Return to Zork file formats

lordskylark · Post by **lordskylark** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 8:37 pm

Now that Return to Zork is playable, is there a program or a way that one can extract the images from the data and view them outside of the game?

Post by **sev** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 10:22 pm

You may take a look at ScummVM source, get the gfx processing routines and reuse them. Particularly pay attention to engines/made/graphics.cpp

Eugene

lordskylark · Post by **lordskylark** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 3:35 pm

Unfortunately I don't know how to program/code.

But I was able to get a script working that is able to extract .prj archives into individual files though so that all the images are separate. Need help after that...

marzipan · Post by **marzipan** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:40 pm

This could be interesting - for me at least - in terms of extracting the MIDI music.

I previously pointed out how the PRJ file included death messages related to inaccessible or non-existant plot points, which just further reminded me of how generally rushed the game felt to me. :-\

lordskylark · Post by **lordskylark** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 3:25 pm

Yeah, there are several items not used in the game, as well as a bit more text. What I am really interested in seeing if there are more unused images. At one time I messed around with the saved game files and found out that many more photos could be added to your photo book, but in the game itself these locations will not allow you to take a photo. So I assume that more delete images are in the data.

Check out this link:
http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3521

The original code had lots of errors, so I had to remake the code and I posted it at the bottom.

The Floppy and CD version have some slightly different XMI tracks (some are present in one but not the other). This also works for the MAC, SEGA SATURN, and PSX versions.

I also have some fragments from the Return to Zork design documents, and they list puzzles not present in the final game. Such as in the Citadel of Zork, you were first supposed to encounter two Orc guards, which the invisibility potion alone worked on. Then in the next room, you would encounter the Orc Leader, which required both the potion and the hellhound barking. The object name "Orc Guard" still is included in the data along with "Orc Leader", which makes me wonder if the images for these are still included in the data too.

lordskylark · Post by **lordskylark** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:30 pm

I actually went through and compared all the files (in a hex editor) to see which XMI from the floppy and CD version were the same and which were not (most of the differences are very very minute, but I included every file that was differt regardless). I also included the MID from the MAC version.

Here is the entire pack. Enjoy.

http://www.filefront.com/15080629/RTZXMI.rar

marzipan · Post by **marzipan** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:31 pm

Intriguing.

It would be nice to know how one can turn this code into an extractor program without needing expert programming knowledge in advance.

EDIT: Oh snap. You posted again it seems! XD

lordskylark · Post by **lordskylark** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 5:05 pm

You save the code there that I made to a file called something like "prj.txt" (it doesn't matter the name).

Then you download the program BMS (which there should be a link on that page). And you run BMS, select prj.txt when it asks you, then selected the RTZ.PRJ file.

Easy!

(I'm just looking for someone to make a FLE image format viewer)

Here are some samples:

http://www.filefront.com/15064297/RTZ.rar
The DOS images are 320x200 and the MAC images are 640x480. The MAC versions are much higher quality.

There's also ANM files which probably work similar to animated GIFs.

http://www.filefront.com/15080883/CGENPR00-CGENPR00.ANM