Short summary for Paul: nothing interesting. I write it as a report of done work and to provide some clues for somebody looking for ancient formats.
After I did EGG format support, I remembered that samples.mplayerhq.hu
had a directory dedicated to that and some other game formats (from Smacker to Bink 2), so I decided to look at it and see if I can support some of those. Spoiler alert: there were low-hanging fruits there.
What got supported:
- ICOM video—this one is used in their Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series. Initial frame is unpacked, the rest are coded as sequences of skip and masked updates. I’ve managed to RE it from the sample files only, it’s that simple!
- Klondike Moon VID—also raw first frame plus simple RLE for the following frames, and I’ve also managed to RE it from the samples;
- Maelstrom ANM—this one uses RLE for both intra and inter frames;
- Manic Karts AMF—simple RLE with a special large value skip or run modes that encode skip/run length in the way known as Xiph lacing;
- The Amazing Spider-Man vs The Kingpin BIN (Sega Saturn game)—again, I’ve REd it from the two known sample files despite this being a console game. I had some vague ideas about how the console works and indeed it proved to be raw data for tiles/palette/scroll planes (even if it was send as a partial update in some cases) that I simply had to assemble correctly. Just reading some console specifications of its video system was enough.
What I looked at but haven’t REd (yet?):
- Knowledge Adventure Movie—I looked at it some time ago and it’s not a format I’m eager to revisit;
- Road Avenger BIN—this format seems to compress tile data with some custom LZ77-based compressor with a signature “
sarc20
“. I’ve managed to locate the bit in the binary specification responsible for the unpacking but no references to what and how it’s used.Nevertheless I hope to finish REing it with my new knowledgeUpdate: done. It’s simply one plane with tiles coded and palette transmitted before the compressed data; - Rollcage Ripper FMV—I REd it long time ago, I just need to locate my notes and finish it. Update: it’s in progress, decoding works, reconstruction is far from good though;
- Rocketz VQM—I failed to find the code responsible for the decoding (and Ghidra decompiler refuses to work on many functions there), and DosBox debugger reports that these files are read in 16kB chunks, so no luck on guessing their internal structure. Maybe one day…
In either case that makes it ten original formats added since version 0.3 and about ninety in total. Two more originally REd formats and another dozen of formats REd and documented by others (those are easier to come by) and my goal for the next release is complete.