Can someone make a BLB file extractor?

[puggsoy]

I recently started playing a game called The Neverhood, and I figured I might like to try and rip sprites from it sometime. Thing is, all of its resources are in BLB files, and although I found one or two tools that managed to actually do something with the files, the most they could really do was get sound files.

Usually I wouldn't ask for someone to make this since a big chunk would be finding out how the format's put together, but I found some documentation on the file type. From my knowledge this information is enough to be able to extract/decompress files, although I don't know a language that can do so.

So yeah, would someone be willing to do this? I'd only need it to decompress the image files, although if audio and other files wouldn't be too much work then that would obviously be a bonus.
In any case I'd be extremely grateful if someone could do this, just a command-line program would be more than enough.

[Roxas358]

Maybe this will help you. The guy in the third post explains how to use GAP to get the graphics, it seems.

[puggsoy]

Already tried that, doesn't seem to work, I just get raw files that I don't know what to do with. He says that after you save them "the rest should be pretty obvious to follow", but I have no idea what he's talking about so there may be something I'm missing.

Thanks anyway though, appreciate it.

[Garamonde]

how long ago was that post? maybe you can get an account and PM him asking what he means?

[puggsoy]

Well it's from May 2010, so that's almost 3 years from now, and his latest post was in November 2012. I try to refrain from registering on forums (or anything) if it's not necessary, so if nobody does this request soon I'll do it. It'd be overall more handy if this tool can be made anyway.

Thanks for the suggestion though, hadn't thought of that.

[Garamonde]

I forgot this earlier but, you may also be able to e-mail him instead if he has it listed, if you don't feel like waiting for him to reply on the site, which doen't seem likely anyway.

[puggsoy]

You can't even view the profile at all without an account But yeah emailing will probably give a quicker result.

I might register even if I don't need to for this though, so that I can ask stuff like this myself. XeNTaX has always been a good place to find when trying to crack game formats and comes up often in searches.

[John2k4]

Only thing about Xentax that bothers me is that they require you to pay to become a member on the forums.

Maybe a Noesis plugin could do what you are looking for..(and I think those are easier to make because Python)

[puggsoy]

Oh well that sucks, didn't even know that. Guess registering is out of the question then.

I'll check out Noesis and making plugins. I don't really know Python but it might not take long to learn, at least for Noesis plugins.

[Garamonde]

really...? I registered for free and they said nothing about that...

[puggsoy]

Might be new then. It's kinda strange though, I don't see why they can't just have ads like TSR.

Anyway, I asked on Stack Overflow and apparently it is possible to do this stuff with AS3, you just need to know how. I mean I figured it might be possible since I know you can manipulate bytes, but I wasn't sure if this information was enough and thought it might only be usable in C++ or the like.

So yeah, someone gave an example on how to use the information in AS3, so hopefully I can do it myself. I'd like to keep the request open though, until I actually know for sure that I can decompress this.

[John2k4]

I've heard that for decompression (and if it is a known format), QuickBMS scripts work nicely. I'm not too sure what language they are in, but I do have a couple of "test" scripts that I can locate (that will see if it is a semi-common compression method).


@MJ - I was kinda frustrated with them because I needed to download an attachment for something, and you needed an account to do so. Clicking on "Register" yields the message.

[Roxas358]

As you are aware GoogleAds cut us off claiming illegal activity at the forum (which is basically untrue, but there is no way to reach out to them for any discussion) we needed to find other ways of safeguarding the financial situation to ensure continuation of the forum.

This is why XeNTaX is no longer free to join and why they don't have ad's anymore.

[puggsoy]

I've heard that for decompression (and if it is a known format), QuickBMS scripts work nicely. I'm not too sure what language they are in, but I do have a couple of "test" scripts that I can locate (that will see if it is a semi-common compression method).

Pretty sure this compression method is only used in this game, maybe like 1 other but this is already a fairly unknown game, and the documentation on the format only mentions it being used in The Neverhood.

By the way, if you or anyone else wants a sample file for whatever, just say and I can upload it.

[Roxas358]

Sure, I'll look at one of the files.