We’ve taken the liberty to mirror Game File Explorer’s Geocities location, to preserve it. Note that we could not get into touch with Aahlstro himself, so perhaps he’ll come to us. In any event, this is a cool program that should be available from a more dedicated site, such as XeNTaX. Game File Explorer will let you open a lot of different Game Resource Archive Formats! Check it out!

The artist called Blue Ninja (NinjaX) has won the XeNTaX Forum Graphics Header compo! Forum visitors voted and the final score was calculated from the total number of points distributed by visitors while taking into account the number of times an entry was the first choice. Blue Ninja just got enough points to win, with 147 points, while Andrei155 got 144 points to take the second place. Steven Gerritse followed with 70 points. Check them out: Winner, Second, Third. Congrats to all winners! Check out all 37 submissions here. There are some really good entries in there!

The vote is on! The Game Research Forum Header contest is now open for voting! Check out all 35+ entries here: http://forum.xentax.com/contest/submissions/index.html . Then hop over to the forum and post your top three!

To celebrate the 5 year anniversary of the Xentax Game Research Forum this year, we are organizing a graphic contest! The idea is to create a new header for the forum that will serve as front from then on! Winner takes $125, second $50 and third $25! Any entry will be considered for rotation at the site, regardless of prize! If you think are up to it, then here’s the requirements:

• Entries should be in PNG or JPG format, with source files depending on art program
• Dimensions Width x Height = 1024 (max) x 150 pixels
• Games, Gaming and/or Game Research themes are obligatory
• XeNTaX logo/text should preferably retain the XNTX capitalization
• The text “Game Research Forum” must be sufficiently legible

Conditions:

• Points are awarded by forum visitors and the board of the Xentax Foundation
• Xentax Foundation has the final verdict, because the winning entry must fit the overall aim, purpose and layout of the site if it is to to be used. This verdict cannot be contested.
• If not enough entries are submitted, the contest will be forfeit. There will be a reward solely for the best entry up to that time ($50).

Deadline: March 15th 2008
Submit you entries to info@xentax.com.  

I have installed phpBB3 and converted the old data of the Game Research Forum to the new one. Now we should have more functionality for users and be up to date at the same time. Some features may still be missing, which I hope to fix soon. Visit the new forum at: http://forum.xentax.com !

There was some bug in the application system for people that wish to apply for access to the Game Research forum the last few weeks. This resulted in the application not being confirmed/approved. This issue has been resolved and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. We’d like to ask those that still do not have an account to apply once again to gain access!

We have finally upgraded the Mediawiki code to the latest version over at Game File Format Central! Indeed, it was about time the XentaxWIKI code was renewed! The latest installment of Mediawiki is now powering GFFC, and we hope to do all kinds of neat stuff with it. If you tried to access it while we were working on the upgrade and experienced some disappointing behaviour, please excuse us. It should all work now! Head on over to http://wiki.xentax.com !

Here we go again. A nice script for MultiEx Commander to extract and replace stuff in *.SLF archives from the PC game Jagged Alliance 2. Have fun with it!

Check out the map picture (PCX) that was extracted from a SLF file!

ImpType Standard ;
GetDString OFileName 256 0 ;
GetDString Folder 256 0 ;
Get FileNum Long 0 ;
Get FileNum Long 0 ;
Get U1 Long 0 ;
Get U2 Long 0 ;
Get U3 Long 0 ;
Set ESize Long FileNum ;
Math ESize *= 280 ;
GoTo EOF 0 ;
SavePos END 0 ;
Math END += 1 ;
Math END -= ESize ;
GoTo END 0 ;
For T = 1 To FileNum ;
GetDString FN 256 0 ;
SavePos FOO 0 ;
Get FO Long 0 ;
SavePos FSO 0 ;
Get FS Long 0 ;
Get U4 Long 0 ;
Get U5 Long 0 ;
Get U6 Long 0 ;
Get U7 Long 0 ;
Log FN FO FS FOO FSO ;
Next T ;

You can also get it as a compiled BMS file (Run Custom Script… in MultiEx Commander).

slf.zip

I’ve created a simple script for MultiEx Commander to open The Witcher *.BIF files and extract/replace the contents. Note that the script does not cater for filenames in the BIF archives. I want to create a plugin that will take care of that. For now, use the script to browse the BIF files and do some simple modding!

IDString 0 BIFFV1.1 ;
ImpType Standard ;
Get FileNum Long 0 ;
Get FN2 Long 0 ;
Get EntrySize Long 0 ;
For T = 1 To FileNum ;
Get Number Long 0 ;
Get C Long 0 ;
SavePos FOO 0 ;
Get FO Long 0 ;
SavePos FSO 0 ;
Get FS Long 0 ;
Get T1 Long 0 ;
Log “” FO FS FOO FSO ;
Next T ;
You can also download it as a BMS file. Use in MultiEx Commander (Run Custom Script on…):

The Witcher simple BIF extraction script for MultiEx Commander

The first MultiEx Commander language pack is released! It will install all supported languages: Czech, Dutch, English, French, German and Hungarian. If you feel you could do other translations, drop in at the forum here! Get the Language pack herel!

Update: Thanks to Carlos at the forum we also have a Spanish version! It’s in the language pack!