Xenosaga 1/2/3 QuickBMS or Noesis script? (.bin files)

[Threadmancer]

Hello!

To begin, I do know how to rip them with PCSX2, but this requires being at the point in the game where I can see the texture on screen. Most of the textures I want are very late in the game. I no longer have my save files. As much as I love all of the games, replaying isn't in my cards right now. I've got all the .iso's unpacked using the Xenosaga Unpack Tools, so all that's left is to crack open the bin archives that hold the image info.

I have searched pretty thoroughly for many many hours, but cannot for the life of me find the resources I'm looking for. Some of them have been linked to dead pages that are un-archived, some of them have linked to dead forum posts that no longer store the files. Heck, sometimes it's an archived forum where a single page out of many hasn't been archived, and the missing page is what has the info. I have several dozen tabs open, have tried various ps2 image format converters and programs that can interpret tm1/tm2 data in binary files. I have of course tried the tools in the Graphics Tools thread, but most of them throw an error/"file format unknown" at me.

I found one person on Steam Workshop who credited QuickBMS for allowing the extraction of a model and texture from Xenosaga 3, but there are no Xenosaga 3 QuickBMS scripts that I can find. They also credited Noesis, but once again, there are no plug-ins for the game. I tried contacting this person (very politely and willing to trade for info) through their commissions page since they are still active, but it's been a couple weeks with no answer. I'm pretty close to commissioning someone else (from this forum iirc) to write a script for me, but I'd be so thrilled to just use one that already exists.

I also once found a post regarding extracting from .bin files from Xenosaga3 saying, "..since it has the same file format as this," where "this" was clearly a link at some point in the past but no longer exists (doesn't even have url info - just underlined text), and there was no mention of what game may have been linked. I unfortunately lost track of which tab I had that post open in. May have closed it when I couldn't deduce what other thing was being referenced.

I am aware of what a .bin file is and is not. I know that most of these probably have multiple images, possibly in TIM2 format (I'm trying to learn the magic codes or w/e; this is just a guess), together in the hex file. I have used a hex editor to mess around using guides for other games and I am enjoying it, but it feels frustrating when I hit a wall. Especially when I know that someone, somewhere, clearly must have a QuickBMS script and/or a Noesis plug-in.

I'm pretty tech-savvy, and willing to learn how to use just about any tool (as long as it isn't too awfully expensive).

What do I want them for?
For making silly little graphics to put in my silly little journals. I enjoy creating custom layouts for my work planners/journals and I've wanted to make a Xenosaga one for a while. I just really love the games a lot!

Anyway, I hope I was clear enough on what I do and don't know/what I've tried. I promise I do know how to search endlessly - I really hate asking anyone for anything. I'm always super scared someone is going to comment, "oh my gosh I can't believe you didn't find [this tool]" or "why can't you just Google it yourself?" and that's fine. :') I'm not asking anyone to hold my hand and help me write a script, I just would love links to whatever the other person may have been referencing. (also posted on vg-resources and reddit)

Thank you!

Edited May 21 by Threadmancer

[ikskoks]

Here are all the tools I could find for Xenosaga series. I haven't tested any of them, so I don't know if they work.

Hope this helps 🙂 

 

Xenosaga_TOOLS.zip

[Threadmancer]

9 hours ago, ikskoks said:

Here are all the tools I could find for Xenosaga series. I haven't tested any of them, so I don't know if they work.

Hope this helps 🙂 

 

Xenosaga_TOOLS.zip 1.4 MB · 4 downloads

There were a couple things in here that I hadn't seen before! Even if they don't work as-is, they'll be useful for helping me understand how all of this stuff works a bit better. 🙂 Thanks!!

Edited May 21 by Threadmancer
i thought my first pass sounded ungrateful >.<

[Threadmancer]

Okay, so I've made a teensy bit of progress* using various binary editor/unpacking tutorials! This totally looks like a font, right?! This is the JP font0.bin file. I somehow unpacked the JP discs on my desktop and the EN discs on my laptop.]

[*Progress= mostly trying to find width data/patterns in the archive files so I can mess around with TextureFinder and those types of apps. Font0.bin didn't have header info but it has very obvious chunks of data in between the 00's.] 

ETA: this image is 20 x 24572 px, and has MANY alphabets of MANY sizes.

 

Edit: Then save as a .BMP, open in XnView, and extract channel to get kanji, hiragana, and english letters from the same image!

Edited May 27 by Threadmancer
updated screencaps

[Threadmancer]

I feel like such a dumbass. I had trouble using the Noesis plugin "texture finder" on my laptop, so I forgot about it. Of course, NOW I understand what the fields mean. So I went to open a thing with it, and ended up finding the right-click->raw image decode option. I had never seen anyone mention it (wasn't looking for it, so tunnel vision I suppose). :') The font file was the main one I wanted, but I should probably keep workin' on the rest now that I'm having a good time.