Category Archives: Game Hacking

GameCube Multimedia Review

Poking around on a number of Nintendo GameCube games, I have found a pretty consistent mix of FMV formats. In due time, these will need to be entered into the MultimediaWiki:

  • THP files seem to be the most prevalent
  • H4M files have the markings of a hierarchical vector quantizer (like the letters ‘HVQ’); HVQ is also used in Sorenson Video 1 and LucasArts video
  • Electronic Arts games have a VID format which has similar markings as a number of their other evolved game multimedia formats
  • One game has 11,500+ Ogg Vorbis files; some of them appear to correspond via base filename to files with the extension .cib; I tend to think that these are corresponding video files
  • Sofdec files, as commonly seen on Sega Dreamcast games
  • DSP files, often paired as L and R files for stereo effect
  • occasional BIK files

Plus, there are a number of other audio files, probably encoded with a custom ADPCM format common on GameCube games.

Branching Out

Cyril Zorin wanted a good place to document a 3D model format used in a LucasArts computer game. I thought this might be a good time to expand the charter of the MultimediaWiki to include more general game formats, not just the FMV-oriented ones. That is, unless there are other wikis devoted to that same charter. Perhaps I’m not asking the right questions, but a quick Google for “game format wiki” brings up this domain and the XentaxWiki in the first page.


joystick

BTW, Cyril wants to know if anyone has anything to add to the inaugural 3D format page in the MultimediaWiki.

GameCube CVS

When I started mounting GameCube disc images with my gcfuse utility, perhaps the strangest thing I found (apart from 11,500+ Ogg Vorbis files on one title) was intact CVS directory structures on a number of discs. Of course, CVS directories don’t give away much interesting detail; it’s not like there’s leaked source code living inside. Perhaps the most interesting thing is comparing the CVSROOT strings to information found in the MobyGames database. So, Yasunari Soejima, Hiroki Sotoike, and Fumihisa Sato: I just wanted to helpfully point out that you neglected to delete the CVS directories before creating the final disc images for certain GameCube games.


Magnifying glass