i noticed that this game has the same setup as bone........most of the files are compressed in a ttarch archive.........i was able to extract the archive, but i cannot find a program to view the files........can someone recomend (or make)a viewer for the texture files and for the 3D model files

- thanks

The game isnt out here yet, so I dont have it.

The images in Bone were standard .dds images, and were contained inside .d3dtx files. If there are any of those, upload them somewhere and I'll take a quick look at them.
Its possible though, that the textures may contain the same deliberate corruption as the ones in Bone.

i have bone and i opened the ttarch archive and the types of filews in both games are mirror mages of each other

there is a folder called "disc1" that contains the ttarch archive

the types of files enclosed in the archive are..........

.aim (animation files)
.cord ( animation controlers )
d3dmesh ( 3d model meshers )
.d3dtx (texture files )
.dlg ( something to do with sound )
.font
.imap (something to do with game text)
.langdb (language translation files)
.lenc (unknown)
.prop (unknown)
.rules (unknown)
.save (save file templates)
.scene (unknown)
.skl (unknown)
.style (unknown)
.vers (unknown)

and there is a seperate folder named "disc2" that contains

.vox (speech files)
.bik (bink video files.......used in flashback scenes)

do you know of any good free file hosting sites.........because i do not feel like paying anyone just to share a few files

and i do not care of the images have a few areas of corruption in them.......i just want to look at them...........is it also possible to view the 3d models with some sort of viewer

You can mail me (quick@mixnmojo.com) them.
Or you could try somewhere like megaupload (http://www.megaupload.com/)

ok i sent them via email

The texture files are far simpler than in Bone. They arent xor'ed and dont appear to have any texture corruption. They are just standard dds images with an extra header. I can knock up a quick dumper for these if you want.

http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/csi/obj_envoy_doorfront.d3dtx.jpg)
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/csi/obj_envoy_rearlights.d3dtx.jpg)
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/csi/obj_envoy_steeringwheel.d3dtx.jpg)
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/csi/obj_envoy_stereo.d3dtx.jpg)

yeah i would like one...............can you make it work with the bone game as well?


and in responce to your email............the game does not have an single image of the telltale logo like bone did............it has an animated video showing a fingerprint brush revealing the logo

but i will look for that other file in a few minutes

EDIT: no there are no similar files that were in bone as well...........but you may be able to find more than i am able to when you get the game

Check your email again :)

ok i sent you the file that program generated..............hope it helps the cause

hopefully the great cow race will use thsese simplified textures as well

anyway, what is the status of that viewer i requested?

Thanks for that. I'll knock up a viewer/ripper for you, sometime in the next few days.

maybe after you make a texture viewer.............we can see about a 3d model viewer

anyway, thanks for being leanient towards me.............i have no computer programing skills at all

hopefully, i would like to see that viewer by tomorrow...........but do not rush yourself, i just do not have anything better to do

as i said earlier i have no programing skills............but i may be on to something

i reinstalled bone and compared the dumped files from the 2 archives, and i noticed something

as you know the index of the archive is not dumped, so the dumped data of an archive is slightly less than the archive itself, i will call this the "lost" data

take a look at the comparison of the "lost" data

lost data in csi archive 644,317 bytes
lost data in bone archive 211,594 bytes

now lets look at the comparision of the "lost" data to the number of files in that archive

csi - 45.836024756349149889734651774916

bone - 40.683330128821380503749278984811

the csi archive has almost 6 more bytes of "lost" data attributing to each file

if they are the same format the "lost data" per file should be the same, but it is not.............very strange

could this extra data have something to do with why the csi textures are not encrypted

here is the refrence data i used
the bone ttarch file is 152 Mb.............csi ttarch archive is 825 Mb

the bone dump file is 152 MB..............csi is 824 MB

number of files in bone archive 5,201............files in csi 14,057

Bg, you could basically bet on it and always win when you'd guess I'm somehow at least looking at some new games' files :)
The only thing they encrypted this time are the .lenc files that are the Lua scripts. The encryption algorithm seems to work in 8-byte blocks, because if the filesize modulo 8 leaves some bytes, you can see them unencrypted at the end of the files. It's almost always a "end" or similar. I'm trying now to write a decrypter for the scripts.
Also, the model format seems to be "understandable" (easier than the Psychonauts models, still a dead end there :)), except for the animations (".anm") because they use some kind of specialized quaternion compression. Maybe there are some articles in GameDev etc. about such techniques that I could test on these files...we'll see :)

Heh, I should've guessed you'd be onto it :)

Dangerzone: Luckily my friend has just bought csi, he brought it round last night, so i've started doing the texture viewer/convertor. Unfortunately its going to be delayed for a few days since its now my birthday, and my .ttarch dumper has a few problems with the csi archive. Some files, such as 'environmap_01.d3dtx' are read as 93 bytes - which isnt correct. I need to check if its an error with the .ttarch or my dumper before I go any further.


As regards the encryption, I was trying to find some identical textures in bone/csi so that I could compare the encrypted/unencrypted versions. Unfortunately there arent any common textures, but there are some common files, mostly in .vers files (which I dont think were encrypted in bone either) and even these may not be the same, I just looked for files of the same size.

anim_group_colors.prop
walkboxes(11ltc4p).vers
actoragentmapper(1p59rvs).vers
etc..

[Edit]
anim_group_colors.prop looks like its encrypted in bone and not in csi and is the same file.

some more good news is that we will have some more ttarch file data on april 12..........the release day of the great cow race


i am going to try some goofy stuff and try to place some of the bone 3d model files and mesh files in the csi game, and see if the files are somewhat compatable with each other

Here (http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/TellTaleTextureExplorerTest.zip) is a rough, but working version of the texture viewer.

It should let you view all the textures, i've used two different dds decoders, so anything that one doesnt handle, the other picks up. A more polished and useful version will come in a day or so and will do mass dumping/converting.

hey thanks for that.............it works pretty well

i noticed quite a few things in the archive that were not in the final game, such as alternate character models, and test textures..............this one gave me a good laugh (there is a bone refrence in it too)

http://i2.tinypic.com/ta4jfd.jpg)

Here (http://quick.mixnmojo.com/download.php?download=TellTaleTextureExplorer0.2.zip) is a more polished and complete version.

so is there any possibilty of a 3d model veiwer as well?

I'm working on one but it's another project on my almost endless list so it'll probably take a while until it's done.
However, I can already view a test model without textures and other stuff. Also, it's hardcoded, i.e. you can only view this model for now :) (the Grissom character model)