I can't figure out how to read this file format (SEQUENCE / SEQ16 / frm16 / Frame)

[rufaswan]

Do you have any suggestions on the next step to take? Will I have to do some hex/programming magic to combine the channels and figure out the palette?

I guess next thing you need to do is to figure out how the data transformed into in-game screenshot. Does it uses palettes and has palette-swap varieties? Is there any similar data but smaller and easier to play around/testing with?

It's a lot of try and error.

Also I feel like the sequence files must still have image data in them somewhere, as the file sizes are pretty big (blue on black is over 500k), but perhaps they were compressed differently.

You are right. I check again and see there are actually multiple zlib data in there. I just decoded the first one. Blue on Black has a very big background image (opening/ending?), but no sprites.

And are there any easy ways to do zlib deflate on windows? I tried a bunch of different ways but either got stuck or got garbage data

I used PHP to zlib decode them. The source code are included inside the zip file. They are for command-line:

Code:

php.exe  dec_sequence.php  Extra Life Icon.Sequence
php.exe  dec_frame.php  Extra Life Icon.Frame

You can download PHP here:
https://windows.php.net/downloads/releas...14-x86.zip (32-bit windows)
https://windows.php.net/downloads/releas...14-x64.zip (64-bit windows)

Good luck,
- Rufas