An issue with transparency

[DarkGrievous7145]

So, I managed to extract one of the asset files for Sta Wars The Clone Wars: Path of the Jedi

Just one MAJOR issue...
The game is a shockwave game, which presents some complications.
My first assumptions were embedded flash movies or...3d models
The first I probably could've gotten at.
The second?
probably not...
It turned out to be, well...



I had my friend pop-open the extracted .cst file for Genreal Grievous.
He says there are 600 jpeg-ized bitmap cast members

So even the fact that i'd have to, when my new pc (and the new router) is set-up, manually export 600+ .bmps wouldn't stop me...
My trick to dealing with LOADS of content is do it in sections/batches, perhaps separated in time intervals of days, weeks, months, etc...

However, there's a worse problem...
see:
   

Note the black background?
If zoomed-in somewhat grossly, besides the jpeg artifacting becomes clearly visible, you'll note this also effects what is supposed to be the transparent regions for this sprite...

So, is there ANY way to restore this?
(Ideally without manually re-spriting THOUSANDS of images...and if just grievous' file has 600+ ...imagine the entire game, which has ...a LOT of files!)

The jpeg-ization doesn't bug me...
but the black background simply won't do.
That said, if there's some kind of alpha approximation algorithm/tool that can be run on these, it'd be nice to have it.

Before anyone asks me for the full .cst file, while I could provide it...
A: it is 17 megs (as opposed to the 'original' .cct which is 3 megs)
B: You must acquire Adobe Director to open it... so that's either a ton of money or one must be willing to pirate it
C: Unlike .swf, the Shockwave format to this date remains top-secret, which is a big part of why its code security is considered to be higher than flash. That said, anything to be done on this file either must somehow be done in Director, or the format must be scuessfully reverse-engineered. My friend and I started a little attempt at this, and needless to say, we haven't gotten very far at all. Fact is, DirOpener, which is used on .dcr and .dxr files, only really works because of an exploit. IDK about Recover cct, which is what I used on grievous, here...

That should be everything.
REALLY hope someone can help, even though I don't presently have the capabilities to start ripping this game, given my computer/internet situation... I do at one point hope to do it. But, not much I can do if the graphics are in a proprietary format that simply can't be exported the same way it must have gone in. (the bitmaps apparently have "use alpha" checked, so they do have some form of transparency data, but director, like all adobe utilities, is designed to lock developers (and hackers) out of recovering data from project and compiled files via proprietary formats that either export in a lossful format, or don't export at all.)

[Skyla Doragono]

Just taking a wild stab in the dark from what I've seen of other special effect graphics, but the background may be that way because of the lightsabers. You notice how in some fighting games, the character's effects have some black mixed in when you rip the graphic, but that black isn't there when you play? It's because there's a separate script processing it out, while allowing the fade effect around certain parts of the object to still be visible, kind of like what you can do with layers in Photoshop. I think that may be the case here; the lightsabers have a fading off glow effect around them, so that's why they just used black for the entire background, and something else is processing that black out.

However... because of the JPG distortion, if you can't find the actual script that's handling that, you may actually have to restore all of that manually. I just tried fiddling with the layers in Photoshop, and I can't seem to get it quite right without the rest of the sprite (which has some pretty dark parts to it) being affected as well.

[DarkGrievous7145]

Just taking a wild stab in the dark from what I've seen of other special effect graphics, but the background may be that way because of the lightsabers. You notice how in some fighting games, the character's effects have some black mixed in when you rip the graphic, but that black isn't there when you play? It's because there's a separate script processing it out, while allowing the fade effect around certain parts of the object to still be visible, kind of like what you can do with layers in Photoshop. I think that may be the case here; the lightsabers have a fading off glow effect around them, so that's why they just used black for the entire background, and something else is processing that black out.

However... because of the JPG distortion, if you can't find the actual script that's handling that, you may actually have to restore all of that manually. I just tried fiddling with the layers in Photoshop, and I can't seem to get it quite right without the rest of the sprite (which has some pretty dark parts to it) being affected as well.

This problem is probably more of a thing with Shockwave itself...
Shockwave is honestly, ANCIENT.
I wouldn't exactly say it was intended for HD, anti-alised graphics, with semi-transparent colored pixels.
Not sure how it even handles the alpha channel.

Up till now, every shockwave game I've messed with hasn't had anti-alias and complex semi-transparrent areas...

I would assume the .cst has alpha channel data for these graphics, unless shockwave is actually powerful enough to correctly apply transparency to a fully opaque image like this...

Regardless of how this actually works, though, i haven't access to any of the code or format specs to do anything.

I have one last idea, and it's having a program made that loads and batch-dumps cast members from these files within shockwave itself. But I really don't know if this would make a difference... It would easily extract all the assets, but I have my doubts about it fixing transparency.

Thanks for the advice!
But the second I'm forced to use that option will be the death of this project, or I will outsource nearly all of the work...

[Hiccup]

Hmm. I wonder if it would be possible to dump the graphics from the memory. That way they would have already been modified by the software? (Of course, this may not be possible with shockwave)

[Skyla Doragono]

Erm... well, it may be possible using a professional version of Adobe Flash? idk, I've never tried to use it personally (it's the one part of my copy of the master collection I don't use).

[DarkGrievous7145]

Hmm. I wonder if it would be possible to dump the graphics from the memory. That way they would have already been modified by the software? (Of course, this may not be possible with shockwave)

in theory, yes...except i simply have NO idea what i'm dealing with...
It'd be more feasible to reverse-engineer the stupid file format.
And that in itself is a massive undertaking!

---

Erm... well, it may be possible using a professional version of Adobe Flash? idk, I've never tried to use it personally (it's the one part of my copy of the master collection I don't use).

shockwave preceded flash.
And flash is pretty laggy and unstable (yet flash player isn't... /: ), so running director AND Flash would be suicide
I did some digging and I might be able to use Fireworks...

[Skyla Doragono]

I know that, but I just checked my CS3 Flash, and it looks like it could open some Shockwave files. Not sure about the game because I don't know the file extension, but it was just an idea.

[DarkGrievous7145]

I know that, but I just checked my CS3 Flash, and it looks like it could open some Shockwave files. Not sure about the game because I don't know the file extension, but it was just an idea.

not sure i've ever heard of flash opening shockwave files...period...
but...

http://crystalien-redux.com/unrelated/ET...ievous.cst
http://crystalien-redux.com/unrelated/ET...ievous.cct

The cst will open in Adobe Director 11.5
It probably would open in older versions, also, but I do not know how far back it would work.
All I know is my friend says it's an older version than 11.5.

The cct, well...good luck.
That's the file that the game loads, it's compiled and compressed...
Probably won't find much use for it.

[Skyla Doragono]

Well that's annoying.

My programs will recognize the .cst, but when I try to open the file, it says unexpected file format.

And the only information I found about .cst files was from eleven years ago, talking about compressing .jpg files into a .cst, but didn't say how it was done.

[DarkGrievous7145]

Well that's annoying.

My programs will recognize the .cst, but when I try to open the file, it says unexpected file format.

And the only information I found about .cst files was from eleven years ago, talking about compressing .jpg files into a .cst, but didn't say how it was done.

Adobe Director will open the cst
the problem is getting the graphics from them...

and hmm...
a lot of the information about this stuff is outdated...
cst aren't compressed, though, was that information actually related to shockwave?

[Skyla Doragono]

Yeah. Something about how the person had a lot of .jpg files and they were trying to compress them all into .cst, but ended up with something bigger. I tried looking into it, but they didn't say how they did it.

I can't help but wonder if there's a way to get Macromedia or something along those lines running in an isolated Win98 environment and trying that way. That may be a little extreme though.

[DarkGrievous7145]

hmm...
if these were jpeg's, i could easily extract them though...
problem with 'normal' bitmaps is that shockwave/director doesn't seem to internally store them in bmp format, from what i can tell...

the specific answer i found btw suggests loading the files in adobe director, and setting the external bitmap editor to adobe fireworks, which apparently DOES intercept the alpha channel, and then one by one launching the external editor. (and ofc, since extraction is the goal, saving them) i can't really test this, however...


idk if this game could run on 98...
There's a way to do almost anything, you just need the right tools/people to make it happen.
personally, i want the file format specs to somehow get leaked or reverse-engineered so decompilers can exist...
So far, my attempts at this haven't been too fruitful. All my friend and I can figure-out is names of "Casts" and "Cast members" seem to have a byte preceding them that indicates length so, for example "cat" would be 03 <whatever the hex values are for " cat "> I think I've also found parts of some kind of data or variable names table, but ugh... i just can't find ANYTHING that indicates how this stupid format is supposed to work. (ofc, I kinda don't know what i am doing, either, but...anything i would know to look for based on other formats isn't being found, and every time I think I might have a hit, I find something suggesting I'm totally wrong. )

[Skyla Doragono]

the specific answer i found btw suggests loading the files in adobe director, and setting the external bitmap editor to adobe fireworks, which apparently DOES intercept the alpha channel, and then one by one launching the external editor. (and ofc, since extraction is the goal, saving them) i can't really test this, however...

You don't have Fireworks? I do, but I don't have Director (for some stupid reason it wasn't part of CS3s Master Suite).

I could probably help you get a copy of Fireworks, but I wouldn't be able to until the weekend.

[DarkGrievous7145]

the specific answer i found btw suggests loading the files in adobe director, and setting the external bitmap editor to adobe fireworks, which apparently DOES intercept the alpha channel, and then one by one launching the external editor. (and ofc, since extraction is the goal, saving them) i can't really test this, however...

You don't have Fireworks? I do, but I don't have Director (for some stupid reason it wasn't part of CS3s Master Suite).

I could probably help you get a copy of Fireworks, but I wouldn't be able to until the weekend.

well...my mom's computer that i'm currently on, has neither...
my desktop has director, but it keeps overheating...

so, that wouldn't be of much to me use right now...

[Skyla Doragono]

Ough. If you want help with your laptop, feel free to send me a PM with the info on it. I can at least point you in the right direction.

Otherwise, lemme know when you want to try using Fireworks.