Cerrano Posted February 1 Posted February 1 (edited) Hello everyone, I am new here and would like to introduce myself a little bit before going to the main part of the topic. In October last year I started a project with disassembling a PS2 game called Driver Parallel Lines and a little bit later the prequel of it, a PSP game called Driver 76. As a person with basically no prior experience in doing things like these, the start was difficult for me, but because I am really interested in turning my idea into reality, I invested really much time in this project, and learned interesting and possibly important things. I also tried out many cool programs for modifying/working with different kinds of files. Since I found my way to the raw textures my current main goal is to modify the Textures from Driver Parallel Lines (PS2) so they get displayed correctly in Driver 76 (PSP). Why do I think inserting these textures from a PS2 into PSP should work?? Because these two games are basically the same and use many same textures, Driver 76 runs fine with these textures (I tried it out), but they don't look how they should, that's why I assume the keyword of this topic might be Swizzling? The main part of this topic I started with the easiest part, which in my opinion is the HUD. This is how the stock Hud looks in Driver 76: At first I would like to describe the whole picture of this Topic to understand what is what. Driver Parallel Lines (PS2) has two eras in it's gameplay, the year 1978 and the year 2006, both eras have it's unique textures, including two types of the HUD. At first I tried the easiest what I could imagine, just effortlessly pasting the 1978 HUD files [a .gfx file (the textures) and a .bin file (the function/moving elements of the HUD)] into Driver 76, and this is how it looked: Not what I expected, but hey, the PS2 .bin file of the 1978 HUD works fine on the PSP, I can see how the speedometer works, the mileage changes, and also the health bar works fine, which now acts like in Driver Parallel Lines. A little bit later I noticed something very interesting. Since Driver 76 has only one era (the year 1976) not two eras like in Parallel Lines (1978 and 2006), it logically should only have the HUD files for 1976, but for some reason it has the files for 1976 and for 2006! I thought this is very good, because this gives a big opportunity to directly compare the PSP version with the PS2 version of the exact same files, which might help to understand the differences. Since I discovered this, I definitely had to try out both files of the 2006 HUD, the PSP version and the PS2 version. The .bin file doesn't work for some reason, I assume it might be directly bound with the 2006 stuff which is not present here, but the function is not important now, since I am aiming to find a solution for the graphical part. Here are the screenshots of both versions: 2006 HUD PSP file from Driver 76 2006 HUD PS2 File from Driver Parallel Lines I think this is enough to understand what the trouble currently is, that's why I will continue with the results which I was able to find, when comparing + analysing these files and trying to modify the PS2 file. As an example, I decided to work with the texture of the ingame loading icon (a CD), which looks like this in both games: Here are the texture files:Texture files.zip Basic info about this CD texture: -Both textures are exactly the same and are used for the same purpose in both games on both platforms. -Size and offsets are for both files identical -Total file size: 5120 Bytes -Palette offset: -(DEC): 0-1024 -(HEX): 0-400 -Graphics/Texture offset: -(DEC): 1024-5120 -(HEX): 400-1400 -Raw Texture size (without palette): - 4096 Bytes The differences which I noticed: *When viewing in HxD* -Palette only: First & Last two lines are identical, everything between becomes reordered like this: 1->3 2->4 3->1 4->2 identical<->identical identical<->identical identical<->identical identical<->identical 1->3 2->4 3->1 4->2 And so on... Screenshot of the comparison with the differences that I found: I think that this is not a big problem, because the situation of the palette seems to be very understandable, so I would just reorder these lines by using this example of the comparison of these 2 files. If this is necessary of course. *When viewing in HxD* -Graphic/Texture only: The Graphic's/Texture's code is completely different, it seems that only the beginning and the end of the code may look somehow similar (but not identical), but it looks like there's no way to find a logical difference between these two, so that's it with HxD, let's continue with the visual part. Screenshots of the Graphic's/Texture's code: Beginning of the code: End of the code: A cool program which I found on this forum called Console Texture Explorer, by Dageron, gave me the opportunity to view textures the way how they would be displayed on PS2 and also on PSP, by ticking the needed console, this saves much time, no need to rebuild the game to see the result if changes are made. Here is an example to simulate the same result which I described earlier with ingame screenshots: PS2 Texture with PS2 Console option tick: PS2 Texture with PSP Console option tick: And the PSP texture with PSP Console option tick: I think this acts as a perfect example that these textures are exactly the same, but the way both consoles display these textures is different. I assume that the PS2 swizzles textures with it's own technique, and the PSP swizzles with it's own technique, is this correct? Or did I understand this wrong? After weeks of unsuccessful attempts to understand what exactly the displaying difference is, I decided to look again for similiar programs today and I was able to find a very powerful cool program which was posted on this forum called ImageHeat by the moderator ikskoks, as far as I understood who is the developer of this program. I would like to say thank you very much for creating this cool program, I like it, there are many many functions. After playing around with ImageHeat, I think I finally understood that my problem has something to do with swizzling. Here is my latest result with this texture + what I did First a screenshot in ImageHeat of the texture displayed correctly: Then I changed the Swizzling Type to PSP, and turned off PS2 Palette Swizzle: This is also how I saved the texture, by pressing Save Raw Data This is the result: All 3 pictures where simulated in Console Texture Explorer, first picture is an example, and the last two pictures where simulated with PSP option ticked. This is how it should look like: This is how it looked: And this what I was able to achieve with ImageHeat after saving with PSP Swizzling type: After weeks of understanding nothing, I think this already something. Unfortunately I still didn't achieve my goal, but it looks like the end result is halfway done/displayed correctly. This is the end of this long post, thank you to everyone who took his/her time to read everything. I would be really happy and thankful if someone could point me in the right direction, or tell me what the issue is. Maybe even the developer of ImageHeat sees this post who has a really good understanding based on his awesome program. This is my first post on this site, I hope i chose the correct forum (Graphic file formats), If not I apologize for this. Edited February 1 by Cerrano Added missing important files (the texture files) + corrected few small spelling mistakes 1
Solution ikskoks Posted February 2 Solution Posted February 2 On 2/1/2025 at 1:07 AM, Cerrano said: I assume that the PS2 swizzles textures with it's own technique, and the PSP swizzles with it's own technique, is this correct? Or did I understand this wrong? That's correct. You can compare multiple swizzling algorithms here https://github.com/bartlomiejduda/ReverseBox/tree/main/reversebox/image/swizzling It's my python implementation for each console. Not everything is there (like Nintendo Switch swizzle is missing currently), but you'll get the idea. On 2/1/2025 at 1:07 AM, Cerrano said: After weeks of unsuccessful attempts to understand what exactly the displaying difference is, I decided to look again for similiar programs today and I was able to find a very powerful cool program which was posted on this forum called ImageHeat by the moderator ikskoks, as far as I understood who is the developer of this program. I would like to say thank you very much for creating this cool program, I like it, there are many many functions. Yes, you got it right! 🙂 I'm the creator of ImageHeat and I'm still working on adding new functionalities and fixing bugs. This program is free and open source and I'm very happy to see that users use it to analyze file formats and solve various graphics issues. You made my day with this comment. 🙂 On 2/1/2025 at 1:07 AM, Cerrano said: I would be really happy and thankful if someone could point me in the right direction, or tell me what the issue is. Maybe even the developer of ImageHeat sees this post who has a really good understanding based on his awesome program. On 2/1/2025 at 1:07 AM, Cerrano said: Since I found my way to the raw textures my current main goal is to modify the Textures from Driver Parallel Lines (PS2) so they get displayed correctly in Driver 76 (PSP). So your goal is basically to convert PS2 textures to PSP format. That can be achieved, but probably not fully automatically (by script or something) and I'll explain why is that. After looking in ImageHeat's source code you would notice that it is just a frontend app (GUI) for ReverseBox dependency. https://github.com/bartlomiejduda/ReverseBox So all the heavy image decoding/encoding/swizzling/unswizzling logic is handled by ReverseBox, not the ImageHeat itself. What you really need to do to achieve your goal is to follow these steps (either it's done automatically by one script or manually by using some external tools etc.) 1. Unswizzle PS2 image data 2. Unswizzle PS2 palette 3. Decode PS2 image data and palette 4. Save it as some popular image format like PNG/DDS etc. 5. (optionally) Edit your image file in some editing software like GIMP or Adobe Photoshop and then save new PNG/DDS file. 6. Read RGBA data from your PNG/DDS file and encode it as a new image data and palette in the format used in PSP game 7. Swizzle your image data (with PSP swizzle algorithm) 8. Save it as RAW file (unswizzled palette + PSP swizzled image_data) 9. Copy your new file to game to see if everything works. Although items 1-5 and 7-9 are realtively easy to do right now (see some of my parsers as an examples https://github.com/bartlomiejduda/Tools/tree/master/ReverseBox_Demo), there would be an issue with item 6 as encoding is not fully supported by ReverseBox - especially for indexed formats. So as for today you would need to find a way to encode your data manually, but everything else can be automated. I'll try to add this encoding feature to ReverseBox in the future as you're not the first person who needs it. 🙂 2
Cerrano Posted February 2 Author Posted February 2 2 hours ago, ikskoks said: That's correct. You can compare multiple swizzling algorithms here https://github.com/bartlomiejduda/ReverseBox/tree/main/reversebox/image/swizzling It's my python implementation for each console. Not everything is there (like Nintendo Switch swizzle is missing currently), but you'll get the idea. Yes, you got it right! 🙂 I'm the creator of ImageHeat and I'm still working on adding new functionalities and fixing bugs. This program is free and open source and I'm very happy to see that users use it to analyze file formats and solve various graphics issues. You made my day with this comment. 🙂 So your goal is basically to convert PS2 textures to PSP format. That can be achieved, but probably not fully automatically (by script or something) and I'll explain why is that. After looking in ImageHeat's source code you would notice that it is just a frontend app (GUI) for ReverseBox dependency. https://github.com/bartlomiejduda/ReverseBox So all the heavy image decoding/encoding/swizzling/unswizzling logic is handled by ReverseBox, not the ImageHeat itself. What you really need to do to achieve your goal is to follow these steps (either it's done automatically by one script or manually by using some external tools etc.) 1. Unswizzle PS2 image data 2. Unswizzle PS2 palette 3. Decode PS2 image data and palette 4. Save it as some popular image format like PNG/DDS etc. 5. (optionally) Edit your image file in some editing software like GIMP or Adobe Photoshop and then save new PNG/DDS file. 6. Read RGBA data from your PNG/DDS file and encode it as a new image data and palette in the format used in PSP game 7. Swizzle your image data (with PSP swizzle algorithm) 8. Save it as RAW file (unswizzled palette + PSP swizzled image_data) 9. Copy your new file to game to see if everything works. Although items 1-5 and 7-9 are realtively easy to do right now (see some of my parsers as an examples https://github.com/bartlomiejduda/Tools/tree/master/ReverseBox_Demo), there would be an issue with item 6 as encoding is not fully supported by ReverseBox - especially for indexed formats. So as for today you would need to find a way to encode your data manually, but everything else can be automated. I'll try to add this encoding feature to ReverseBox in the future as you're not the first person who needs it. 🙂 Hello 🙂 At first I would like to thank you for taking your time in reading and understanding my post and especially for providing me the steps which I have to follow to achieve the planned result. I'll definitely compare the swizzling alogrithms (swizzle_ps2.py & swizzle_psp.py) and try to understand something. When I downloaded ImageHeat from GitHub the first time, I also noticed ReverseBox and checked it out then and how you already mentioned before I also saw that all these functions which are in ImageHeat, are from ReverseBox actually, but I wasn't able to try out ReverseBox then because of lack of experience with Python I will also try to follow the steps that you provided, but for now I have a new challenge: I have to understand/figure out how to work with python, since I am not familiar with it unfortunately. For now I have installed all these packages which were provided in the requirements.txt of ReverseBox-main and ReverseBox_Demo/RAW Parser I installed them all with the command python -m pip install PackageName which is hopefully the correct start. Now I have to figure out how to work with your scripts, most importantly how to launch them at first, how to make them work with my texture files and after finding/understanding the commands for these scripts, I will try to play around with them to see what exactly happens to my file if I try one option or another. Basically I have to figure out all the basics now.
ikskoks Posted February 2 Posted February 2 46 minutes ago, Cerrano said: I have installed all these packages which were provided in the requirements.txt of ReverseBox-main You don't have to install dependencies for ReverseBox directly as it is a Python package, so it is something that should be imported to your project. Usually you should treat ReverseBox as a black box and only import functions that you need to your own code. Unless you want to learn algorithms or modify them, that's a different story then. 🙂 46 minutes ago, Cerrano said: I have to understand/figure out how to work with python, since I am not familiar with it unfortunately. You don't need ResHax to learn Python. Some free YouTube tutorials will be enough. 🙂 Entry threshold for this language is very low, so it's easy to learn some basics. 46 minutes ago, Cerrano said: I installed them all with the command python -m pip install PackageName which is hopefully the correct start. You could do it even easier like this: pip install -r requirements.txt This command will install everything at once. 46 minutes ago, Cerrano said: Now I have to figure out how to work with your scripts, most importantly how to launch them at first, how to make them work with my texture files and after finding/understanding the commands for these scripts, I will try to play around with them to see what exactly happens to my file if I try one option or another. You can start with installing some IDE like PyCharm https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/?section=windows It will make some things easier like setting up the project, installing dependencies, debugging etc. Those parsers were designed to show image conversion capability of ReverseBox, so they're not really full working and user-friendly tools, but they can definitely help you with learning basic usage of ReverseBox It means that you should ultimately do those things to make it work: 1. Import some function from ReverseBox 2. Use the imported function in a way you like to use it 3. Wrap a code to make some usable export/import functions (or decode/encode or swizzle/unswizzle etc.) Btw, I saw "rawutil" dependency on one of your screenshots. I dropped it in newer versions of ReverseBox as it was too slow for my needs. 🙂 So you don't need that as well. 1
Cerrano Posted February 3 Author Posted February 3 (edited) Hello, yesterday after writing my last message, I immediately started with the work, the whole day till around 22:00. Quote 23 hours ago, ikskoks said: You don't have to install dependencies for ReverseBox directly as it is a Python package, so it is something that should be imported to your project. Usually you should treat ReverseBox as a black box and only import functions that you need to your own code. Unless you want to learn algorithms or modify them, that's a different story then. 🙂 Yep, exactly this. I understood this soon after starting that I need only the specific functions which are inside of the scripts. I mainly used the function unswizzle_ps2 from swizzle_ps2.py and swizzle_psp from swizzle_psp.py I also only tried the unswizzle_ps2_palette function a few times, but didn't focus on it, because I haven't found a swizzle_psp_palette and decided to try all the textures with the original ps2 palette, to see how it will be. Quote 23 hours ago, ikskoks said: You don't need ResHax to learn Python. Some free YouTube tutorials will be enough. 🙂 Entry threshold for this language is very low, so it's easy to learn some basics. I understand that I don't need ResHax to learn Python, I haven't planned to ask for help here about Python itself 😄, this forum is focused on something different 👍 I started with the assistance/help of ai, through the whole day I communicated very much with ai for configuring the scripts which I explained very detailed, the very first short scripts worked like a charm, but later there were many not functionating outputs which were the longer and more complicated scripts, but in the end I received scripts after my wishes/configurations. Quote 23 hours ago, ikskoks said: You could do it even easier like this: pip install -r requirements.txt This command will install everything at once. Ok, I will note this for possible future work with Python, thank you for the tip 🙂 Quote 23 hours ago, Cerrano said: Now I have to figure out how to work with your scripts, most importantly how to launch them at first, how to make them work with my texture files and after finding/understanding the commands for these scripts, I will try to play around with them to see what exactly happens to my file if I try one option or another. Basically I have to figure out all the basics now. I understood everything of this what I said earlier. I understood that when working with python scripts you don't need specific commands like in other programs, because every exact move is written in the python script. Quote 23 hours ago, ikskoks said: You can start with installing some IDE like PyCharm https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/?section=windows It will make some things easier like setting up the project, installing dependencies, debugging etc. I did every tiny changes in Notepad++ since ai did the main job with the scripts. Quote 23 hours ago, ikskoks said: Those parsers were designed to show image conversion capability of ReverseBox, so they're not really full working and user-friendly tools, but they can definitely help you with learning basic usage of ReverseBox It means that you should ultimately do those things to make it work: 1. Import some function from ReverseBox 2. Use the imported function in a way you like to use it 3. Wrap a code to make some usable export/import functions (or decode/encode or swizzle/unswizzle etc.) Btw, I saw "rawutil" dependency on one of your screenshots. I dropped it in newer versions of ReverseBox as it was too slow for my needs. 🙂 So you don't need that as well. Alright, I have two codes with your functions which do the unswizzling from PS2 and swizzle into psp, but with the help of ai I will try to create an all in one script, which will read the basic information about the textures from a .txt files so the script converts multiple textures at once with the needed parameters. Sorry for the mess with these many quotes, but I wanted to show that I take your answers seriously and really appreciate your help. Before writing this answer I finished the work today which I started yesterday, and I manually converted each texture by launching the 2 scripts for each of the texture. There are a total of 52! After that I manually added each (PS2) palette to each texture in HxD and the result of them all together was put into the .gfx file which is used by the game. While doing this I faced an unexpected problem for me. All of these textures have a BPP of either 4 or 8, but there was only one special which wasn't! It has the Comptype: VQ2 I have no idea what it is. All other have 2 offsets (Start offset for palette and End offset for palette+start of the texture) but this one has 3 offsets... I ignored this texture and pasted it how it is without changing anything on it. This is the result, exactly what I wanted for a looooong time: It just needs polishing, the textures are not clean enough but I am very sure (hopefully) that this is because I used the PS2 Palette without converting it to PSP. The healthbar is displaying a little bit wrong (Some colored background behind the heart), the speedometer also looks kinda weird, map is missing on radar and in general the textures are not smooth enough how they should be. Yesterday I tried to edit one palette manually after this method which I discovered and If I remember correctly, the texture had a smooth edge after that. The felony bar when in car and and when on foot seems to be not working, but this is an unrelated issue (not a graphic issue, maybe rather something .bin file related), which I will have to analyze later. So my next goal is to combine all these scripts into one, which will do the following: -Read basic info from .txt file which will be applied to each palette+texture individually for the converting process -Unswizzle Palette from PS2 -Unswizzle Texture from PS2 -Swizzle Texture into PSP -And hopefully some function which will put them all together in one file in an order like this: Palette1 Texture1 Palette2 Texture2 and so on... And I will play around with the file which has the comptype: VQ2 to see what is possible, this one is a real gamebreaker....😒 I want to say thank you very much for helping me to achieve my long awaited goal by telling me the needed information and providing such important scripts!! 🙂😀🤝 Edit: I checked the 9 steps again which you provided earlier and noticed at step 8, that swizzling the palette to psp palette is not neccessary. And I think the time has come to already mark your first answer as solution 🙂 Edited February 3 by Cerrano 2
ikskoks Posted February 3 Posted February 3 2 hours ago, Cerrano said: I want to say thank you very much for helping me to achieve my long awaited goal by telling me the needed information and providing such important scripts!! 🙂😀🤝 Edit: I checked the 9 steps again which you provided earlier and noticed at step 8, that swizzling the palette to psp palette is not neccessary. And I think the time has come to already mark your first answer as solution 🙂 That's great! I'm glad that I could help. 🙂
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