Krishty’s Sim Forums

Yes, the .hlp file is compiled in what was intended to be a one way process. The .chm can at least be decompiled. With some tricks, Win10 can be made to run the .hlp reader, so I can see what super_ef.hlp originally looked like and compare it with the .chm version. While I'm at it, I might as well r...

Yes, that's what that conversion SW is doing: The problem as I see it, is that we don't know exactly which html file extracted from the .hlp file is the destination of those hotspot links as they are given made-up names.

Super EF2000 (and EF2000 Reloaded) use the .hlp file. I've converted to .chm but haven't tried integrating it with EF2000 Reloaded, so it's completely standalone. But there's a problem in that the .shg files that have 'hotspots' don't work at all. This is the first thing you see when you open super_...

While EF2000 Reloaded is mainly aimed at 3dFX DOS version, the Windows 95 version 'Super EF2000' used the Windows help system to provide a nice 'online' help window. Unfortunately, this no longer works on Window10, and clicking on it has no effect. efr_help.png The information is held in a file call...

I'm not sure whether this came out before or after EPIC, but shares some characteristics of later games in terms of the way the data files are packaged but the extracted files have more in common with EPIC. As this is a franchise game, I don't want to incur the wrath of Orion Pictures' legal departm...

Looks great! Look forward to flying around the AC3 world without having 10 seconds to get get somewhere or destroy something.
I already have AC7, so there's presumably also AC1,2,4,5 & 6.

Slowing down this vital activity as the weather has cooled down enough to go outside again. :) The .dat file isn't quite what I was expecting, after a hundred or so unknown bytes at the start, there is a block of embedded .3 files without names. For the picture in the last post, it's about the first...

'flib.dat' is about 42kB, and is less than half the size of the next smallest mission file. This first mission is in space only, and involves blowing up mines. The file appears to be a composite of various data types, but contains no text elements. Here it is visualized at 120 bytes per row. epic_fl...

From a data file point of view, the only big mystery left is the 'levs' folder, which contains one .dat file for each of the 10 missions in the game. There's an overall 'director' script (epicflow.jr) that defines some top level, but it looks like for each mission some sort of 'control' is handed ov...

Back to the 'dat' folder, and the remaining file types to sort out are .hdd, .hud and .bin. These seem to relate to the cockpit display from the different directions, front, rear, left & right. The .hdd files look like they define the lower part of the screen. The byes are organized in a similar...

Ha! Turns out that line was there all along, but Lean Viewer doesn't display lines which I totally forgot. epic_castle.PNG It still doesn't explain what opcode 0011 does, but it may specify the 'hit box' and is not normally displayed, as you suggest for those wheel positions. A pity about the wheels...

Leaving the .3 files for now, and have a quick look at the .mp files in the 'dat' folder instead. For 'liz.mp', which has size 4101 bytes, we can assume the first 5 bytes is some sort of header giving 4096 which is 64x64. So, treating as a bitmap and reusing the palette, gives us this (magnified som...

I'm not seeing any wheels at all in game footage from YT, but there may be multiple releases of the game. epicamtrax.PNG All that's left is opcode 0011, used on two versions of a comms dish. 0011 000d 0038 0436 Basically, a palette index, a vertex and '0436'. I put a yellow sphere at that vertex to ...

On to opcode 0006, and the two models that use it. 0006 0010 001a 001b 001c 0000 2300 So, we have a palette index, 3x vertices then 2 words that look like the sphere radius from opcode 0005. Plotting those 3x vertices as vertex shaded triangle gives this: amtrax_colverts.PNG These are obviously the ...

Well, it needs to be perfect. You know what those EPIC rivet counters are like. :D Mobygames has some screenshots from what's supposed to be the DOS version: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/epic/screenshots ...which is quite interesting for comparative purposes. There isn't a special opcode to ma...

I suppose it would be the equivalent of 005C. I'm not sure what the units are, but dividing that last number by 128 seems to be about perfect when used as the radius of a VRML sphere. epic_spheres.PNG I think the 'fuelpaul' model should have two spheres, so I've probably been a bit too aggressive in...

That video I embedded above is quite useful in that it shows I have a sphere missing on one of the ships. So, now I know what Opcode 0005 is for. Just need to work out how to implement it. epicsphere.PNG So, for this line: 0005000d003100002580 000d is the palette entry, 0031 the vertex, and the rest...

Aha, I suspected that later as even the explosion sprite was just shades of grey. It's cool that Lean Viewer picks up the .smb extension as a sprite. Those from TFX have extension. .spr. Anyway, with a game exe size of about 170kB, it's possible to scroll through it looking for palette-ish data, ie ...

It would be good if I could find a more appropriate palette for EPIC, but I guess it's buried in the exe somewhere. Maybe the same palette is used elsewhere, so had a look at the .lbm and .smb files. The palette's in the .lbms are all over the place, but seem constant for the .smbs. This might sense...

There's a lot of similar looking filenames, so I'm not certain which are used but I'm guessing the largest files are the most detailed. The file 'f22_glob.3' only differs by 2 bytes between TFX and EF2000, although the sizes of the other files look quite different. ef_tfx_comp.PNG Aren't TFX models ...