VOGONS

Reverse engineering a game's (Cartooners) data files.

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First post, by Peter Swinkels

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EDIT:
See: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?759753 … d-import-actors

Hi,

Thinking it would be a nice challenge, I've been trying to reverse engineer Cartooner's actor files. Searching the internet for information about the game, the Apple IIgs, disassembly and analyzing a game's data I found some useful information. Through a lot of effort I've figured out about 75% of how these files work. Some parts of the files are proving rather difficult though.

Using Microsoft Visual Basic.net 2010 I made a viewer which displays all the known parts of an actor file. Link: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?759753 … d-import-actors.
The .zip file also contains a document in the "\Documents" folder describing everything I found out so far.

Is there any one here who knows about disassembly and/or has experience analyzing a game's data files?

Last edited by Peter Swinkels on 2015-02-08, 14:52. Edited 3 times in total.

My GitHub:
https://github.com/peterswinkels

Reply 2 of 6, by Stiletto

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Or even http://fileformats.archiveteam.org

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 3 of 6, by Peter Swinkels

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Thanks for replying. I've just taken a quick look at those sites and they might contain information that can be help me along. I'll will also consider uploading the information I've so far there.

My GitHub:
https://github.com/peterswinkels

Reply 4 of 6, by Peter Swinkels

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Okay, I've managed to create an account at http://www.shikadi.net but can't figure out where or how to create a page for the information I would like to add. The site's help page for editing is empty. Clicking "edit" on a page that appears to be suitable for what I want to add apparently allows me to edit the page's header and nothing else. 😕

After finally figuring out the answer to the site's automated account creation prevention question I managed to create an account at http://fileformats.archiveteam.org. I will see if I can accomplish more over there.

My GitHub:
https://github.com/peterswinkels

Reply 5 of 6, by Calvero

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ModdingWiki:Contributing isn't empty.

In short: Go to the Halloween Harry page and click on Edit. Press Ctrl+A to select everything and Ctrl+C to copy everything. Then go to http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Cartooners and press Create. Now press Ctrl+V to paste the Halloween Harry text and start changing it to make it say Cartooners instead of Halloween Harry.

Reply 6 of 6, by Peter Swinkels

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I finally made a major breakthrough in figuring out Cartooners' Actor file format: the Cartooners Actor Viewer can now export the actual images rather than raw colorized data.

The improved program can be downloaded at http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?759753 … d-import-actors.

EDIT:
The program can now export an actor's data and images. This data can then be changed and imported again, meaning it is now possible to create custom actors.

My GitHub:
https://github.com/peterswinkels

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