I’ve released a new tool pack + loader! In the new work-in-progress tool pack you will find 10 tools: PICT2BMP, VFS Extractor, Painfull, Sexwad, ClipMon, base64, CDDS2DDS, TRE Archiver, DownScanner and FileCutter. A lot of them are not idiot proof and are undocumented. Come to the forum if you have questions about them. Oh, and there’s a loader music, called NWP1999D. It’s an oldie by me, but still a nice ode to StarCraft hehe.
Download the package!

No task is too difficult at our fabulous Game Research Forum. Thanks to combined efforts, and a great find by bugtest the *.PAK file format of the Cities XL game is now known, and using QuickBMS you can already start extract the resources from these files. Read all about it here: http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3544 Also, find many more answers to difficult formats there!

By request, I have created UnTGZ, a tool that will convert Zork Nemesis‘ *.TGA art files to *.BMP. Basically, it was a matter of reverse engineering the executable to see that Apple’s LZSS code was used to compress and decompress these *.TGA files. Zork’s TGA files are basically 16-bit bitmaps (LZSS compressed) with RGB codes in the bitmap data. Download UnTGZ to convert *.TGA files to windows bitmap.
The tool: UnTGZ 0.02

Two excellent tutorials have been written by chrrox covering the exploration of archive formats and also how to write QuickBMS scripts to extract them. The first tutorial is a general guide for writing scripts, while the second focuses on using zlib compression. Many users have found them helpful. Overall they are well written, but one thing that could be improved is the formatting.

There are those of you that will know audiofile analist Strobe from his multimedia file scanner Jaeder Naub, one of those cool tools that will rip any media from your files. However, did you know that Strobe is also a chiptune composer? Bet you didn’t huh! Check out some of his latest tunes right below right now! Next time you see him at the Game Research Forum, give him a big hand .
Strobe’s Tunes:
Robotic Anarchy
Cute bunnies
Pirates of the Beard Island

This year, in 2009, XeNTaX has been around for 20 years! Count ‘em! All these years ago, Mr.Ammo and I had been active on the Commodore 64, mainly being lame and hacking other people’s demo’s, as the Unidentified Software Busters (USB). In 1989, we thought it time to do away with all that and start creating our own stuff. Of course, we could not do this as USB, and we founded XeNTaX. A fresh, new group, that would focus on graphics. We  created several attempts at demos, Mr.Ammo and I both drawing, while I took up the coder part as well. We soon realised that we needed something more, and I started composing c64 sid tunes (we both played in the same bands already, and I composed some music for that band). Our first music demo was Toxic Waste, featuring 6 of my early tunes and graphics by Mr.Ammo. Toxic Waste was picked up by the German diskmagazine and demogroup Blaze and asked us to join their editorial board of the magazine Addybook, while also joining Blaze as spreader (Mr.Ammo) and musician (Mr.Mouse). We then turned XeNTaX into a C64-music group (in the C64 scene), and had members from all over the world. In 1993, however, XeNTaX stopped the C64 activities and lay low for a while. Some of us did compose some tunes on the Amiga and PC during those years, but it wasn’t until 1997 that activities on the PC started to increase. In 1998 we build our first website, and released stuff for the PC, such as MultiEx Commander, some other small demos, and some PC tunes. In 2001, the first windows version of MultiEx Commander was released and in 2003 we started the Game Research Forum. A few years later, in 2005, the Game File Format Central. Finally, we became an official foundation in 2006.

Now we are here, 20 years later since the first XeNTaX release on the Commodore 64! Happy anniversary to all! Check the Softography page for some of our releases, from the C64 days to 2001.

The MultiEx Commander project originally started on the DOS platform. First there was the commandline tool multiex.exe in 1997, that used the first version of MexScript to process multiple different game resource archives for extraction and updating. MultiEx Commander (1998-1999) was then build as graphical user interface for users. Hence the name, Commander. The last DOS version was 2.3 in 2001 (the first Windows version was 3.0 in 2001). I’ve uploaded most of the relevant files of the DOS version over at the forum here. There you will find the installation files, source code, screenshots and DOCS. For old-time’s sake! Install DOSBox or similar first and then start the installation when in DOSBox mode. It’s quite fun to relive the beginning!

By request I’ve edited some old source code of TRE Archiver to not require MexCom registration. So, basically this is the same as 1.0.3, but now without the need to have a registered copy of MexCom. Don’t complain that it won’t open any new TRE types. The original tool was from 2003, it’s now 6 years later. I won’t support it any further.

TRE Archiver 1.0.4

A few nights ago something terrible happened while I was visiting Rivet City’s Marketplace during my game of Fallout 3. My loyal companion Fawkes (a near-immortal supermutant wielding a gatling laser weapon) unfortunately caused a massacre there. Read the whole, illustrated story right here: http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3303
 

Bogey used MultiEx Commander to create some cool mods for MX vs ATV Unleashed (PC). The mods sport many various improvements, including speeding up the motorcycles and ATVs, making it more difficult to crash, making the physics more advanced, and removing the curse filter on chat. The mods are called Caffeine I, Caffeine II, Caffeine III, and Tweaks, with Caffeine III just being a later version of Caffeine II, etc. Caffeine III includes all features of Tweaks, but in Tweaks there are no changes to the physics. The readme for both is posted here.

• Download Caffeine III (600 KB)
• Download Tweaks (475 KB)