SegaXtreme

Sega Saturn Screen

TakaIsSilly - Aug 1, 2001

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 1, 2001
			Hi folks... Since this is primarily a Saturn translation board, I figured I should post a little file format I reversed engennered. It's used on the MKR ending artwork pics, and it is used there to store a tile based, 256 color, 64x64 tile image. It is provably used in more games, and the signature is SEGA SATURN SCREEN in the header. It's still incomplete, as you can see in this picture(i figure there is some kind of encryption) http://www.clubotaku.org/theopera/fuu.gif... the format is in this small text file http://www.clubotaku.org/theopera/sssformat.txt... Hope you can learn something from it. Omoto Takashi

		RadSil		Aug 2, 2001
			Nice! I'm sure this is used in some other games... By the way, maybe the palettes are in different files. I've seen many Saturn games like this.

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 3, 2001
			Btw, I figured out the problem... the tiles are stored in LSB order. I might release a image converter this weekend.

		RadSil		Aug 4, 2001
			Um, well that's... Nicer!

		MasterAkumaMatata		Aug 5, 2001
			I thought your name was TakashiIsSilly, as in TakashiIsSilly... from the old SX board

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 5, 2001
			Done ^o^. It's made in a rush, so it's quite err... buggy. It ouputs in .RAW format, that you can open with Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (i think) and i give the extra info. No garantees it will work at all, tough. Try 8-bit grayscale and no preview if you get errors when converting. And _yes_ it is deadly slow. http://www.clubotaku.org/theopera/taksmake.zip...

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 5, 2001
			Actually, here it _is_ Takashi, but I lost the old password

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 6, 2001
			Oke, here is a new version of the converter. It's a little more intutiive and doesn't crash. The name is now SSSCR.EXE (from the header, SEGA SATURN SCREEN). BTW, the files with that format are provably all named .S2D. The improvements to the last version are: - Corrected infomation on information for Adobe Photoshop - Fixed huge bug due to QuickBasic weirdness. - Gives simpler instructions to set up. There is only interactive mode, and it's still slow. Really, download this one. For a trial you can use the files on the /Ending folder of MKR... Or you can check the already done ending pics i'm giving to Sega Fans . Oh gosh... I forgot to add the link http://www.clubotaku.org/theopera/Ssscr.zip... *** (Edited by TakaIsSilly at 8:17 pm on Aug. 6, 2001) (Edited by TakaIsSilly at 8:29 pm on Aug. 6, 2001) (Edited by TakaIsSilly at 8:32 pm on Aug. 6, 2001)

RadSil

Aug 6, 2001

	
	
		
		
			Quote: from TakaIsSilly on 7:12 pm on Aug. 6, 2001



 - Fixed huge bug due to QuickBasic weirdness.

QuickBasic huh? I love QB. Were you in a hurry to write this?

		SkankinMonkey		Aug 6, 2001
			I could mirror this file on SX and post it up in the news if you would like.

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 7, 2001
			SkankinMonkey - Please do. I have no patience or time to find a decent home for this program ^^;. RadSil - Deadly hurry. That's also why the friggin thing takes 1 minute per image on a 1Ghz processor. What a timing. MKR was just released ^^;

		RadSil		Aug 7, 2001
			Could you release an updated version of your filespec? You know, for posterity (or something). It would make a good addition to the miscellaneous page too.

		RadSil		Aug 7, 2001
			Oh, Takashi, nearly forgot something. Would you know anything about the SNES mode 7 tile format? The translation I am working on currently (Cotton 2) has some kind of graphics storage similarities to mode 7. That is, I have found some kanji in a file using tilemod to browse in mode 7... but it isn't perfect.

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 9, 2001
			Well... Try this: open the file in Adobe Photoshop, by renaming it to .RAW. Set Channels to 2, check interlaced. Then set a wide of 8, and a big value for height. That should give you the same result as Mode 7. Play with the Header value a bit, if otherwise As for the file format... Hnn, check the other link in a few hours.

		Link		Aug 9, 2001
			That pic reminds me that I should start playing MKR again lol.

		CyberWarriorX		Aug 10, 2001
			Hey Taka, how'd you go about hacking that format? Did you have any docs or anything? Just kind of curious. Cyber Warrior X

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 10, 2001
			Err... Quite easely. First I used a Hex Editor. I check the file, and loocked for separate data blocks. For example, 15-bit palette data looks something like this 7F 00 7E 3A (ie, the last bit is allways 0, so it's a seguence of 7X XX values). Tile data is also easy. If they used a software converter (most likely) The data will be arranged in bunches of sequencially bigger numbers, like 00 00 00 01 00 02 00 03 00 04 00 00 00 05 00 00 00 06 00 00. The most annoying is actual cell data. I used the method I mentioned before, opening the file in Adobe Photoshop in raw mode with a 8 pixel wide setting, and use 8 bit 1 channel mode. Then you take a few hous of your life to sketch something that does the converting operation for you Simple, huh ?

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 10, 2001
			And just to add... Gamastura released a neat article about data recovery (or reverse engeneering): http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010803/trzepac...

		MasterAkumaMatata		Aug 11, 2001
			In other words: curiosity --> desire --> observation --> hypothesis --> trial and error --> confirmation --> coding --> implementation --> testing --> finished beta product does that sound right? Edit: had to reformat it to look more presentable (Edited by MasterAkumaMatata at 2:28 am on Aug. 11, 2001)

		TakaIsSilly		Aug 11, 2001
			If you cut the Hypotesis, Testing and Finished Beta Product parts, yes, you're close