Feeble Files

[OmegaRed]

Hi all, 1st post.
Sorry to sound like a n00b but im having some real problems with this.
the main one being i havent got a clue what to do. i mean, i've looked around and to my untrained eyes its just a barrage of information.
like renaming the voices.wav...does that mean i have to rip the cd and mount that to run it or what? and encoding the dxa's....??
its all just a mess.
if anyone could point me in the right direction of some nice easy step by steps that will sort me out then it would be much appreciated.
I have the old 4 disc windows version
cheers in advance
peace

[hmfynn]

Hi, I'm also a new user who had a bit of trouble getting this to work, (figured it out though) and tonight I'll try to write a step-by-step post for you. Right now I'm still having trouble getting the game to save, but I've yet to dig around for that answer yet. I'll get back to you and edit this message when I'm done:)

NOTE: Just want to give credit to the people on this forum, I've pieced all this together by sifting through their comments, and am putting it in noob-friendly jargon for you (as I had to do first for myself!) so no one else has to.

Get ready for a LONG process. You do in fact, as far as I know, need to convert every single .snk file to a .dxa file. You'll also need to copy all the files from each CD onto your hard drive. (of course, you only need the files for the CD you're working from, but you'll probably want to keep those converted .dxa files around so you never have to convert them again, especially if you have a dvdR or a jumpdrive (or LOTS of drive space you just don't know what to do with)

---STEP ONE

Ok, first off, you're going to need to download 3 extra (but thankfully free!) programs

The first is right here on the site in the downloads section. It's the 0.9.0 Tools Windows Installer (1st file in the 3rd section of downloads. It says unstable, but it worked fine for me)

The second is a file conversion tool called "Bink and Smacker" which is part of RAD Video Tools. You can find it at their website www.radgametools.com. (The README that comes with TOOLS mentions this program but doesn't tell you what it is or how to get it) You'll need this program to convert .snk to .wavs and .pngs, and the TOOLS program to convert those .wavs and .pngs into .dxa. (I'll get into more detail about that later).

The third is a codec, which you may already have (I didn't), aptly named "Lame", or, more specifically "lame3.97-b2" which can be found at http://www.free-codecs.com/Lame_Encoder_download.htm. (The README doesn't mention this at all, probably because many users already have that codec)

--- STEP TWO

Ok! Now to the actual game: install The Feeble Files (I did this outside of ScummVM by running the regular disk setup).

Now, you'll need to run the Installer for the ScummVM tools you just downloaded. Within the new folder it makes, copy the file "encoder_dxa.exe" and paste a copy of it into your Feeble Files directory.

Note - You're going to need to be typing the path a few times during the conversion process, so you MAY wish to install this game into a simpler folder (e.g. C:\Feeble instead of what setup wants, "C:\Program_Files\Adventure Soft (UK) Ltd\The Feeble Files"

Now, you'll need to unzip that LAME codec file, and copy ALL the contents (you don't really need all of them, but honestly, I'm not sure exactly which ones you do, and since there's only about 8 of them, I say bring along the whole thing) into your Feeble directory. (This may not be a necessity, but when I was trying to convert the files later, it kept telling me it was missing "lame" and this solved it)

----------

NOW begins the arduous task of file conversion. Which shall be completed in the next post

[hmfynn]

STEP THREE -

- first, the easy part. Copy the file from the CD "Voices.wav" into your Feeble drive and rename it "Voices1.wav". (you do this because once you get to the other CDs, you'll be copying THEIR "voices.wav" and renaming them voices2, voices3, etc. I would assume that, if you felt like it, you could just leave it "voices" and copy the CD2 voices over the CD1 voices once you get to CD2 in the game; but, if you've got the disk space, installing them all and renaming them would probably be easier. I'm still on Disk 1 (since I can't get the game to save yet) but renaming it to voices1.wav worked here so I assume the others will too.

- next, copy ALL the .vga files from the CD into your Feeble folder. (There are already .vga files in there, but not the same ones). Thankfully these don't take up too much space. You'll have to do this once you get to CD2 and the others, but while you're on CD1, all you need are those.

-Now the rough part. Take a deep breath cause this ain't gonna be fun. It's not hard but it's tedious, so either break it up over a week or pop in your favorite 10-hour Civil War Miniseries and sit down to a long night of clicking and typing. Over and over again. Sigh.

Now would be a good time to copy every .SNK file from the CD into your Feeble directory (again, there are some .snk files already there, but you need these too.)

Now at this point, you should have installed the RAD converter, and it will be in your program files menu under "Bink and Smacker"

Now you have to (or "get to" if you're an optimist) manually convert every single .SNK file (and you'll "get" to do it for 4 CDs)
In Bink and Smacker, go to the Feeble folder, single-click (don't double click or it'll play) on the first .SNK file you see (for example, agent32.SNK). Then at the bottom of the window, click on "Convert a file".

You'll need to do this twice for each file, since you need to convert both the video and the sound.

First time - in the window that pops up, at the top click "Output Type" and select PNG files. Also check the box that says output at 256 colors. Then click CONVERT on the side bar.
What this does is create about 500-1000 image files Z(one for each frame of animation). You'll see them in the directory, but don't worry, you will be able to delete them with one click in a few minutes.

Second time - same process, but instead for Output type click WAV files

Now the file agent32.snk has a whole lot of PNG files behind it and its own agent32.wav file.

NOw you need to open a command prompt. Go to "RUN" in your start menu, type "CMD.exe" and change directory to your Feeble folder.
Example - cd "\Feeble"
(or, if you kept the original directory, it would be cd "\program_files\adventure soft (uk) ltd\ etc.....you get the idea.

Now, once you're at the directory, you need to type
encoder_dxa name of file
So in this case it would be encoder_dxa agent32.

NOW, finally, you have two new files called agent32.mp3 and agent32.dxa
THESE are the two files that SCUMMVM reads simultaneously for the video to run.

You may now delete agent32.snk, agent32.wav, and all the png files.

That wasn't so bad was it? Well, unfortunately, you're going to have to do it for every single .snk file on all four CDs. That's where it gets bad.

An extra problem is that this will take up a LOT of disk space (about half a GB for each CD). You can either keep the converted files for each CD on its own CD so you can slip them in and out of the directory when you get to that part of the game or something along those lines (I assume this is legal since you'll still need the original CDs to actually play, and this would qualify as backup file storage). Hopefully, you've got the space.

------

Well, anyway, that's what worked for me, at least on CD1. I'd get further, but I still can't SAVE. Still looking for that solution on the forum....

Hope this helped so far! [/b]

[hmfynn]

Correction: I CAN save, I just can't save to the same file, i HAVE to make a new one each time or it locks up. Odd.

[OmegaRed]

cheers hmfynn, youve made my day. i've been wanting to play this game again for too long now. thanks for sifting through the jargon for the benefit of the technologically challenged everywhere
top boy
peace

[sev]

Poor hmfynn, so much time for pointless clicking.

Now you have to (or "get to" if you're an optimist) manually convert every single .SNK file (and you'll "get" to do it for 4 CDs)
In Bink and Smacker, go to the Feeble folder, single-click (don't double click or it'll play) on the first .SNK file you see (for example, agent32.SNK). Then at the bottom of the window, click on "Convert a file".

Copy all SMK files into single directory. Run RAD Game Tools, Select all those files (Ctrl + A) and press on "Convert file", it will say something like "you have selected multiple files, do you want to batch process them?". Click on "yes". Now Select output file type PNG, make sure it's 256 colours and click on "Batch". Wait about an hour. Then close batch processing window, select smacker files again (there is a drop-down list for file type, chose *.smk and press Ctrl+A). Now select output file type WAV and click on "Batch" button again. Wait some more. You got cutscenes extracted in less than 15 clicks.

However, I highly recommend to split this job in 2, i.e. copy half of files, or SMKs from only one CD, not all of them at once and process each batch separately. Windows NTFS system is quite slow on big directories, and you will get a bigger slowdown on opening/closing files as more videos will be converted. Splitting files into several parts will improve that.

NOw you need to open a command prompt.

Now, once you're at the directory, you need to type
encoder_dxa name of file
So in this case it would be encoder_dxa agent32.

Again pointless typing, now even more sophisticated.

Type in following commands:

Code: Select all

for %i in (*.smk) do encode_dxa.exe --vorbis %~ni

And wait for several hours.

Explanation. That is a loop over all SMK files in the directory. For each SMK file it will run encode_dxa with 2 parameters, '--vorbis' and SMK file name without extension.

Again, you save several thousands keyboard clicks.


Eugene

PS. I would literally DIE if I'd have to perform all those clicking when I was testing different DXA compression methods.

[hmfynn]

Wow, good thing you came along before I did CD's 3 and 4. Then again, I am running on a laptop I hate to leave plugged in for so long at a time. (Surprised the thing can run the game at all, it practically freezes while emptying the recycle bin from the previous conversions)

[Tuxie]

Here is the Linux version:

Code: Select all

for SMK in *.smk; do
    echo BinkConv \"$SMK\" \"$(basename "$SMK" .smk).png\" /n-1 /z1
    echo BinkConv \"$SMK\" \"$(basename "$SMK" .smk).wav\" /v /z1
done >batch.rlst

wine 'C:\Program Files\RADVideo\radbatch.exe' batch.rlst

for SMK in *.smk; do
    encode_dxa --flac --best -b 1152 "$(basename "$SMK" .smk)"
done

Save as "batch_encode.sh" in the same directory as the .smk files, cd there and run "sh batch_encode.sh".

This assumes you have used wine to install RADtools into the default directory and you want to use FLAC to encode the audio.

[Ad_Enuff]

Is it at all posssible for the SCUMMVM project to host the converted SMK files like you did for Broken Sword and so forth?

I'd be happy to download them and seed them via torrent aswell if it helps the SCUMMVM project to distribute these video cutscenes?

[sev]

Is it at all posssible for the SCUMMVM project to host the converted SMK files like you did for Broken Sword and so forth?

I'd be happy to download them and seed them via torrent aswell if it helps the SCUMMVM project to distribute these video cutscenes?

No. For Broken Swords we got an explicit permission to distribute them.


Eugene

[Ad_Enuff]

No. For Broken Swords we got an explicit permission to distribute them.


Eugene

Is is possible to ask permission? Or is it possible to support the original SMK files in SCUMMVM without the need to convert.

In the case of the Feeble Files, the cutscene file conversion is simply way too much.

Is there a simpler way of doing it? or a tool SCUMMVM can create that will do it far easier?

Or as I suggested above, actually support the SMK files directly within SCUMMVM?

If it were like MAME, that woudl normally be the case.

[clem]

Or is it possible to support the original SMK files in SCUMMVM without the need to convert.

no it's not. if it was possible it would have been done already.

Is there a simpler way of doing it? or a tool SCUMMVM can create that will do it far easier?

the tool to convert them IS already a tool (the) ScummVM (team) created

Or as I suggested above, actually support the SMK files directly within SCUMMVM?

as answered above, this is not possible

If it were like MAME, that woudl normally be the case.

I believe ScummVM is far more vulnerable to lawsuits than MAME is

[eriktorbjorn]

Or as I suggested above, actually support the SMK files directly within SCUMMVM?

That would be nice, but from what I've heard RAD Game Tools have been rather protective about Smacker in the past. If so, it's quite understandable, as it's one of a fairly short list of products that they are selling.

Smacker support was added recently to ffmpeg and MPlayer, but it seems to be a bit slow and somewhat buggy. We're still waiting to see what will happen.

[deadagain]

In the case of the Feeble Files, the cutscene file conversion is simply way too much.
Is there a simpler way of doing it?

I used this script:
for %%i in (*.smk) do binkconv.exe %%i %%~ni.png /n-1 /z1 /#
for %%i in (*.smk) do binkconv.exe %%i %%~ni.wav /v /#
for %%i in (*.smk) do encode_dxa.exe --flac --best -b 1152 %%~ni

Substitute --flac --best -b 1152 with your own settings ofcourse...
Assumes binkconv.exe (& radutil.dll), encode_dxa.exe & your choice of encoder in the path.

Afterwards you can ofcourse delete *.png *.wav *.smk files.

Can I suggest putting these simple scripts in the readme?? It might help people when trying to convert the files...

[Ad_Enuff]

I cant leave my PC runnig scripts for hours on end as this is a family computer.

Can the SCUMMVM community that own The Feeble Files 4 CD edition like myself, help each other out and share them somehow on torrent for example?

The cutscenes is all I need to play it in SCUMMVM, I have all the other files ready to go!