Well, this has been interesting. I was able to get PP (Pro Pack) to unpack the 104 of the 116 files. It all unpacked to like a 7.8 meg folder from 2 meg.
There are RNC files 83, 84, 90, and 91 that I was able to play on my modplayer. I think I see how Facing Twilight was able to extract the mods years ago.
The errors in unpacking were...
0,2,35,82,85,86,87,88,89,97,111,112
The rest is still fairly unknown, and part of the challenge is figuring out applications that can load the files.
Here's how you can help me in unlocking Bubsy:
1) SpiderJerusalem you mentioned a Hex2Dec function in Excel. Wasn't able to find it on my home Mac version, can't guarentee work Pc will have it. Can you run that function on the Offset and Length columns and post the updated spreadsheet here?
2) If you would like to look at what is unpacked so far and want to help identify what's what, drop me a PM. Would appreciate all the help I can get.
3) There are many different types of extensions, I'm sure many are specific to the game environment, and others are actual extensions of a application.
.pic seems to be the backdrop pics.
.w11 voice track for Ali baba (not sure what would play these voice tracks or format)
.w22 Voice track for Jack and the Bean Stolk
.w33 Voice track for Hansel and gretel
.w44 Voice track for 20,000 leagues
.w55 Voice track for Alice in wonderland
.pp seem to be animated additions (the arrow that points where to go, etc)
.mus files are established straight up .mod files.
.bad I believe the files containing the bad guy information for the levels.
.bos the boss animations. I know this from switching the bosses around.
.bin would appear to be a binary, not confirmed.
.txt There is one "Game.txt" file.
.dta another file with the name "Game" in it. In this case "Game.dta"
The next part I'll present extensions how they interact with each other.
There are files BSET1.XXX through BSET5.XXX There are basically five worlds.
The extensions that go with these labled files are
.BTR
.CRY (only one of these and for world 4)
.DAT (also has a "SFX.DAT" file)
.RGB (in these 4 is missing.. I believe .RGB and .CRY are graphics formats?)
There are files that say World1A.XXX-World5C.XXX There are a total of five worlds, with three levels in each for 15 levels. The associated extentions are...
.MAP
.MPR
.CTL
"Font1", "Intro", "Logos" has these assoctiated:
.JHD
.JSP
"Atari", "Bubsy" "IDI", "Star", "Waterfon" all use
.JPL
And I'm thinking these are the opening screens that cycle at the beginning of the game.
And that covers all of the extentions. Now we need to somehow figure out which ones of the above are what in the RNC files that were unpacked, and then figure out what applications can work with and view the files above.
The modplayer files worked straight up, so that is an encouragement.
For those that want to try your hand at uncompressing the last 12 stragglers I have the zipped file below with the 12 RNC files that errored out. I included 90, and 91 which not only worked but are established mods to practice with.
With 90 and 91 I was able to run Pro Pack (included) on the them with the command:
pp u m *.rnc
That is ProPack.. with the "U"npack "M"otorola 68K and "*.rnc" all files in the directory ending with ".rnc"
Once you do that, just change the extension to .mod at the end 90 and 91 and they will play in your modplayer.
And that command and file structure seemed good to the program for 104 of the 116 files. Of the remaining 12, I tried the PC, ST, Amiga, Data, and Motorola types with no luck.
Again,
- help with the hex conversion
-Help with identifying the file in the directory in the excel spreadheet attached to RNC file
-Help finding applications to open these files
Any or all would be appreciated.
Question I have to wonder, what type of computer was this developed on? (A ST, PC, Amiga... probably not Amiga). They had to work the graphics, and I believe that there is a program to convert graphics to work on the Jaguar? What app would that be?
Good luck in whatever you try on this, and if you don't yield results, have fun trying.
My hope, worse caase scenario... extract the maps. Many have asked for those.
