Game Formats Division
January 3rd, 2006 by 
Multimedia Mike
Recently, I have been getting reports left and right from people who have successfully reverse engineered old game-oriented multimedia formats. Sometimes the reports overlap, i.e., 2 people have independently RE’d the same format. I thought I would update my list of upcoming game-related formats (here’s the last entry I wrote on the matter):
- TGV, used in various Origin games, most notably in Privateer 2: The Darkening. I have 2 contacts who have independently RE’d this format.
- EA WVE/UV2 files, which are principly Motion JPEG files
- Multimedia from American Laser Games titles, notably Mad Dog McCree. Again, I have 2 contacts who have independently RE’d this format. This might be the IBM PhotoMotion video codec as the manual for Mad Dog McCree credits that format.
- BRP, used in a few Argonaut games such as Alien Odyssey. After VAG figured out Argonaut’s AVS format it was postulated that their later BRP format is also a vector quantizer. It certainly looks that way based on cursory investigations.
Further, it is worth investigating how this format relates to the TGQ format found on Warcraft II: The Dark Saga for the Sega Saturn.
Posted in Multimedia Goals And TODO | 
6 Comments »
January 4th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Just a little addition to the BRP format.
It supports different coding algorithms based on the fourcc of the data chunk. One type is the mentioned vector quantizer, the other mode is a simple RLE scheme and the third one a mixture of RLE and motion vectors. All three have two modes each, one for inter- and one for intraframes.
January 4th, 2006 at 8:31 am
I look forward to viewing and documenting the full details when you have completed the RE process.
January 5th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Hi, I’m curious about those TGV files since they’re used also by Space Hulk 2. I’m
desperately looking for a player for those old babies.
January 5th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Hey, cough up the IBM PhotoMotion codec!! I’ve been wondering about this one since 1992!
January 5th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
Chris: If I could supply a write-up, do you have the skill to create the open source implementations? I’ve been doing much more documentation than coding recently.
January 6th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Sorry, no such skills here.