The VG Resource

Is there any way of opening the .shp files?

Again try looking up Tyrian based modding tools, there might be some.

I found these:

http://www.camanis.net/opentyrian/tools/

I'm trying to figure out which does what, there doesn't seem to be any tutorials around.

Drag & Drop *.DATs into tyrshape.exe.

Drag & Drop *.SHPs into tyrshape.exe.

Not sure if the others are useful, however don't try tyrunpak, one file became over 10,000 empty files.

Ah, I got it, each executable opens the files with the corresponding names. There's quite more stuff than what's on the open source files.