Game File Explorer, Version 1.32
----------------------------------
GFE is a game resource file viewer and ripper. Supported formats are
(this is not a complete list):
- Aliens vs Predator Fastfile (FFL)
- Blood II REZ and DTX textures
- Conflict: Freespace 1 & 2 VP files
- Cultures LIB files (demo)
- Dark Forces LFD and GOB
- Delta Force Land Warrior Demo PFF
- Descent I , II & III HOG
- Doom, Doom II, Heretic, Hexen, Strife WAD
- Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage,
Witchaven GRP and ART
- Half-Life and Gunman texture WAD3, MDL, SPR
- Heavy Metal: FAKK2 FTX textures and PK3s
- Heretic II and Soldier of Fortune M8 and M32 texture files
- Hexen 2 BSP, Lump, MDL, Pack, SPR and WAD2
- Jedi Knight GOB, MAT, BM, CMP
- Kyrandia I & II & III PAK, CPS, COL
- Mysteries of the Sith GOO, MAT, BM, CMP
- Nascar Heat TRK, RES and TEX textures
- Nocturne and Blair Witch 1 & 2 POD2 and RAW images
- Outlaws LAB
- Quake BSP, Lump, MDL, Pack, SPR and WAD2
- Quake II PAK, Wall, PCX and TGA
- Quake III Arena PK3
- Rainbow Six, Black Thorn, Ghost Recon RSB files
- Red Faction VPP
- Rise of the Triad WAD
- Serious Sam test demo 1 & 2 GRO and TEX
- Sin Pack and SWL textures
- Star Trek: Elite Force PK3
- SWAT3 RES
- Terminal Velocity POD and RAW images
- Terminator: Future Shock/ Skynet BSA and textures
- Thief, Thief 2 and System Shock 2 CRF
- Vampire: The Masquerade NOB
Main features:
- a listing of all entries in game container/resource/asset
files or in a directory
- viewing and converting selected images to bitmaps (.bmp)
- extracting other entry types to separate files
- ripping wave (.wav) and bitmap (.bmp) files inside any file
- playing sound files (waves and Doom sounds)
System requirements
-------------------
Windows 95, more than 256 colors.
The Menu not very well explained
--------------------------------
FILE
OPEN - Opens a file. (Ctrl-O)
BITMAP/WAVE RIPPER - Searches for wave files (Ctrl-R)
BROWSE DIRECTORY - Directory browsing (Ctrl-B)
INFORMATION - Shows the information box. (Ctrl-I)
CLOSE - Closes a file. (Ctrl-W)
EXIT - Closes the program.
IMAGE
COPY - Copies selected image to clipboard. (Ctrl-C)
SAVE - Saves selected image to a BMP. (Ctrl-M)
SAVE AS - Saves selected image to a BMP, but asks the
filename first. (Ctrl-A)
SAVE ALL - Saves all images (only Duke3D ART, Quake BSP and
Quake WAD2 files). Make sure you have enough disk
space before selecting this.
SAVE TO FOLDER - saves all selected images to the same folder.
SOUND
PLAY - Plays selected wave file. (Ctrl-P or double-click)
STOP - Stops playing the wave file. (Ctrl-S)
SAVE - Extracts selected Doom sound to a .wav file. (Ctrl-G)
SAVE AS - Extracts selected Doom sound to a .wav file, but
asks the filename first. (Ctrl-H)
ENTRY
FIND - find an entry... (CTRL-F)
SEARCH AGAIN - search again... (F3)
SAVE - Extracts selected entry to a file. (Ctrl-E)
SAVE AS - Extracts selected entry to a file, but asks the
filename first. (Ctrl-T)
SAVE ALL - Extracts all entries. Make sure you have enough
disk space before selecting this.
SAVE TO FOLDER - saves all selected entries to the same folder.
PALETTE
VIEW - Shows the palette.
SAVE AS - Saves the palette.
OTHER - Changes the current palette.
HELP
CREDITS - Credit box.
ABOUT - Shows the About Box.
Known problems
--------------
Sometimes unstable and may crash, I haven't been able to fix this yet.
If the images look funny (colors are wrong), you need to load the
appropriate palette.
Please report other problems to aahlstro@ravencommunity.net
Legal stuff
-----------
The author is in no way responsible for any damage that occurs to
your software or hardware as a result of using the software.
Use at your own risk.
GFE is freeware. You can distribute GFE freely as long as you don't
charge anybody any money for it and include this file unmodified.
Credits and thanks
------------------
Thanks go to everyone who have reported bugs, suggested new formats
or sent comments about GFE!
Thanks to Vladan Bato for releasing the Command & Conquer specs!
Special thanks to Don Hannema for hacking the Sin and Outcast
Package formats and giving me lots of help with C&C mix files!
Thanks to Compuart for coding the Kyrandia CPS and COL plug-ins!
I would also like give thanks to LaMeR for his help with testing
GFE, giving valuable improvement ideas and sending me information
about useful game file format sources!
See http://www.dirtylittlemonkeys.org/lamerlabs/index.html.
For reading JPEG files GFE uses Independent JPEG Group's JPEG
library. See http://www.ijg.org/.
For uncompressing ZIP files GFE uses the zlib compression library,
Copyright (C) 1995-1998 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
See http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/zlib/ for more info.
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables (UPX) was used to make gfe.exe
a bit smaller (OK, a lot smaller!), Copyright (c) 1996-2001 Markus
Oberhumer & Laszlo Molnar. See http://upx.tsx.org/.
Thanks to Matt Saettler and Mathieu Olivier for explaining the Blood
RFF format and showing how the RFF file directory structure should be
decrypted.
See http://www.planetblood.com/bloodsource/rff_fileformat.shtml and
http://www.planetblood.com/bloodsource/rebuild.shtml.
History
-------
version 0.9
- first release
version 0.91
- fixed some PCX and TGA bugs (a problem with padding)
- sorted out one very annoying memory problem
- fixed many other minor problems
- added "Save" option
version 0.92
- added full Jedi Knight MAT support
- added text viewing
- added wave playing
- added support for 256-color JASC palettes
(version "0100", Paint Shop Pro 3.0)
- added bitmap scrolling
version 0.93
- added multiple selection of entries
- removed repetitive overwrite prompts and added "Yes to All"
and "No to All" options
- lots of minor improvements
version 0.94
- added Doom sound playing and conversion to .wav
- added toolbar and changed the look of the program
- GFE can be now run on pre-OSR2 win9x platforms...
version 0.95
- added Descent 3 demo HOG support
- added "info" -dialog
- added 32-bit .tga image viewing (Kingpin Pack files)
- added palette viewing
- fixed a problem with JASC palettes (hopefully)
- a few minor improvements
version 0.96
- added Heretic II .M8 and .m32 texture support
- added Daikatana Wall texture support
- added internal palettes and palette saving
- fixed the tooltips bug
version 0.97
- added the "Wave Ripper" -option. It searches through any file
you select, but doesn't work right if the files are compressed.
- Soldier of Fortune .m32 textures can now be viewed inside pack
files
version 0.98
- added support for Half-Life WAD3 texture files
- added support for Sin Pack files (with a little a bit of help
from Don Hannema. Thanks, Don!)
version 0.99
- added support for Rainbow Six RSB files
- added support for 16-bit Jedi Knight BM files
- Daikatana demo 2 packs can now be opened, but you can't view
the images because most of them seem to be compressed.
- Same thing with Outcast packs, you can see what's inside, but
nothing can be done...
The format of Outcast packs was hacked by Don Hannema.
- fixed a small problem with displaying bitmaps
- wave ripper is now much faster
version 0.995
- added directory browsing. Works with BMPs, TGAs, PCXs, M8s,
M32s, WALs, SWLs, RSBs, BMs, MATs, ...
- Motocross Madness 1 & 2 .dat files can be viewed, .tex files
can be opened too, but the images can't be viewed... Anyone
know how to read them?
- added support for Jedi Knight CMP palettes
- added decompression of compressed Daikatana entries
- added compressed TGA viewing
- added bitmap ripper, searches for .bmp files (more formats
will be added later...) It works fine with Force commander
.rpks (Ronin PakFiles)
version 0.996
- added support for Half-life sprites (SPR) and models (MDL)
- added support for Heavy Metal: FAKK2 .ftx textures (demo)
(but they need to be extracted from the zip file first)
- added support for Delta Force Land Warrior Demo PFF
- directory listings are sorted alphabetically
- models and sprites inside Quake and Half-Life packs are previewed
by showing the first frame picture (you still need the extract the
model or sprite to see all the frames)
- a few minor improvements
version 0.997
- added full support for ROTT (finally)
- added entry searching
- fixed a few bugs (M8s in packs, double-saved Doom pics)
version 0.9971
- added support for Cultures LIB files
- fixed a M8 saving bug
version 1.0
- added window resizing and maximizing (some of the long entry names
didn't fit in the listbox with some packages)
- added support for Heavy Metal: FAKK2 and American McGee's Alice PK3
files. GFE opens other ZIP files too, but currently only FTXs and TGAs
can be previewed before extraction. These are the games I tested:
- Vampire: The Masquerade NOBS (and TGAs inside them), previewing
and saving bitmaps works
- Quake III Arena & Star Trek: Elite Forces PK3s, many of the
textures are in jpeg format, so they can't be previewed, no
problems with TGAs
- Team Arena PK3s, TGA previewing works
- SWAT 3 Close Quarters Battle & SWAT3 Elite Edition RES files, BMP
previewing doesn't work yet, sorry
- System Shock 2 and Thief CRF files, PCXs can't be previewed yet
- fixed a bug with FTX textures (RGB -> BGR)
- opening PAKs is faster
version 1.1
- added support for SWAT3 RES files (zip->bmp viewing)
- fixed a weird image corruption problem that occured when many PCX files
were saved at the same time
- added support for Star Trek: Elite Force and Quake III Arena PK3s
(zip->jpeg viewing)
- added support for Serious Sam test demo 1 & 2 GRO files and textures
(zip->tex viewing)
version 1.2
- added support for grayscale jpeg images
- added full Daikatana Pack and Wall support (compressed entries can be
viewed before extracting)
- added support for Nocturne and Blair Witch 1 & 2 POD2 and RAW images.
(To view the RAW images correctly you need to select xxx.act before
selecting xxx.raw. For the same reason saving more than one image at
a time won't work.)
- added support for Terminator: Skynet and Future Shock textures (texture.*)
(most of the images are displayed OK, but there are some special cases
that I don't know how to handle yet...)
- fixed a few bugs...
version 1.22
- added zip->pcx viewing (useful with Thief and System shock 2 CRF files)
- added support for Warlords Battlecry XCR files
- added support for C&C MIX files, but the support is still a bit
unfinished. No problems with CPS files, but proper WSA and SHP file
support is missing. Many thanks to Don Hannema for helping me out with
the C&C file formats!
- fixed a terminator texture problem: animated textures are displayed
now correctly (but still some problems with some of the sprites...).
Those BSA files can now be opened too.
- added support for the old Westwood PAK format. It means support for
these old games: Dune 2, Eye of the Beholder, Kyrandia 1 & 2 & 3 and
Lands of Lore
- added "save everything to this folder" -option for images and entries
Version 1.3
- added Blood RFF support (both shareware and retail)
- added Blood II REZ resource file and DTX texture support
(should work with other LithTech engine games too)
- added Terminator: Future Shock/Skynet IMG support
- added C&C AUD support (using the new plug-in system)
- added some optional registry stuff (see File->Preferences...)
version 1.31
- added support for Rage of Mages RES
- fixed a Terminator Rampage image offset bug and added the palette
to the menu (it's needed to view the images correctly)
- fixed some Blood RFF problems (and probably added some new ones)
version 1.32
- added Red Faction VPP support
- added Ghost Recon and Black Thorn RSB image support
- added support for Kyrandia I & II & III CPS images and COL palettes
thanks to amazing plug-ins coded by Compuart
- added support for Nascar Heat TRK, RES and TEX textures
To do
------
So many things to do... It's a shame I haven't been able to update GFE so
often anymore.
- adding new formats (next: VOC, 24-bit PCX and ripper improvements)
- multiple image support
- tree view of entries
- hex view of unknown entry types
- lots of code cleaning
- a plug-in system (for compressed stuff)
If you have suggestions, comments or bug reports, please send them
to aahlstro@ravencommunity.net
Updates and news about GFE can be found at:
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/8271
http://www.ravengames.com/hosted/gfe