Earthworm Jim .EW Files

[Infomaniac]

I am perfectly aware this game already has a sprite rip, but the sprites in question are for the Windows 95 256 Color Special Edition. It features better looking sprites than what was present in other versions, and I feel it should be ripped. I had actually been trying to rip the sprites from this game for a long while, but no such luck. While the sounds were in wav, and have been uploaded, the sprites seem to be in some unknown format. So if anyone can help me out here with ripping these sprites, that would be fantastic. For those who decide to take a look, here are the files in question: Link to all of the .ew files

[Dolphman]

Wish I knew what can open this format.
But this version definitely needs to be ripped as it's the superior port out of all of them. (Why isn't it available on Steam or GOG?  )
Not only that, the W95 version has a super secret idle animation that hasn't been documented anywhere. Not even at TCRF.

[Infomaniac]

Okay, what, and how did you find that!? What even triggers that? Actually, that sound clip i found in the files of water dripping on the ground makes too much sense. You can find it in the sound effects I ripped from the game. Just check sounds resource and pc, and earthworm jim Also, this is off topic, but there is a reason why this version has not been re released. The game was designed with the windows 9x kernel in mind and nothing else. When played on newer computers, there is a bad jutter problem, sounds will cut out randomly, music wont loop when it it supposed to, fade effects from screen to screen do not work as the game needs to be played in 256 color mode for it to work, and when you complete andy asteroids, the music is supposed to fade out, and play the appropriate for whether you win or lose.

[Filler]

You could probably run the Windows 95 version on a VM.

I might try to find a way to brute force this, but sprite files like these are always a pain to get working.

EDIT: Some things I've noticed.

INIT.EW Does have file name references when opened as raw text such as "puppytruncm" A quick search for BMP in the raw text shows it's used a couple times.

My assumption is that it's a packed archive of BMP files. Dunno if that's accurate, or not.

[puggsoy]

Looking at it those don't seem to be filenames, and the occurrences of "BMP" aren't extensions or headers.

There are .wav files. I've also found the value 0x34125634 ("4.V4" in ANSI) which seems to be repeating at intervals and which I suspect might be an identifier for some image format. I'll check it out, but I don't think any file names are present.

[Filler]

Shows how much I know of sprite ripping.

It was probably just a coincidence, then.

[Infomaniac]

Yeah, the wav file's were easy to rip, as hyper ripper just found them and dumped them into a folder, which you can grab here. https://www.sounds-resource.com/pc_compu...thwormjim/ Oddly enough they sound better in game, then they do out of the game. I sorta am debating about uploading the whole game folder, as you can't play without the disk, as it will say you need the audio tracks. If that is okay with you guys, then let me know.

[puggsoy]

Maybe not the entire game, but just all the files that seem like they might have graphics? Like you can probably exclude the executable and anything else you're confident doesn't contain sprites.

[Infomaniac]

I want to apologize first of all for reviving this old post, and for not posting these files sooner.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pnls_9...UwutmRvUCp

[oblivioncth]

Sorry to dig an old thread, but I wanted to register to add that by coincidence I've been working on reverse engineering the data storage for the Windows 95 port of Pitfall the Mayan adventure so that I can (potentially) remake the game in C++ as to be more compatible with modern hardware/OSes. I haven't quite figured out the entire format yet as a few files seem to encoded completely differently than the rest, but I've been able to successfully dump about 90% of the sprites from that game with accurate pixel positioning and color.

The Windows 95 port of Earthworm Jim: Special Edition uses the same general asset storage structure, INIT.EW instead of INIT.PH (Pitfall Harry) and the latter uses the same "4.V4" signature for each set of sprites that puggsoy mentioned, so I imagine that the sprites for Earthworm Jim are stored in the exact same, or nearly the exact same way they are in Pitfall TMA since they were both ported by the same company.

Once I've finished figuring out the rest of the sprite format with Pitfall in theory I should be able to easily dump the sprites from Earthworm Jim 95 with little modification to my MATLAB scripts. They would all be unnamed since I've never played that game before and aren't sure what each sprite is, but it would include everything (or close to everything). The only thing I haven't touched at all with Pitfall yet is the levels, which could have their backgrounds stored in a completely different format. There are "4.V4" texture sets in the level files as well that I imagine store the sprites for the enemies and interactive environment pieces that are unique to each level, but I have no clue if the level artwork itself is stored the same way, so I can't promise anything in regards to that yet.

Anyway, I can give dumping the EWJ 95 sprites a roll once I'm done or close to done with the Pitfall ones if anyone is interested.