A couple of years ago, there was some tool released on the PCKF that let you change the words "COMMANDER" and "KEEN" that go by left and right during the opening credits. I seem to recall that it imported two b+w bitmaps with certain dimensions and put them into one of the ?MSC????.BIN files.
I tried looking for it a few months ago but couldn't find it - probably it was lost during the Great Random Post Deletion EZBoard Crash Thingy. Does anyone know where this is or maybe have it on their comp? Or maybe even know the format that the info is stored in ?MSC????.BIN so I can do it myself?
Changing the "Terminator" background words
I took a look at the source of that "introtxt" program, and I managed to figure out the format of the ?MSC0001/2.BIN files. It was a bit tricky because that source was really nasty, but I did manage to determine the following without too much effort:
Like most of Keen, every number in the file is represented as a word. So whenever I say "next comes the number of blah blah blah" I mean that next are two bytes representing the number, with the low-order byte first.
With this information I gathered, I was able to write a really easy extractor.
So ?MSC0000.BIN is the "thank you for playing" screen, ?MSC0001.BIN is the "commander" text, ?MSC0002.BIN is the "keen" text, ?MSC0003.BIN is the "not enough memory" screen, ... what's ?MSC0004.BIN for? Does anyone know?
Like most of Keen, every number in the file is represented as a word. So whenever I say "next comes the number of blah blah blah" I mean that next are two bytes representing the number, with the low-order byte first.
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First comes the height of the image in pixels.
Then comes the width of the image in pixels.
Next come a series of offsets to the RLE data later in the file, one for each row.
- Now comes the RLE data. For each row, we have:
- The number of inital contiguous black pixels.
- The number of contiguous set pixels after that.
- The number of contiguous black pixels.
- The number of contiguous set pixels.
- ...
and so on until the end of the row, including the last stretch of contiguous pixels, whose length could be inferred by the width and the lengths of the other runs in that row.
Then comes the end-of-row marker, xFF xFF.
The offsets mentioned above are to the start of each of these row-sections.
So ?MSC0000.BIN is the "thank you for playing" screen, ?MSC0001.BIN is the "commander" text, ?MSC0002.BIN is the "keen" text, ?MSC0003.BIN is the "not enough memory" screen, ... what's ?MSC0004.BIN for? Does anyone know?
I thought this tool (already linked above) was doing importing as well?
http://dosclassics.com/download/258
Maybe I remember wrong, I'm too lazy to check.
http://dosclassics.com/download/258
Maybe I remember wrong, I'm too lazy to check.
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thehackercat
- Posts: 69
- Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 10:49 pm
- Location: Mississippi, USA
KEEN-SCREEN will indeed do that, and Keengraph also does so (It ONLY allows you to change the terminator text in fact.)
Get KEEN-SCREEN here: http://levellord.rewound.net/KEEN-Screen.zip
And Keengraph here: http://levellord.rewound.net/KeenGraph.zip
Keengraph is simpler, just place it in your graphics directory, tell it to export Keen 4 (or 5 or 6) and it'll give you the bitmaps. An import will give you the data files, you'll need to use modkeen to import *them*
Keep in mind that it's not a good idea to change the width of either bitmap too much or you get glitchy graphics.
Get KEEN-SCREEN here: http://levellord.rewound.net/KEEN-Screen.zip
And Keengraph here: http://levellord.rewound.net/KeenGraph.zip
Keengraph is simpler, just place it in your graphics directory, tell it to export Keen 4 (or 5 or 6) and it'll give you the bitmaps. An import will give you the data files, you'll need to use modkeen to import *them*
Keep in mind that it's not a good idea to change the width of either bitmap too much or you get glitchy graphics.