Privateer 2 editing and extracting

You don't have to jump to the nearest planet. When you load a savegame you are already on that planet that has these set/modified bbs cards. So just enter the booth, pick the mission and start from the planet to play it.
However, i still haven't figured out the corresponding mission to a certain mission number.
e.g. there are Missions with the index number 368, while the missions 369 and 367 don't exist. This seems to be more like a pointer to a certain mission rather than an enumeration of one mission after another (e.g. like read mission at line 368 in the mission*.iff file, where only line 368 has an entry point and the following line has already certain data to this mission and the previous line 367 data to the previous mission). So it can still take a bit time to find the really working mission indexes.
Right now i'm working on a way to store the data user-friendly and allow the user to expand/modify this file (most probably an ini with sections like [368] Name="Ser Arl Shoyer's ass kicked" Reward="5.500Credits").

I'm still searching the news hex address. Like the string "BBS_", which is followed by the section of the bbs cards or "PCOM", which is followed with the planet commodities, there is also a special "NEWS" string in the savegame file.
However unlike the other sections, this NEWS section doesn't seem to contain the information about the currently shown news.
But i haven't given up on that and will surely sooner or later find the place where these information are stored. A certain tab in the editor is already included, and this will then also allow to modify all related data to the news.

After that is done, there also isn't much left that needs to be deciphered from the savegame, as only the big section with the accepted missions is left and this one looks really complicated due to the many dynamic variables like ships involved in the mission, their nav point, relative position from the nav points centre, direction speed, interaction with other ships etc etc.
I'm not sure if i ever implement this, but this will surely go in the last version of the editor. Though i also know it would be very useful to directly read all the corresponding data concerning a certain mission, so you could quickly compare the WCPedia mission page with the real mission data. Then it might be even possible to write complete new missions and hook them into the game via editing the savegame. But as i said, this is the very last point on my list.
I'm much, much more interested to know how i can modify the ship speed, shield, hull, yaw/pitch/roll values as well as the weapon firepower range etc. Though this data doesn't seem to be stored in the dark.exe, but in one of the strangely compressed iff files (i assume gameflow.iff).

 

Can you give me a link to this VIFF tool? Mario Brito wrote in the comments of his bigf privateer 2 extractor tool that the compression of privateer 2 and wingcommander is in some cases very similar but in others totally incompatible/different (e.g. zlib for some of the priv2 files).
Maybe the tool works on the right files and i can uncompress them to finally read/write the ship data.

 

I checked out the VIFF.exe (thanks for the download link btw), but unfortunately it didn't help me further. Because it can't uncompress the chunks (neither extracting them) and i also haven't found a converter to convert the chunks into a common picture or readable text format.

 

Yes, the fat files are definitely the priv2 audio format.
In one of my posts above, i did something similar and found a quite decent solution to convert the fat audio files.
let me quote myself.

 

yep. They even have the same filenames as in the P2_Archive.zip, which has the geometry in 3ds and the textures as gif.
So an experience decoder should be actually able to compare the files and find the correct compression algorithm, to uncompress/decode the used iff files.

Damn, it would be awesome to be able to change some 3d-models. The first thing i would do is giving the stream laser MKII a small dual laser beam and the Kraven MKIV a quad laser beam (or big dual laser beam), so the laser beams match with the weapon 3d-model shown in the booth. (i always wondered how the Kraven MKIV can fire a triple laser beam while the gun has only 2 big and 2 small barrels)
As a next step i would make all the laser a lot more different, so they aren't only simple lines with the same length but different texture, but also a sphere (e.g. for the volt laser) and different in size and length. (This was definitely a great advantage of Privateer 1 where each weapon also had a different unique looking projectile)

 

I would like to know how he found out the algorithm just out of interest (a simple trial and error would surely have taken ages).
Though beside of that a code example to extract every file format would be really great.
I would then enhance my Priv2Editor with a File-modding section that gives the normal user the chance to edit/compress/uncompress the p2d files with a graphical interface and a simple file browser.

If that is too much work, it would be awesome if he could point me to the file with all the ship data like shield strength, speed, armor, gun/module/missile slots etc as this doesn't seem to be stored inside the dark.exe.

Other than that every tiny bit of information he can provide is useful.

Maybe also point him to this topic so we can communicate directly.

 

Well if he can point me in the right direction (code snippet), i think i can come up with the rest. It's just that i have absolutely no clue how he found out the right hex values for e.g. table1 in his Priv2 TGV audio decompressor or some of the other algorithms operating principles.

 

I see, another disassembling expert Coming from the C&C modding community, i'm quite familiar with this kind of elite modders.

Thanks AD for forwarding my question and thanks HCl for the answer.

I'm eager so get more info on the various P2 filetypes.

 

Hey all!

Sorry for not keeping an eye on the Forums as often as i should, i'll make an effort to keep up...

Lin Kuei, love your editing tool, great work!

Due to past e-mail exchanges with AD i took another (very quick) look at the Def! chunks in P2. I made a quick program to test things out and it turns out most of what i recalled was correct: Def! chunks are indeed compressed with zlib's deflate, which means you only have to call the inflate function to get the data back. The compressed chunks have a "Def!" identifier, followed by the uncompressed length of the data block, compressed length, and finally the deflated compressed stream.

This means we have all we need to decompress the stream right there! Good

So i basically came up with this quick program. It decompresses the first Def! chunk on SPACE.IFF (lots of stuff hardcoded, this is not a complete tool)

(quoting most relevant sections only.. still quite large, sorry about that)

Out of curiosity, the P2 Demo space.iff begins like this:

and it decompresses into:

Which is good, there is definitely some structure there! At first glance it makes sense.

Without checking further, i suspect this particular chunk is a header that points to what may be sprite data. So you may want to parse the header and start dumping 8-bit bmps, to see if anything interesting comes up.

Anyway, hope this is useful! If you need the small VS project i hacked together for this test, let me know.

I'll see if I can find something on my old notes regarding the other algorithms...

 

This is great news HCl. Thank you.

Yep, this would be great. I could then directly convert it into C#, add it to the priv2editor and enhance it this way with a file-editing section.

Oh, this is great. I can't wait to finally have access to the raw data of priv2 and maybe be even able to change stuff.