Final Blog entry by yours truly. My “engagement” ends. It’s been a nice ride whether it will continue or not depends on you, users.

Listening to “The King of Pride Rock” and “I Just can’t wait to be King” while writing. yeah, I’m still a child at heart.

Closing considerations:

1. the 3D/2D section of the forum is the most prolific by FAR.
2. Second one is Game Archive.
3. What really few people care about is music. Pity

3D/2D Models

• Dekaron 2: lol2k has released a script for this game.
• Real Racing 3: barti has updated his script.
• Lumis’ Max script offer is still valid.
• Jack and Daxter HD: chrrox is making some nice progress!
• AION: Pesmontis has made a couple nice discoveries.
• Ryusui has released a couple updates for AMD.
• S4 Model League: barti has released his progress.
• CVM files are being investigated.

Audio File Formats

• Deep Black Reloaded: reznov needs a hand for this game.
• XMA Transform: updated. Thanks Alpha23!
• Cars Race-o-Rama: help for ARC files wanted.

Graphic Formats

• Unswizzle: someone has already grabbed the 100$ reward, apparently. Or at least the promise of it.
• Dead Rising 2: michalss wants help for the textures.

Game Archive Research

• Agarest: Ekey has released a script for this game!
• Touhou: and also for this game.
• Reznov is investigating .cache files!
• Star Wars the Old Republic: work continues.
• Gundam Extreme: tool released.
• MGS saga: let’s hope the tool continues to be developed.
• Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2: script updated for the demo.
• One Piece Romance of Dawn: chrrox, MrAdults and Zerox all together. Awesomeness ensues.
• Dead Island: .pak file investigation continues.
• Super Marsia Land: script requested and obtained. thanks Ekey.

Phew, what a weekend. Thank god I took the day off.

3D/2D Models

• Odd oddity continues. Hilarity ensues thanks to people who don’t know when the joke is on them. Or when it’s not.
• Janglesworthy shares some useful websites. thanks!
• Dekaron: lol2k12 wants help for this game.
• Gran Turismo 3 & 4: MateSMC’s thread is still going strong.
• Killzone 3: luxox is making progress.
• Disney INFINITY; a surprising interest for Ralph & co.
• Cadabra 3d: a “catfight” game which is now abandonware. Fascinating.
• Ryusui’s thread got an answer from MrAdults himself.
• And he himself is working on his other project,

Audio File Formats

• Mass Effect 2: yours truly continues his crusade for fruitless SFX search. Lack of cooperation does not help, but oh well.
• Tonic Trouble: Doolie wants to really get the resources of this old, but fun, game.

Graphic Formats

• Rocky Balboa: apparently this game has interesting textures.

Game Archive Research

• Metal Gear Series: DAT Files information wanted.
• War Thunder: Rafael09ED needs to get the audio off the fsb files.
• Outlast: “that crap” needs a bit of investigating.
• Awakening 5: cacarama needs some help in getting stuff out of the archive.
• Sine Mora: Ekey is currently working on updating the unpacker.
• Stalja needs help in understanding DAT archives.
• MGS Collection: some more info on this would be required.
• Orneon Limited: Ekey is looking for an extractor. I wonder if someone can help him.

On January the 19th we released the comprehensive analysis of the Metacritic website regarding their Games data. As a way to shed some light on the findings reported in that paper, I write this annotated blog. It will save you from having to read the 30 pages.

Introduction

The Metacritic website has a number of important flaws according to the Wikipedia page:

Metacritic:
• Converts each review into a percentage the site decides for itself
• Manually assesses the tone of reviews that have no explicit score and then assigns a quantitative score
• Refuses to reveal what weights are applied to which publications

Now, assuming the above is correct, this would make the data shown at Metacritic highly biased and far from the truth. Statistics dictate that you cannot apply scores at your own leisure based on subjective perception or using unvalidated methods and then call that a sophisticated meta-analysis. Therefore, it is time someone took a closer look at the data at Metacritic, in a descriptive way, to explore the data and see what comes up.

(more…)

Another week is past and another summary is here. The summary of next week, however, will come either on Friday or Monday, as I will be full on both Saturday and Sunday.

3D/2D Models

• Metroid Prime: Antidote has discovered how bad can Metroid Prime modelling be.
• Ratchet & Clank: Demonboy wants to understand this format.
• Farsata has an animation problem.
• Dead or Alive: work continues.
• Silver 3d: work continues also here, albeit differently.
• Castlevania: Karpati (oh, the irony) has released an updated version of his portable 3d Object Converter including Lords of Shadow 2 support.
• Sniper Elite: lots of updates, from the same author.
• AMD: Ryusui has an update for those interested.
• Discussion on Maxscripts continues.
• Sleeping Dogs: SergeantJoe’s crusade continues.

Audio File Formats

• House of the Dead 4: HOTDfan (duh) wants to open the audio files.
• Bioshock 2: Xstalker needs help with the repacking FSB files.
• Alpha23 needs help in understanding a peculiar form of ADPCM. Everyone, move.
• Mass Effect 2: yours truly in the flesh would like some help in getting those damn Mass Effect 2 SFX. Stupid machines.

Graphic Formats

• Miasmata: Haoose provides solution.
• Emrekumas61 wants to understand a font type.
• God of War Ascension; HAIDER wants to crack the font.

Game Archive Research

• The Old Republic: a positive update.
• The Force Unleashed: a return of interest here!
• GTA V: luxox18 has graciously shed some dds insight.
• Archive X: apparently, development continues and has not stopped at all.

Quick Summary of the Week’s events. New Layout too, I believe. Hope it’s correct. Sorry for the lateness but I wanted to wait for more substantial entries, then I started working as a legal intern and studying for my second Master’s Degree and I forgot.

2D/3D Formats

• Dark Souls: interest in the FLV files continues.
• Sleeping Dogs: SergeantJoe asks for help again!
• Warframe Online: script updated and development news.
• Cursed Crusade: Zaramot is doing most of the work.
• Diablo III animations: work continues well, apparently.
• Silver: development has started.
• Final Fantasy X HD: development continues, despite being slow.
• Onimusha Dawn of Dreams: chrrox released a nice script.
• AION: Pesmontis has made a request for a Collada exporter.
• Cabal Online: FauxBestaan has released a nice script. I wonder if development will continue.
• Dragon’s Dogma: Zaramod is tackling it.
• Kingdom Under Fire 2: chrrox has made a very brief informative post.
• Toukiden: orohu has made a request.
• Real Racing 3: a lot of interest for this little Android game.
• Aarklash Legacy: work continues on this project.
• Heroes and Generals: medwed wants help for this game.
• Kingdom Hearts 1: it deserves more recognition!
• Rusty Hearts: mm497905573 makes a request.
• Ghostbusters: format has been successfully cracked it appears.
• Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2: zardalu has made a request to crack the demo.
• Astebreed: lots of data to read.
• Ninja Ripper: hotgoblin has made a request.
• Binary Domain: a Noesis script has been released, thanks a lot! Working for Yakuza too.

Audio File Formats

• Gamecube ADPCM: AlphaTwentyThree needs help. Everyone, focus, now.
• Mp3 Stereo to Mono: Alpha needs more help in knowing how to split stereo tracks without re-enconding.
• Tonic Trouble: the work on those MPX files continues.
• Electronic Arts .mus: continues the work on this.
• Wild Arms 2: SmashFan127 wants help for this.
• .HCA Header: FinalBlast has some good news.
• Star Trek/Darkness 2 audio: this is a bit more complicated than expected.

Graphic Formats

• Army Men: SRDDonkey wants to understand this peculiar graphic format.
• Necromancy: an old thread about textures.
• SpongeBob Truth or Square: barti has released an updated script.
• Diablo III TEX: development continues, albeit slowly.
• NFL Blitz 2000: barti has made a couple interesting findings.

Game Archive Research

• DPK4: GMMan wants help for this format.
• LittleBig Planet Karting: Alpha23 needs some more help.
• X: development continues.
• War Thunder: thanks brendan19 for the batch command. Hope it works with many files.
• Panzar: freakshow wants to tackle this “game”.
• More criticism concerning money offers for tools.
• KickBeat: reznov needs help.
• The Matrix Path of Neo: renewed interest for this great game!
• Metal Gear Rising: development continues.
• FFXIII Lightning Returs: development continues also here.
• Wild Arms 3: SmashFan’s effort continues, alone. Kudos for being so determined.

Today we release the next chapter in the Quantify Me series: Metacritic. Having done an analysis of the CSDb first (CSDb: Quantify Me) in July 2010 and then Mobygames (Mobygames: Quantify Me) at the end of December 2012, the attention has turned to the games listed at Metacritic. This one turned out to big a big analysis, collecting data almost non-stop from the Metacritic website between the 25th of August 2013 and the 10th of September 2013. Then cleaning of the database and actual analyses took another lengthy period of time, as this needed to be done late in the evenings, as much as possible. Finally the first chapter of this endeavor is here. The conclusion of this 30 page paper (which you can get here as PDF) is as follows:

The data at Metacritic leaves much to be desired and seems to be heavily biased. When critic scores do not comply with user scores in the majority of cases, which has been shown in this paper, and the selection of critics is seemingly under no formal control, the validity and accuracy of the data is low. Caution is necessary when using Metacritic information to guide your own decision to buy or not buy a game. Until there is more transparency on how this process takes place at Metacritic, more transparency on the flow of funding from which sources and the observed biases are removed, the database is of limited use for the end-users.

Putting back a monster update, thanks to forgettin the “Game Archive” for quite some time.

2D/3D Formats

• SmashFan127 wants help for Spyro the dragon WAD files.
• ZeroGravity has updated his script for Diablo III animations to also support the expansion. YES!
• Bogus needs some kangaroo help.
• Ryder25 has solved his animation issues.
• LUBDAR wants help for a Diablo III app.
• Lumis really needs help.
• Kingdom Hearts interest, again. Yay!
• Janglesworthy shares 3d info.

Audio Formats

• Amran wants help for XWC files of the Starbreeze engine.
• XMA transform interest continues.
• Keystothemaxim solved his MAME CHD problem.
• FinalBlast has found a temporary solution for his HCA header problem.
• A certain user wants help for Kingdom Hearts 1.5 audio voice files.

Graphic Formats

• Root670 wants help to understand 8 bit sizzled textures.
• Lemurboy12 wants help for Spongebob PSP graphic files.
• Doctor Loboto wants help for Ghostbusters .tex files.

Game Archive Research

• Yianti apparently is interested in Cabal 2.
• Reznov wants help for .cache files.
• Renewed interest for Castlevania Lords of Shadow.
• Cybore wants help for Naruto Ninja storm.
• GooD has released a decoder for GTAV Ps3.
• First thread about Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.
• HV files cracked.
• Mcboom2007 wants help for JSON files.
• Archive X still being worked on.
• Cra0 has released a Call of Duty Ghost PaK extractor!
• Silent Hill homecoming PAK files are still being investigated.
• Zardalu points out interesting Dark Souls developments.
• .BBz archives are being investigated.
• Robocop IOS game is being investigated too.
• Force Unleashed II is investigated as well.
• Lightning Returns is also worked on.
• MNF files are looked upon.
• A certain user wants help for Tomb Raider’s Guardian of Light archives.
• Updated question on MGS script.

Happy new year! Sorry for being late, I’ll try to get this fixed ASAP.

2D/3D Formats

• Tosyk continues to work on LA Noire heads.
• Apparently, the (somewhat) pointless satire continues too.
• And it’s also called upon as an example to follow.
• But it’s not very successful, as this kind of behaviour still continues.
• Friuns offers money for Trackverse xml parser.
• Shakotay2 helps again for understanding Darksiders 2 .anm files.
• Chipicao releases his Maxscripts. Thanks!
• Payday 2 model format is still being investigated.
• Mikulover39 is working on the remaster of FFX. Great!
• AngryBirds importer is still being worked on.
• After 95 pages .carbin models are still being worked on.
• TaylorMouse made a script for Diablo 3 animations.
• Fear Effect .wad files being investigated.
• As is Samurai Showdown.
• A desperate cry for help for the game DayZ.
• WebGl extraction is still being investigated.

Audio Formats

• Renewed interest for XMA Tranforming.
• Droolie wants help for Tonic Trouble MPX files.
• SmashFan127 continues his crusade in understanding Wild Arms data.

Compressed files and methods

• Simple needs help to understand Cross Beats archives.
• Cra0 needs help to understand Counter Strike 2 online archives.
• Phnx wants help for Kingdom Of Alumar archives.

Game Localization

• Epik wants help to translate a chinese game back to English.

Final week of the year. Happy new year, everyone.

2D/3D Formats

• Zardalu needs help for Mirror of Fate.
• Lumis refuses to give up.
• Tosyk continues the research on L. A. Noire heads.
• Webgl extraction continues to be investigated.
• As is Mechwarrior tactics.
• Nyxo has released a Dark Souls FLV tool.
• TaylorMouse has tackled again Diablo III animations.
• Trackmania 2 files are being investigated.
• A p3d.in extractor has been released.

Audio Formats

• Update needed on Star Trek games.
• 41hc1 asks for Manhunt (wii) fsb help.
• MiLØ asks for help concerning a Ps3 game, Drag-on Dragoon.
• Aagems asks for help concerning Xbox 360 audio files.

Compressed files and methods

• Small update on the Dark Knight Rises GLA thread.

Game Localization

• A small update on the Batman Arkham Origins voices.

A quick summary of what has transpired last week. Penultimate week of the year, everyone.

2D/3D Formats

• Blaar asks for Mechwarrior help.
• Jaydenthetank wants to extract .webgl files.
• And also Transformers 2.
• And also Wild Arms 2.
• O0Demonboy0o asks for help in understanding .nsbmd files.
• Interest continues on the Metal Gear Solid 4 script.
• Dead or Alive thread continues.
• A somewhat pointless thread.
• Update on Payday 2 format.
• Lumis‘ offer of 15$ continues.
• The 2006 game Sonic the Hedgehog gets some updated info.
• Sailingjia asks for an Angry Birds Go importer.
• RatedR203 asks for .anm help, for the game Darksiders 2.
• Help and money offered for God of War 3 meshes.
• TaylorMouse asks for help concerning the 3d format of the game Aarklash Legacy.

Audio Formats

• FinalBlast needs help in understanding .hca format.
• Work continues in the Silent Hill thread.
• Pepper needs help for 3 different games.
• Reznov’s thread deals with FSB5 for Shadow Warrior.

Compressed files and methods

• Marsy85 needs help to work on a compressor based on LZ.
• DerpyTails wants help in extracting files from the Sony Mega Collection Plus.
• SmashFan asks for help, again, for Wild arms.
• Floyder asks for help in understanding MstarTR file format.
• Savage needs help in order to unpack HVP files.

Game Localization

• Update on the Telltale and Gametap thread.
• Djokay wants help in translating a german game, Jack Keane und der Schickals.