peace_of_mind

His mood :p

Actually in all fairness I think you'll find DaWei to be tolerant and pretty helpful to newbies so long as they've put forth some effort and don't act like script kiddie jackoffs. Those he has no patience for, and the rest of us have very little.

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moondog

I apologize for not having posted back. What I have found out for those who care (not DaWei the crusty one ) or not found out so far.

1. The company that originally put this game and thereby these files together was Israeli (I knew this already) and hasn't been in business since about 97 (maybe).

2. The programmers apparently created this file and had to have had some way to open it and manipulate it, but did not pass it along to anyone. They didn't even pass it along to the people they "left" the game to.

3. I have tried all the "known" mbm type viewers that have been recommended in a number of forums (as DaWei knows). These are all mainly based on the .mbm files used for Symbian stuff and Nokia.

4. The chances that anyone will be able to actually open this are slim and none.

5. I have also posted these questions in a number of Graphics forums, just in case and received some of the same recommendations as I've received in all the Programmer forums that I've posted in. (as DaWei the Crusty knows).


thanks for your indulgence (yeah even you DaWei)

dog

mattireland

Just had a final quick thought... is it really an mbm file or did they give it a false extension to try and through other devlopers off?

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moondog

Interesting thought. I DO know that the file is some type of compressed file as I can open it in Notepad and see the names of the files and such. But it's all gibberish to me .... I'm a graphics guy. That's one of the reasons I came here was to get the brains to see if they could figure it out.

Would you care to take a look at the file so that you can see what I'm talking about? Here's the LINK

This link takes you to a page that has screenshots as well as one of the files I'm trying to figure out. To download the file click on the link at the top of the page.

I have tried changing the format of the file to .zip .rar .jpg and .bmp with no luck. Not sure what other formats I should try. Any ideas?

dog

DaWei

That link at the top of the page leads to http://www.moondographics.com/chain/mag1.zip and gives a page not found error.

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moondog

DaWei, thanks .... "it's a good thing I tested that link out BEFORE I posted it" he said sarcastically.

It works now ... honest!

dog

DaWei

I didn't have any problem unzipping it with ALZip. Just drug it out of the folder, and there it was. A cursory inspection of the contained file suggests that it begins with a header containing the name of each .bmp file plus what is probably an offset into the file for that .bmp. I would suspect that the internal images contain an ordinary .bmp header, but I won't have time today to look further into that.

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mattireland

Yeh. I did the same. It worked for me. Also in future maybe try changing the ending to .jpg or .gif just in case?

Would love to hear how you get on... please reply!

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Matt Ireland
http://www.mattireland.org
matt@mattireland.co.uk

DaWei

The simplest inspection of the file with a hex editor reveals that it isn't a jpeg or a gif. It has its own magic number and a list of the included images.

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DaWei

There is no way that these files represent any kind of program that you can import into a 3D editor (3dsMax, Maya, et.al.) and modify.

They are image files. You can rip the same images independently from the page that you linked, if you right click on the thumbnails and view and save the original images at their original size.

If you are expecting to find editable files somewhere, you have not yet discovered (or, at least, published) the appropriate link.

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Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers