Monkey Island Special Edition - File Formats

[Rum Rogers]

Oops, sorry, I figured it out. It's due to the use of strings with different length.

[Farlander1991]

Well, in speech.info phrases can be any length as long as they're within their block (you can notice that all speech.info is divided in blocks of the same length), and as long as you don't delete the spaces (20s) and put value 00 inbetween the end of your phrase and the spaces themselves. No crashing.

[accolon]

Originally Posted by Jeroen_JRP

Ow, I'm sorry about that, forgot to check it. Didn't have any trouble myself becouse Windows Vista and 7 use far less spaces in their folders.
Thanks for the heads up!

Well, the easiest way would be to put quotation marks around the filename variables.

[Snugglecakes]

Not sure if anyone has noticed this.

I ripped the original music from the special edition and then from my original MI1 CD. There's a definite difference in quality, with the original CD music being the better. Only other difference is that the original CD music has silence before and after every track, the SE music has had this removed, making for slightly smaller length clips and you don't get that pause when you enter a new room.

[Jeroen_JRP]

Originally Posted by accolon

Well, the easiest way would be to put quotation marks around the filename variables.

Thank you! Should be working now:
http://hulauncher.jrpweb.nl/files/mi...Processing.cmd
or
http://hulauncher.jrpweb.nl/files/mi...Processing.zip

[Benjy]

Originally Posted by Benjy

Hi everyone,

Wow, it's been years since I had come here. Anyway, this might seem to be a dumb question, but what is the engine behind MI: SE? A newer SCUMM?

Mmm... no one knows?

[Espiox]

Originally Posted by Benjy

Mmm... no one knows?

I'm pretty sure Lucasarts have confirmed that it is SCUMM, but I would imagine it's a heavily-altered version.

[irishmile]

Not sure if this will work in game but......... ?

Im not even close to being done with all of the sprites...
I based it off the original box art.

What I need to know is since his hair is shorter here will it mess up the ingame sprite? Like will he have black splotches on top? I have no clue how to actually put it in the game.

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/6403/guybrush.png

[Guy.brush]

The SE uses DXT textures. They either have a built in interpolated alpha channel or in some cases seperate mask images seem to have been used. Height shouldn't be a problem as long as he is the same size or SHORTER than the SE version. If he is taller, you might get more overlapping problems with parts of rooms (door frames, etc).

Oh and you will eventually have to generate that new alpha channel for your version, so keep that in mind when altering images.

[irishmile]

I give up LOL

[Guy.brush]

WHat? don't give up, his hair looks very good.
Just remember that you need a version with him cut out. I dunno how the sprites work, maybe they just need to be on pure black or another color for the game to make that color transparent, but some of the game art I looked at definitely had alpha channels/masks.
You know what an alpha channel is? An integrated channel that serves as a mask to make parts of an image semi-/transparent.

[deadca7]

Don't give up at all!
It's very easy to do. I'm using photoshop. but it should be about the same for every paint program that support alpha

1. Go in to channels, CTRL click the alpha map
2. Go bak to layers. Press CTRL + J, now you should have Guybrush on a separate layer
3. Paint the new hair, or what ever you wanna do
4. Go back to channels, paint alpha map black
5. Go back to layers
6. CTRL click on the Guybrush layer
7. Go back to channels, and fill the selection with WHITE

All that is white is gonna show in game, gray is 50% transparent.
Done

EDIT:
I took my time to render your edit out, just to test it in-game. I'm uploading it as .png (with transparency) so you can use it if you didn't paint on transparency.


And it works like a charm in-game btw

[jott]

Please continue your work! It looks really promising.

Actually the DXT5 format used for all the sprites supports an alpha channel.

Your PNG picture above has a black background. In your graphics program, is it black there too? All those sprites should have a transparent background.
This means, you should be able to just use the regular alpha channel of your graphics program without any special treatment.

[jott]

...other than that, use my dds2dxt tool to convert the DDS that your graphics program (or any 3rd party tool) saves back to DXT. Just drag&drop the DDS file on it.

Then you can just replace it with the original dxt file and you should see it in-game.

[irishmile]

I have just been using the .png files someone posted here because I actually have no clue how to extract them and then put it back in.

[irishmile]

I have been using these..... I will work on them some more off and on.. but I may need someone to work the magic on them again and make what I do with them workable in game.

Originally Posted by Serge

Just for fun, by the way, here's most of Guybrush's costume:

http://www.jither.net/media/images/guybrush.png
http://www.jither.net/media/images/guybrush2.png
http://www.jither.net/media/images/guyho.png

[jott]

It's not that hard to extract the data files.
Just run extractpak in the Monkey Island SE directory (where the Monkey1.pak is).
This will extract all artwork and store it in the "DDS" format.

Now you just need a tool to load and save DDS files.

There seems to be a Photoshop DDS Plugin by Nvidia so you might want to check it out if you use Photoshop.

That's actually all about it. If you finished your work just convert it back to the original dxt format with dds2dxt.

[irishmile]

Here are the other two...

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/1016/guybrush2.png

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3938/guyho.png

[Guy.brush]

love it.

[jott]

Indeed. Much better than the "original" one.

The facial expression is still weird though........

I wonder how much better the remake would have been perceived from many fans, when Guybrush looked decent.

[Snugglecakes]

Oh wow wow wow! This is so awesome, great stuff. I still don't know how LEC came up with that awful default character that doesn't look like anything from any of the other MI games.

[irishmile]

Originally Posted by jott

Indeed. Much better than the "original" one.

The facial expression is still weird though........

I wonder how much better the remake would have been perceived from many fans, when Guybrush looked decent.

I seriously thought about redeoing the face as well... but decided the hair was a big enough project as it is... Seeing as how I have not even really dented the amount of sprites still left to do I am glad I didnt do the face as well..... I mean anytime he interacts with something new he needs a new head..... WHY couldnt lucasarts just use a head replacement for all the animations? I suppose they didnt feel the need to make it easy for us to make their ugly sprite a little less ugly.

[Burarum]

Any updates on the Tales music?

[bgbennyboy]

Tales music is coming. I'm working on it now.

[ronzbig1]

Originally Posted by Krasas

From what I could gather, the header before each "group of cues" entry in the speech.info file has the following fields.

• 4 bytes that are some kind of CRC or otherwise uniquely indexing a spoken line (in english). This means that the cues: "Guybrush Threepwood.", "Guybrush THREEPWOOD", "Guybrush Threepwood!" will all have the same value for this field, even though they are spoken from different characters, and have differences in pronounciation. I really have trouble understanding the reason for this field, but I bet that this is what causes problems with fansubs.
• 2 bytes that index the room where the cue is spoken
• 2 bytes that are some kind of index for the "interaction" where the cue is spoken (e.g. same value if guybrush interacts with the same object, same value throughout one conversation)
• 2 bytes that somehow index the cue within the conversation or the room -I am not sure.
• 2 bytes that incementally index a "subcue" (if any) within a single cue. Subcues are seperated by the escape sequence \255\003 in the original text. (value 00 for the first subcue, 01 for the second etc.)
• 2 bytes: that have the value 01 if the line is spoken by Guybrush, and 00 else.
• 2 bytes: of unknown purpose. They almost always seem to be 00, but there are cases where they have other value.

Do you think you could write some editor, which gives chance to add new language/change other?

[koun]

I am currently working on a tool for easy translating of SoMI-SE (well, as "easy" as translating that many lines can be made).

It will basically consist of a table that includes the following columns:
-English line
-Translated line [english before you changed it] (editable)
-"is translated" checkbox [undo translation(replace with english again), mark translated(if you wanna keep the original, e.g. for "Grrrrrr")]
-actor
-scene
-maybe other info...

below will be some small tables showing:
-lines identical (or similar) to the one selected
-all subcues form the same cue as the selected one
-all lines from the same scene as the selected one

I plan for the following features:
-tables can be sorted by any column
-search/filter lines
-add same translation to identical lines with one click (or multiple clicks if you wanna select part of the lines only)

I'll open a new thread as soon as I got a preview version ready (I can currently parse the file and display the information in the table).

Any feedback from translators that can help me understand how to make the job easier would be very welcome. Just post in this thread for now.

[Guy.brush]

Nice work koun!
Maybe you could add a porn- ,nerd- or sweary-fyer or something like that? You know, some automatic translation, were certain nouns or verbs get exchanged with very naughty or silly words. Like those generators for webpages?
Might be interesting to play a MI mod where the dialogue is full with random stuff like that.
So imagine a checkbox for a swearing Guybrush where random curse words get inserted into his standard phrases.
"For f***k's sake man, I can't fr***n pick that f***n **** up!"

Or imagine a Christian Bale mod:

"For f**k's sake man, walk to the sun? Walk to the f***n sun? You're amateur man."

[EmperorJello]

Originally Posted by irishmile

Here are the other two...

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/1016/guybrush2.png

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3938/guyho.png

Splendid.

How do we use them in-game? Do we need to repack (and how?) or is there some sort of override directory functionality?

And could we do something about Elaine's hair as well?

[Guy.brush]

If Irishsmile completes his work (including replacing the alphachannel/mask for the Guybrush sprite, which shouldn't be too hard) then all you'd have to do is place the new texture file inside the appropriate directory.
The engine scans the base directory for art/.. and uses this with priority over the files packaged inside monkey1.pak.
So if you name the texture like the original and it is in "legit" DXT format it will just work.

[jp-30]

Originally Posted by Guy.brush

Nice work koun!
Maybe you could add a porn- ,nerd- or sweary-fyer or something like that? You know, some automatic translation, were certain nouns or verbs get exchanged with very naughty or silly words. Like those generators for webpages?
Might be interesting to play a MI mod where the dialogue is full with random stuff like that.
So imagine a checkbox for a swearing Guybrush where random curse words get inserted into his standard phrases.
"For f***k's sake man, I can't fr***n pick that f***n **** up!"

Or imagine a Christian Bale mod:

"For f**k's sake man, walk to the sun? Walk to the f***n sun? You're amateur man."

Uhh, let's not push our luck with LucasArts, eh? Do you really think LucasArts would be happy to see that mod?

Anyway... Is anyone working on adding alpha to Irishsmile's beautiful work and saving them as the individual replacement files that can be zipped up as a mod-pack (and unzipped into the required game directory)? If not I'm happy to give it go, but don't want to do it if someone's already working on it.

Oh, and can anyone extract the Guybrush closeups so Irishsmile may consider applying the new hairstyle to those graphics too? I can open them in photoshop, but they have weird striping in the backgrounds.

The bad news, Irishsmile, is that there are a lot more guybrush sprites - Cannon shot, pulley swing, Q-Tip, Meat swinging, Chest Carrying, Slipping over etc, but I dare say 95% of them are just cut and pastes of your existing hair designs. Plus several closeups, of course.

[jp-30]

(double post)

[Kev63]

Just to inform you that the iPhone version of the game has a Monkey1.pak which looks the same as the PC one (hopefully smaller in size as there aren't DXT files but only PNG). The Remonkeyed Explorer is fully compatible with this...

[bgbennyboy]

Aye, just looked at that myself. At first glance other file formats seem the same, apart from music+audio which is caf

[maff.brush]

Originally Posted by Krasas

From what I could gather, the header before each "group of cues" entry in the speech.info file has the following fields.

• 4 bytes that are some kind of CRC or otherwise uniquely indexing a spoken line (in english). This means that the cues: "Guybrush Threepwood.", "Guybrush THREEPWOOD", "Guybrush Threepwood!" will all have the same value for this field, even though they are spoken from different characters, and have differences in pronounciation. I really have trouble understanding the reason for this field, but I bet that this is what causes problems with fansubs.
  ...

hi everybody! any idea about those 4 bytes? I would like to translate the subs in the "old mode", but keeping the speech in the new one.

[jp-30]

If all the new sprites/backgrounds were replaced by 100% transparent dxt/dds files, would the game 'see through' to the original sprite / backgrounds and keep the new voicework and music?

[Krasas]

Originally Posted by maff.brush

hi everybody! any idea about those 4 bytes? I would like to translate the subs in the "old mode", but keeping the speech in the new one.

From quick observation, only 20 bits seem to be used in this field. I don't know the exact method they use to calculate the value for this field, but if I had to guess -and if the assumption that this is a checksum is correct, I'd say they probably first convert the line (subcue) to lower case chars, remove any non-alphanumeric chars (including '.', '?','!', quotation marks etc) maybe even remove white spaces and then produce the checksum. So unless we can figure out this checksum function, it won't be possible to proceed with fansubbing.

And keep in mind:the worst case scenario is that such a function could have been written to ignore any characters that don't belong to the english alphabet. Which is highly likely, 'cause when I translated some lines for the classic text, but kept names like "melee island", "guybrush threepwood" intact, the game actually used speech for these lines (speaking only these names). Which means it ignored everything else in the line and just did a lookup based on the checksum of the english words it found

So, currently, the only way to change the text and keep the speech is the following: Keep the english text in the classic version and modify one of the available translations (excluding the english one, so e.g. change the french one) in the speech.info file. Then by selecting that translation (here the french one) you'll still have the classic version in english, but the new one will be in your language -font problems aside.

I am also interested in writing tool to support a new translation (or porting a translation for the classic version to the new one). However, in my case this would also mean messing with and patching the font files if possible, to extend the charset.

[maff.brush]

Originally Posted by Krasas

I'd say they probably first convert the line (subcue) to lower case chars, remove any non-alphanumeric chars (including '.', '?','!', quotation marks etc) maybe even remove white spaces and then produce the checksum.

I can confirm this (white spaces are removed too). I have no idea how to get the checksum function (...if it is possible...)

[TheJoe]

Originally Posted by Serge

Misunderstood you then, but in that case, nothing codewise keeps it from running the original game with the sound effects, and turning the art projection off.

This all seems to me that if you wanted speech in the classic view you wouldn't need to patch it (MISP style or otherwise) but simply prevent the speech from muting.

In regards to extracted music - if you have the original MI CD version to use with ScummVM, I think you'll be able to use them because they all seem to have the same filenames as the original CD audio.

[koun]

My translation tool has reached a usable state. So I'll make it available for public testing in a day or 2.

Are any free hosts preferred or discouraged in this forum?

[bgbennyboy]

Good stuff, any will do. You may be able to attach it to your post though (go to the advanced post view).