Hi everyone, I'm new here 8)

Hi everyone, my name is Stephen, I've had this game for a few years now, but never really got into modding it or playing online as nobody was really every on. Anyhow, with this entire zombie craze going on (yeah I'm talking about DayZ and such...) I figured this engine would make for a decent survival mod too. I have Arma 2, and uh, well to be honest I never really cared much for it. I understand that this game and Arma are two different beasts, but this game engine tuns much better for people with slower rigs, and personally I think its more fun all around. That said, I'm also an indie developer with experience using UDK, and Unity 3D (I program in C#, C++ and also work with Maya and Mudbox for asset creation). I'd like to get together with someone who has worked with this engine that would also like to work on a survival mod. I am not proficient in LUA yet, nor the tools for this game, but having a good grasp on the development process in general I learn fast. So, would anyone like to help out?

-Stephen

hi Stephen!

WELCOME TO THE FORUM! I gave you a big welcome to the forum, because my last piece I was working on was a zombie-esque survival mod. With back story!

Thing is with this game we are very limited in what we can do.  Creating new assets is a no-no from the off. the .win files you will find in your directory are semi locked and ALOOOT of the old modders from the original forum have parted ways with deving the game anymore.

That being said, I don't want that to stop you in your quest for helping out with finding something new to bring to the table for DR. As you said this is a great game and I played it well on a shitty rig before this one I have now. Just a shame we can't do much with the tools with have available.

There is one person you may be interested in getting to know though. Tjdagger. I was speaking with him just last night and he was contemplating actually getting into the game development side of things and with your knowledge and background and his with DR, I think you can both benefit each other.

I wouldn't expect much in the way of him creating things in the near future for Dr because like me he feels a bit exhausted with deving it and reached a point where there was no more he could develope.

As for my zombie survival concept, check out the thread ( Zombie thread )I made that was in someways trying to generate interest in what I wanted to do. As it happens I just deleted all the Autodesk SDK's that I was planning to get to know. But I came to the conclusion I need at least a PHD in Astro physics for the basics. Which I don't funnily enough. Anyway!

If  you would like I wouldn't mind doing something in the SDK's that you have already worked on, maybe bringing my ideas and your knowledge together could bring a new game to the public completely.

skype me and we'll chat if you like. (pm'd)

MD

Hello and welcome to Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising OFDR Forums!
Mdog the right person. Ask him, and you get an answer;)

Excellent, Good to hear. Thank you for the welcome. I hope that my development skills will be of some use to the community.

StephenWebb wrote:Excellent, Good to hear. Thank you for the welcome. I hope that my development skills will be of some use to the community.

If you happen to know someone that has some knowlege of file encryption maybe you could twist their arm and try to find a way to extract the win.000 files.  If we manage that we might be able to open up a whole new world of modifications for this game.  Until then, we are stuck like chuck.

None the less, welcome aboard!

Cheers

Howdy

ThePhantomMenace wrote:

StephenWebb wrote:Excellent, Good to hear. Thank you for the welcome. I hope that my development skills will be of some use to the community.

If you happen to know someone that has some knowlege of file encryption maybe you could twist their arm and try to find a way to extract the win.000 files.  If we manage that we might be able to open up a whole new world of modifications for this game.  Until then, we are stuck like chuck.

None the less, welcome aboard!

Cheers

There is no problem with encryption that was gotten around years ago. win_000.nfs is encrypted with AES-256 the key is AC 22 11 23 44 95 AC A2 7E 80 59 86 10 8B EE DD 4D 01 D3 97 0B 9D 4C A9 3D 7B E1 BB ED DA 84 58. QuickBMS can decrypt it for you, it will provide a file listing. Here are some I made earlier based on my knowledge of win_000.nfs. Note the directory listing is not in there, it's probably obtainable from win_000.nfs (the above file listings are only the plain text part of win_000.nfs). Having an accurate directory listing is essential to modding the game since external files need to be positioned in a matching location in the game's data_win folder to override their counterpart in the win_000 archive.

The main problem we have is that most of the larger files in the win_000 files are compressed using some variant of LZSS. The LZSS implementation in QuickBMS can only decompress very small files from the archive (I forget what the limit is) beyond that it's just garbage. I assume CM used some kind of library function to do the compression, but I don't know which (I can't see them taking the time to make their own compression algorithm). Any ideas anyone? It may be possible to track down the decompression algorithm using a debugger (watching Win32 calls to access the HDD files seems a good place to start), I once tried to find it V1.02 using Ollydbg 2.01 but couldn't get far enough into the program without it falling over. Some one once told me that v1.00 of the game can be debugged without this issue but I've never tried it.

Anyway, regarding stuff you may be able to help with. You mention experience with game design. How familiar are you with .dds textures? All of the ego engine's textures are .dds format. There is a slim chance that the game textures could be modified by placing an appropriate dimensioned texture in the data_win folder. While the actual textures can't be extracted intact from the win_000 files due to the compression problem, I believe the file header will be intact and could be used to infer the dimensions required for a replacement texture.

I knew it was something to do with the offsets.  That file is something I've needed for quite some time.  I figured out a while ago how to render objects like houses and anything you can find on the map through the entity database but I could never get the physics of the objects to render because I didn't know what fileswere being called.  That list might help me crack the issue and make everything available in the database.  Thanks Zeewolf!!

Cheers

Note the "system" entry at the top which apparently consumes 2883584 bytes? That's the win_000.nfs file, as far as the game is concerned the game files looks like one contiguous file starting with win_000.nfs through to win_000.521.

In QuickBMS this is usually done with two or three scripts:

Code:

append
for i = 0
    set NAME string "win_000"
    set MYEXT string i
    strlen MYEXTSZ MYEXT

    if MYEXTSZ == 1
        string NAME += ".00"
    elif MYEXTSZ == 2
        string NAME += ".0"
    else
        string NAME += "."
    endif
    string NAME += MYEXT

    open FDSE NAME
    get SIZE asize
    log "win_000.full" 0 SIZE
next i

Would concatenate all the win_000 files into one big file called win_000.full. To extract a file, memory_map_application.xml for example:

Code:

set NAME "memory_map_application.xml" # target file name
set SIZE 9505 # set the file size from the file size column
set PREV_OFFSET 2883584    # set the EOF offset of the PREVIOUS FILE
set ZSIZE 3201 # set the Compressed file size (the difference between the current EOF offset and the previous EOF offset)
math PREV_OFFSET -= 2883584    # subtract the file system (win_000.nfs) file size from the file table offset
comtype lzss
if SIZE == 0
 cleanexit # folder, don't bother trying to extract
elif SIZE == ZSIZE
 log NAME PREV_OFFSET SIZE # the file size matches the offset size the file is not compressed
else
 clog NAME PREV_OFFSET ZSIZE SIZE # the file size doesn't match the offset size, assume the file is compressed
endif
cleanexit


Unfortunately the standard version of QuickBMS can't cope with file offsets over 4GB, although there is a special version of QuickBMS that supports larger pointers, I recommend writing a C program to extract the file from win_000.full, then using a QuickBMS script to decompress it. You'll see that the decompression doesn't work on large files, but is ok for smaller ones like the XMLs.

If you want the raw binary for win_000.nfs this can be decrypted using the following script (Dragon Rising and Red River use the same key funnily enough):

Code:

get SIZE asize
encryption aes "\xAC\x22\x11\x23\x44\x95\xAC\xA2\x7E\x80\x59\x86\x10\x8B\xEE\xDD\x4D\x01\xD3\x97\x0B\x9D\x4C\xA9\x3D\x7B\xE1\xBB\xED\xDA\x84\x58"
log "decrypt.dat" 0 SIZE
cleanexit

I then made a C# program that parsed this decrypted data to generate the file lists I've posted. If you just open up the decrypt.dat file in a hex editor and search for some of the file names you'll get an idea of how the file listing works, but there's a massive chunk of binary data located before that which I presume is a data structure describing the folder hierarchy (the file listing gives you a list of folder names but not their relative paths).

ThePhantomMenace wrote:I knew it was something to do with the offsets.  That file is something I've needed for quite some time.  I figured out a while ago how to render objects like houses and anything you can find on the map through the entity database but I could never get the physics of the objects to render because I didn't know what fileswere being called.  That list might help me crack the issue and make everything available in the database.  Thanks Zeewolf!!

Cheers

LOL, "ThePhantomMenace" my arse. I know who you are.


BTW, I've been tinkering with the Gem editor and "Men of War".


Cheers M8, we should catch up on skype some time.

ThePhantomMenace wrote:I knew it was something to do with the offsets.  That file is something I've needed for quite some time.  I figured out a while ago how to render objects like houses and anything you can find on the map through the entity database but I could never get the physics of the objects to render because I didn't know what fileswere being called.  That list might help me crack the issue and make everything available in the database.  Thanks Zeewolf!!

Cheers

That is quite a lofty claim, for once it would be nice to see some progress with modding. It's a shame enthusiasm only gets you so far.

Zeewolf wrote:

ThePhantomMenace wrote:I knew it was something to do with the offsets.  That file is something I've needed for quite some time.  I figured out a while ago how to render objects like houses and anything you can find on the map through the entity database but I could never get the physics of the objects to render because I didn't know what fileswere being called.  That list might help me crack the issue and make everything available in the database.  Thanks Zeewolf!!

Cheers

That is quite a lofty claim, for once it would be nice to see some progress with modding. It's a shame enthusiasm only gets you so far.

Edited: my misunderstanding of a previous statement! Doh!

When I saw the image, I had to look twice to realise what I was looking at. Its not everyday you see a wooden barn placed in the middle of the airfield. If the physics were found then we have new towns in DR basically! muwahahaaa!




(beware this topic may go of discussion, PhantomMenance *cough*lol! can you post an image on another thread to show your work of the that building? I don't think I have it anymore!)

I find this bizarre, if what he's saying is true and all that was required all this time was the file list, how come no one else has been able to provide it? The method to decrypt the nfs file has been known since 2008, having been created by xentax. You yourself posted in the the thread where they discussed it!

Zeewolf wrote:I find this bizarre, if what he's saying is true and all that was required all this time was the file list, how come no one else has been able to provide it? The method to decrypt the nfs file has been known since 2008, having been created by xentax. You yourself posted in the the thread where they discussed it!

 
Well, he only figured it out and found the ability to do this within the past 9 months. I think it was around the beginning of this year. The CM forums closed with all the major players in the community long gone before that.

That post link you put up with reference to my name was not actually me. Mdog is short for ManiacalDog, (an old xbox tag I had) I've never been maddog on any forum I've signed up too. Just clearing that one up.

I think the main reason why no one has found it out until now is that no one was persistant enough to try maybe? IDK!

Buts its true, I've seen the image!