While I know enough‘s been said about this level in Thief III: Deadly Shadows, I feel the need to just stress this once more. Shalebridge Cradle is pure and utter evil taken digitized form. Kieron Gillen wrote an excellent feature on just this single level in the March 2005 issue of PC Gamer. Those of you that’ve played this game and dared enter the Cradle will know exactly what I mean. It’s been a few years since, but no-one has ever even come close to achieving what the team behind Thief III did. The Cradle is the most important piece of level-design this last decennium. Having played games from the early 1980’s onward, feeling tense while playing Doom for the first time, while being startled by those damn facehuggers in Half Life, this…is something quite different. When you – as Garrett – enter The Cradle, you enter the Cradle. This level will envelop you, suck you into it’s evilness and scare the hell out of you. Not by yelling BOO! at every corner, no no. That’s for the amateurs. Read the rest of this entry »

Though an obscure game and hard to find, a request came in by fatduck to support *.DAT files of this game called Robot Wars. Notably, this should be from the Playstation (Portable?) version. You’ll note all the *.GIM files in the DAT archive, so this tells you it is indeed from some console game that used OPTPIX iMagestudio to edit the games’ textures etc. Get the plugin here.

Thanks to Sziládi Zsolt we now have a Hungarian version of MultiEx Commander! To install this translation all you need to do is unpack the zip archive and copy the “data” folder you obtain to the folder where you installed MultiEx Commander. You have two files: one in the data/eul folder and one in the data/languages folder. Simple!

Of course, with this comes also a Hungarian MultiEx Commander webpage, thanks a bundle Sziládi

Download the MexCom Hungarian Language files!

Mr. Mouse released a MexCom plugin for *.PAK files from the Playstation Portable game Puzzle Quest. By request at the Game Research forum, the PAK format was demystified. In addition, Deniz Oezmen created a tool to convert binary XML files back to text form. Options: Read the whole discussion, Learn about the PAK format, Get the Plugin, Get XMLConv.

Mr.Mouse fixed some bug at the Game File Format Central (XentaxWIKI) and added MexScript that supports Command and Conquer 3 *.BIG files in MultiEx Commander. In addition, you can open Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth *.BIG files. Choose the WIKI in MultiEx Commander’s Options dialog and open a big archive of your choice! Click here to view the format.

The Xentax Foundation is looking for PHP/Web coders to work on a user interface dedicated to game file format research. Xentax has been active in the game modding scene for a long time, offering tools such as MultiEx Commander, hosting knowledge via the Xentax Game File Wiki and hosting a community-driven game file discussion forum. Indeed, at the forum a team of investigators examine game resource archives, audio formats, graphic formats, compression/encryption techniques, 2D/3D models and any other game related files, by user’s request! We believe it is time to take this work to a new and dedicated level by creating a new webinterface for gamers to use to suggest new files for research. Read the rest of this entry »

Mr.Mouse created a plugin for MexCom to open and extract from Spellforce 2 *.PAK files. By request at the Xentax forum, there’s now a plugin available. Installation is simple, just copy the DLL to the data/plugins/PAK directory. Now open those *.PAK files!

Get it here.

Deniz Oezmen and Benjamin Haisch (John_doe) reverse engineer compression or encryption techniques while you wait! Visitors of the Xentax boards will have met Deniz and Benjamin before and have seen their prowess. I felt it time to set the spotlight on them for some excellent work they did. While I am not afraid of reverse engineering compression/encryption techniques (read the Definitive Guide), I am absolutely no expert. However, these guys play that game in a higher league. Two pieces of work I’ll highlight.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a new plugin available for Just Cause .ARC and SARC files. By request, a plugin for Just Cause files was created. Read the post at the forum. This should open .ARC files (providing .tab and .txt files are in the same folder) and SARC files contained within the .ARC files. Additional info is given at the forum. Update: Info also entered at the wiki: ARC and SARC.

Mr.Mouse created three new MexScripts to use in MexCom. The MexScripts are also available from the WIKI source from within MexCom. Set the BMS source to WIKI in Options. Note that the scripts are still unofficial so set the source also to unofficial in the Load Archive dialog. Play with the All and Ext filter to see the new games in the Type lists. The new game resource archives supported are : Breath of Fire 4 (PSX) *.EMI files, Wing Commander 3 (PSX) &.LIB files and The Cars THQ (PC) *.RES files. Don’t forget to Vote for the scripts if they function okay for you. To do this, select the Supported Games list in Help and double click on vote for the appropriate game/archive.