Hi everyone: I’m looking for help deciphering the image compression used in Primitive Wars (2001).

I am trying to extract textures and UI bitmaps from the .mcs and .dat files-

Can anyone help me with a QuickBMS or Python script to extract the images?

I’ve attached a RAR file containing two files and the information an AI managed to glean from the game executable.

COPY

RGB565 (16 bits per pixel, no palette—which explains why Mousec.dat wasn't a palette; it has high entropy because it's something else entirely, likely unrelated to the textures)

32×32 pixels, stored in column-major order (by columns, not rows)

100 frames of 2048 bytes each = the complete file

32-byte header: [16=bpp, 100=frames, 32=width, 32=height, 1,1=hotspot, 0,0=reserved]

UNCOPY

Thanks in advance!

primitive wars mcs dat.rar

mcs is a simple uncompressed file holding raw 16-bit RGB565 pixels

for the .dat i'm unsure if it's encrypted or compressed.

if you could, send over the .exe and some more .dat samples

here is a script for the mcs files for now

mcs_extract.py

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by Hazza12555

Hi @Hazza12555 ! Thanks so much again for all the times you've helped me! It worked perfectly! Now I can replicate the script with other MCs and extract the textures correctly. You're a genius—I really appreciate it, Hazza!