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diszxchat, posted Mon May 22, 2017 8:12 am (23401)

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I'm not sure if this applies to "The House Of The Dead" and "The House Of The Dead 3" (<- I believe it's another format but the first, I'm not quite sure)

But here it goes,

everything except its game sounds are in .bin (Binary) format. They're from PC.

I have seen several threads stating other games in .bin format so I hope this works as well.

No-one has ever make a topic about this game so it's kind of weird. I wonder if it's possible to do it.

Here's the file:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B65Rg ... Glsdk51elE

aluigi, posted Mon May 22, 2017 11:20 am (23407)

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I can only express an opinion regarding the files in the TEX, I think they are a 32bit uncompressed size followed by the compressed data. The bad news is that I don't know what's the compression algorithm moreover because it's difficult to identify the correct uncompressed data with my scanner (there are no readable strings or recognizable data).

diszxchat, posted Mon May 22, 2017 12:19 pm (23413)

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aluigi wrote:

I can only express an opinion regarding the files in the TEX, I think they are a 32bit uncompressed size followed by the compressed data. The bad news is that I don't know what's the compression algorithm moreover because it's difficult to identify the correct uncompressed data with my scanner (there are no readable strings or recognizable data).

I guess some old games textures such as this is not up to standard to identify. I remember seeing multiple videos of this game being modded and being successfully decoded and imported to 3DSMAX. It's only a map being successfully decoded but no texture (he didn't decode it). He did make an executable for events but it was never released.

That, however, the user is less active and I'm not sure if he still have those files anymore.

Since you only express files in the TEX, I assume that the rest you are checking on or it's identifiable? (Correct me if I'm wrong)

Here are one of those:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7uXaBYf6Zk

aluigi, posted Mon May 22, 2017 12:42 pm (23416)

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diszxchat wrote:

Since you only express files in the TEX, I assume that the rest you are checking on or it's identifiable? (Correct me if I'm wrong)

Well, that's basically not my field (archives, compression and encryption) so I checked the TEX files because I noticed the compression but I don't know the other files.

diszxchat, posted Mon May 22, 2017 2:44 pm (23432)

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aluigi wrote:

diszxchat wrote:

Since you only express files in the TEX, I assume that the rest you are checking on or it's identifiable? (Correct me if I'm wrong)

Well, that's basically not my field (archives, compression and encryption) so I checked the TEX files because I noticed the compression but I don't know the other files.

Oh, I see. That's quite understandable. Well then, I will just surf to search other websites / forums to see if they do decrypting/decoding file format things. Other than that, there might be other users who specializes these types of things from this forum but it's chances is less. I will come back to this forum here for non-archives, non-compression and non-encryption. I like that the "help" is really good.

aluigi, posted Mon May 22, 2017 2:48 pm (23434)

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Yeah sure, other users may have a better idea of the formats. Let's wait.

Mortisanti, posted Wed Sep 05, 2018 8:18 am (38127)

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Considering the game was developed by Japanese people and some of the game files have Japanese names, could that pose any problems for reverse-engineers unfamiliar with the language?

chrrox, posted Wed Sep 05, 2018 9:40 am (38129)

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The compression is common Sega compression.
you can try these tools on the files.
http://info.sonicretro.org/SA_Tools / https://github.com/sonicretro/sa_tools
a guide
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =303487646


quickbms script.

Code:

#House of the dead
#quickbms script by chrrox
comtype PRS
get NAME basename
get EXT extension
string NAME   "_dec."
string NAME   EXT
get SIZE long
get ZSIZE asize
math ZSIZE -= 4
clog NAME 4 ZSIZE SIZE

Mortisanti, posted Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:48 pm (38136)

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Very nice. Thank you for this, chrrox.

Mortisanti, posted Thu Sep 06, 2018 5:35 am (38151)

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chrrox: Sorry for double-posting, but I must be doing something wrong. Using the same file in your image (bg_adv03.bin) and the steamcommunity guide you linked, I'm unable to use it with GVM2PAK and PAKtool both before and after using your script on the file. What steps did you take to get bg_adv03.bin to open in RAW pixels viewer?

This is what I get if I use your script on bg_adv03.bin to change it to bg_adv03_dec.bin and open in RAW pixels viewer

chrrox, posted Thu Sep 06, 2018 9:13 am (38153)

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looks like you did not decompress the file.
make sure you are on the newest quickbms.
run the extraction from command prompt.
c:\quickbms\quickbms.exe "c:\The House Of The Dead 2 Data Files\hod.txt" "c:\The House Of The Dead 2 Data Files\TEX\BG_ADV03.BIN" "c:\The House Of The Dead 2 Data Files\TEX"

Quote:

QuickBMS generic files extractor and reimporter 0.9.0

offset filesize filename
--------------------------------------
00000004 1720320 BG_ADV03_dec.BIN

- 1 files found in 0 seconds
coverage file 0 100% 1048355 1048355 . offset 00000004

Mortisanti, posted Thu Sep 06, 2018 5:28 pm (38161)

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Thanks for the quick reply. Apparently I was using the script properly, but it appears diszxchat is using a different version of HOD2 (perhaps the Empire Interactive version?). I'm using the version published by Activision. His BG_ADV03.BIN is 1,024 KB whereas mine is 338 KB. Attached is the same-named file from my version, and here's a link to download my files - without the "sound" folder because those are just WAV files: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OKi2L ... 6WhWLG4H1o

The Activision version is substantially smaller... Perhaps heavier compression?

chrrox, posted Thu Sep 06, 2018 7:30 pm (38163)

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compression looks he same just different image format.
mabee different platforms.

Mortisanti, posted Thu Sep 06, 2018 8:52 pm (38166)

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chrrox wrote:

compression looks he same just different image format.
mabee different platforms.

Interesting; the files I provided are also from a PC version. What exactly does your script do to BG_ADV03.BIN? And is there something I can edit in your script that will properly decompress my version of the files so that they open properly in RAW pixels viewer?

chrrox, posted Fri Sep 07, 2018 9:58 am (38177)

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Where did you get your version from?
some sites post emulators and call them pc versions.

Mortisanti, posted Fri Sep 07, 2018 6:21 pm (38184)

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chrrox wrote:

Where did you get your version from?
some sites post emulators and call them pc versions.

Mine is from an original CD that I bought from Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or GameStop in the U.S. 12 years ago; it's by Activision Value Publishing, Inc. There's also a version published by Empire Interactive, a UK company, which is more widespread on the internet via torrents and rom sites in which the popular NoCD patch is compatible with (I was sick of using my CD so I had to crack it on my own ).

I just downloaded the Empire version and compared its files to mine: they're the same exact size except for the executables. Now I want to know which version diszxchat is using...

chrrox, posted Sat Sep 08, 2018 11:11 am (38197)

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looking at the abandon-ware site their house of the dead files have sub channel data. ma-bee how you dumped the iso did not capture everything correctly.
Every scene release I have seen online matches diszxchat's samples.

Mortisanti, posted Sun Sep 09, 2018 6:18 pm (38226)

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chrrox wrote:

looking at the abandon-ware site their house of the dead files have sub channel data. ma-bee how you dumped the iso did not capture everything correctly.
Every scene release I have seen online matches diszxchat's samples.

That must be the case, because I just tried a few different installations: 1) straight from my CD with an external CD drive, 2) from a BIN/CUE I made from my CD using ImgBurn mounted with Virtual CloneDrive, 3) from the My Abandonware version also mounted with Virtual CloneDrive, and they all yield the same exact files after installation. At this point I'm guessing my external CD drive/ImgBurn/Virtual CloneDrive just aren't reading the sub data? Regardless, the game runs as it should despite the botched files so it's confusing.

Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a tech support thread, just curing curiosity.

snailtrauma, posted Mon Nov 18, 2019 6:35 pm (52174)

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Hello. Apologies for digging this up but after investigating a bit over the past days, I'm 99% sure diszxchat is using the original PC JP version files. Given the rarity of the original game (and the price those versions actually have) I've scoured for just about every site I could find for the last few days and so far, the only game version to have/allow those file sizes is the original JP release of the game. The first official US release by SEGA already has the files compressed, and every subsequent re-release (Empire Interactive, Activision Value, Grabit!, etc.) follows that version.

The main difference between the re-releases and the official one (other than the publishers' logos) is that the title screen tends to be a static menu (whereas the original SEGA US version retains the rotating options at the bottom of the screen seen in the JP version).

Of course this doesn't solve whatever compression method is being used but it should be noted that so far, everything points to the compression have been made by SEGA and not a subsequent publisher, nor does it suggest being the work of subchannel data tampering.

Something in the *.exe could probably be changed to allow it to read the higher resolution files but I'm not a programmer.

Habanero, posted Sat Feb 04, 2023 10:47 pm (75285)

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Was this ever resolved? I'd like to see if I can modify the subtitles (which I think are textures). I got as far as running the QuickBMS script, but the Steam guide linked up above is 404'd. I'm using the Empire version.