DID.DAT files and their contents

DID’s Air Dominance Fighter and Total Air War.
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Scorpion82
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Scorpion82 »

Took a while, as I wasn't at my PC for several days.

The Super EF2000.dat dated 2nd May 1997. It's directly from my backed up installation, as I can currently not find my CD suit case.

https://www.file-upload.net/download-15 ... T.zip.html
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

Scorpion82 wrote: 2023-Mar-12, 19:25 Took a while, as I wasn't at my PC for several days.

The Super EF2000.dat dated 2nd May 1997.
Thank you! This one is identical to the one I got from HomeFries in 2014 or so.
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Scorpion82
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Scorpion82 »

Ok, so nothing new here. The only real difference I'm aware off between the DOS and the WIN95 version that matters is the display overlay to the virtual cockpit. In the DOS version these overlays are available in the HUD ONLY view only. In the WIN95 version they are also selectable as an overlay to the 3D cockpit.
mikew
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by mikew »

Yes, that seems to be the version from the V2.0 release. Thanks for looking.

I found my SEF2000 dat file and it's dated 2nd December 1996 with a size of 49 938 786 bytes. This is somewhat larger than the later file, although I assume due to less compression.

The internal structure of this file is more like TFX or Inferno rather than EF2000 V2.0, ADF or TAW
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

Krishty wrote: 2023-Mar-06, 22:52Aaand one from an Italian ADF CD-ROM – 144,581,082 B and dated 1997-11-21. Always something new!
Here is another ADF did.dat from a German CD-ROM:


(deleted attachment)


The checksum differs from both the English and the Italian release.
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

This ADF CD-ROM is very odd. It contains an autorun.exe from 2017; various files have modification dates from 2006, 2014, 2016, and so on.

It could be a virus or a very low-budget re-packaging … or someone simply burnt it from their modded HDD backup.

I’m mentioning it because the did.dat is different yet again, and from a quick diff the difference is not in config/translation files but in binary content?!


(deleted attachment)
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

This ADF CD-ROM could be important to us. In contrast to the others, its modification date is 1998-01-08 – so it could likely be a highly patched version.

The CD-ROM also comes with the Intel MMX logo, which gave me some headaches in internal analysis before.


(deleted attachment)
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

This ADF CD-ROM looks like the German one, but it comes without the DirectX setup and without the Ocean logo. And, of course: A different did.dat! Also of note: The CD-ROM says it was burnt in 2009.


(deleted attachment)
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Scorpion82
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Scorpion82 »

Ok I'll check whether I find my CD case and checkout the SEF2000.dat from the CD and the F-22ADF.dat from the CD. Any interest in the Eurofighter Typhoon.dat?
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Scorpion82
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Scorpion82 »

Found my CDs, but nothing new that hasn't been posted here. F-22ADF DID.dat is from 20.11.1997 and SEF2000 from 02.12.1996.
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

Well, it could have been! Thank you anyway 👍
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

Mike, I don’t mean to make you mad, but … it seems like there are two versions of the TAW demo. One you found on the Wargasm CD-ROM and one from CyberStratège №12:

image.png
image.png (12.99 KiB) Viewed 1828 times

I know what you think! “At least they won’t have different did.dats“, you think!

But they are different 🤣


(deleted attachment)
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

And before I forget: There seem to be Japanese versions of both ADF and TAW. Japanese TAW even has the radio transmissions translated:
cockpit1.jpg
cockpit1.jpg (69.44 KiB) Viewed 1823 times
I don’t think this would be possible without data modding AND re-compiling the executable. Imagineer was also responsible for the PlayStation version of TFX, so they probably did have access to DID’s sources.

Nobodoy could find an ISO of this version, so I’ll open a separate thread for recovering it!

Edit: The new thread has two did1st.dat files that would be very interesting to analyze 😉 And one in a hotfix of only 1718 bytes(!!!)
mikew
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by mikew »

Wow! Looks like I have some downloading to do... :D
Is everything here, or are there some things to download from Discord?
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

Everything should be here!
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

As a very special present: did.dat from the Japanese TAW version, dated 1998-10-28. 3 MiB smaller than the English one!


(deleted attachment)


The CD-ROM also contains the English did.dat, which is identical to one we already have here.
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by mikew »

A quick update to prove that I am still looking into this task from time to time...

To start, I'm comparing 6 ADF did.dats and ignoring the patches, RSO and the Japanese version for now.
These 6 are from the English, German and Italian releases, plus what Krishty has called 'Almost German', 'Odd' and 'patched' above.

These contain about 12800 separate files, and we know the names of 11711 of them.
So far, I've been able to establish that all 6 contain all 11711 known files. In addition, the folder and extension lists are common.
This means that I can use the hashes to compare the unknown files.

Anyway, the next step is a byte comparison of the known files...
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

🎉👍
mikew
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by mikew »

All 6 did.dats contain 12842 files, so either there are some differences in their contents...or I've somehow been analyzing the same file 6 times. I don't think so, but I went through the code just in case. :)
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Krishty
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Re: DID.DAT files and their contents

Post by Krishty »

I checked specifically that the checksums of the files differ before suggesting them to you, so either the file content or the file order must be different.

Right-click > CRC SHA > SHA256
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