Ariel assault Map porting?

I realize it can't be a ohne to one port job, but is there any way to rip the single player maps/assets from the ps2 game and port them over? Halflife had it's ps2 assets ported over to PC. The added stuff might be nice to have.

Look, I know t2 is pretty much around simply because of dedicated oldsters that might see the ps2 game as watered down, but I mean just to have it y'know?

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  • edited December 2014
    Update: Got an ISO ripped and... Now looking for tools to deal with the audio pkg files and the files.DAT file in the iso's /tribes directory.

    Unlikely. But I'm hoping the actual files are compatible with tribes 2.

    Data structure looks like this:

    /root
    /tribes
    files.dat
    /data
    /media
    effects.pkg
    music.pkg
    training.pkg
    voice.pkg


    Nothing I've found via google-fu will touch any of them and I want to extract to compare against the pc version of tribes 2. Doubt it but it would be sorta nice if the raw assets are compatible with. Tribes 2 is pretty dead, so this is more out of curiosity and the fact nobody has bothered. Plus I like how a few of the weapons look in the ps2 version.

    [VVH]
  • You may be able to open the .pkg files with an archiver like 7zip.

    Though it looks like the media you're after is in the "files.dat" file which can be any format, really.
  • 7zip wouldn't touch the pkg files unfortunately. Ditto with .DAT.
  • It certainly can be done. You'll likely need some software with some nice horse power, though. (in other words, $$$)
  • I could make the specific asset files accessible to anyone that has ideas, but I don't want to advocate or come off as if pirating (even though it's a twelve year old game) so not sure if uploading and linking to just the DAT/pkg files would be kosher or not.
  • It certainly can be done. You'll likely need some software with some nice horse power, though. (in other words, $$$)

    You just need software that knows the format of the game files, the comment on 7zip opening the PKG files was a longshot anyway as the file extensions don't really matter since file extensions are only there for Human reference (notice how Windows uses a specific icon based on extension?) as software typically just uses the extension as part of the file name and figures out the format from the content of the file itself. If it's supposed to be in a format that's already known then it doesn't even need to determine what format it is.

    If it's a totally custom file format then it'd involve either looking for leaked specifications or reverse engineering the game code itself to work out how the format operates and then to write software that can extract the assets with this information. Though I do believe it is fairly probable that it's not an entirely in-house format, whatever it is, so there probably is some information on it somewhere.
  • It certainly can be done. You'll likely need some software with some nice horse power, though. (in other words, $$$)

    You just need software that knows the format of the game files, the comment on 7zip opening the PKG files was a longshot anyway as the file extensions don't really matter since file extensions are only there for Human reference (notice how Windows uses a specific icon based on extension?) as software typically just uses the extension as part of the file name and figures out the format from the content of the file itself. If it's supposed to be in a format that's already known then it doesn't even need to determine what format it is.

    If it's a totally custom file format then it'd involve either looking for leaked specifications or reverse engineering the game code itself to work out how the format operates and then to write software that can extract the assets with this information. Though I do believe it is fairly probable that it's not an entirely in-house format, whatever it is, so there probably is some information on it somewhere.
    Just get some programs that you can import the raw data on, yeah.
  • Alright. I do not know how to do that/where to look. Know any good starting places outside of Google and hope?
  • Well yes, but be forewarned, it involves quite a bit of monetary investment. It's not just editing pngs and notepad files. You're talking modeling and crap.
  • Well yes, but be forewarned, it involves quite a bit of monetary investment. It's not just editing pngs and notepad files. You're talking modeling and crap. In other words, moving on from intermediate coding and moding and all that jazz, we're talking beginner developer.
  • Well yes, but be forewarned, it involves quite a bit of monetary investment. It's not just editing pngs and notepad files. You're talking modeling and crap.

    There isn't really any monetary investment involved. You'd be investing your time and possibly your sanity working this data into a format that Tribes 2 can operate with.

    As far as starting places, you'd want to start off by attempting to determine what format the .dat and .pkg files are really in. If you're lucky, then it'll be some well documented format where some software might already exist to sift through and extract said data. Though it could easily be some format that the guys made up on their own for one reason or another, which is where the leaked specifications and/or reverse engineered game code would come into play.

    Be warned, these appear to just be archive formats which means that there's still no guarantee that once you actually get something extracted that it'll be in a format you need, you may need to invest yet more of your time to convert this data as well.
  • Maybe they're just zip or lzh files?
  • 7zip would have handled it if it were either of those. So you can eliminate every format 7zip handles right now.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.pkg

    ".pkg is a file format used by Apple Inc. on its Macintosh line of computers,[1][2] and the iPhone. It is also used by Sony's PlayStation 3 on downloadable content over PlayStation Network[3]"

    The format there may have some relation to the PKG format used by the PlayStation 3, though it could just be a fluke that they have the same extension.
  • Interesting. Doubt it's the same format, but it's a lead at least.
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