODY GOODYs
Ceeb: XD

[Snarboo]

Alright, I've been investigating a few interesting games as of late, but I've hit roadblocks in each:

1. First game I tried was Assassin 2015. I was easily able to find the sprite data, but I've run into a huge issue: there doesn't seem to be a palette anywhere. Based on information I've read about the game, each level and sublevel can have its own palette, so it's possible the palette is stored inside of the level, a data file I can't get into, or is remapped on the fly.
2. The next was Sandwarriors. Most of the interesting stuff is conveniently located in TGA files, such as the level textures. There's even a couple files that seem to be different palettes. However, the files I assume are the hud and weapons seem to be compressed.
3. Finally, I tried Mortal Coil. This has the opposite problem that Assassin did: I know where a few palettes are located, but the files I assume are the graphics appear to be compressed.

Of these three games, Assassin 2015 seems the most promising. I might be able to rig up a fake palette like I did with XS, but there's one problem: I can't run the game. The version I found refuses to start and claims it is not a valid Windows 32 application.

So, anyone willing to help me? :)

[Zero X. Diamond]

Mortal Coil might be some kind of RLE from what I remember, but I'm not 100% on that. I'd never heard of Sandwarriors before so I've got no idea on that one, and isn't Assassin 2015 the one that's basically "Cutscene: The Game?" I seem to recall seeing a gameplay video where it was literally like thirty seconds of gameplay, then a cutscene, then another thirty seconds of gameplay, then another cutscene...

[Snarboo]

Yeah, Assassin 2015 has great graphics but abysmal gameplay. It's literally strings of cutscenes with seconds of gameplay in between. The weapon graphics are great though, as are the enemies.

As for Mortal Coil, how might you probe a file that has RLE compression on it? Is there a tool or do you have to reverse engineer it?

[Zero X. Diamond]

I have literally no idea. All I know is that RLE and compression routines like it generally leave the images in such a state that, with a proper palette (or something close to it) you can tell that it's some sort of organized image data. If I knew how to crack it, I'd probably have Necrodome's guns right now.

[Snarboo]

I thought so. This is one of those few areas I wish I was more tech savvy.

[Zer0]

Guys, here are the resources for Bram Stokers Dracula. I might get the music uploaded soon as well.

LINK: http://www.mediafire.com/?sobtvw23353ogle

[Gez]

An RLE compression is quite simple. The image is divided into lines which will be of two types: compressed and uncompressed. When compressed, you'll have a value for the length, and a single pixel. That pixel is repeated as many times as the length value told. When uncompressed, you have a length value, and the next length bytes are taken as pixel data.

The problem is that there's no standard. So the way in which it determines whether a line is compressed or not depends from format to format. Further, some formats allow a line to span more than one row, others don't.

[Zero X. Diamond]

Guys, here are the resources for Bram Stokers Dracula. I might get the music uploaded soon as well.

LINK: http://www.mediafire.com/?sobtvw23353ogle

How did you do this? Are you a witch? All my attempts to even VIEW the graphics failed.

[Zer0]

I ripped the graphics by switching file names around. for example, the title graphic would be switched around with the monster graphics and it would show up on the start screen instead. I got the sounds using a ripper program, stuff like fonts was all screencapped and organized, the sky texture was just uncompressed raw data which I opened using tiledggd (http://code.google.com/p/tiledggd/) a useful program for this kind of resource stuff.