Opening .PIC files

[kcua_626]

I used a hex editor to open the hex files and came out with some interesting results. I used bmp2pic to create .PIC files of an all black and all white .BMP file and used a hex editor to open them.

-it looks like the .PIC files are not proprietary bitmaps but rather compressed picture files. Look how small the white and black .PIC files are.
-the header of the .PIC files might give as a clue on the file type if someone can recognize them. Here's a good list of possible programs for opening .PIC files. http://file-extension.net/seeker/file_extension_pic
-viewpic and bmp2pic were written for the PMODE/W DOS extender which means that they are most probably written in c/c++ or pascal. Hopefully we can find a decompiler and see these programs work. Here's the article of PMODE from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMODE

So that's all for now . I'll try my luck on decompilers and see what I can come up with.

Kevin

[mathusalem]

Thanks for your efforts kcua_626 but GmZombie has managed to make some screen capture of the game's pic files (a good part of them). so now I have a lot of the elements I need in terms of aspect and pixel size and how the skin is organized. Now what we need to do is tell the game to load an other format than .pics which are much too troubledome to handle. I have loaded in the Graphic Update thread a zip f le with some test images of a renewed skin in Bmp and png. That's the images we would like to find a way to use. (if we find the way, i will update the skin further.
So if you have the knowledge, now that you know our present goal, go right along.

[Snacko]

I decompressed and unlinked the pmode extender from bmp2pic so now it's possible to load the executable via a debugged ex. IDA
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?uighloyfzeo

[mathusalem]

hmmm it still doesn't work for any image.
as I said wouldn't it be easier to find where the exe loads the images and redirect it toward the pngs or bmps ? (those file apart from their format have the exact same name as the .pic files

[jonkarni]

I don't know if this will help but I saw that you can make qbasic file into assembler and the new file to c code lines.
I have done half job by disassembling the bmp2pic into assembler.
If you think you will be able to get some thing from that, that will be happy, so good luck, if it worth some thing and so the file.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=316f ... 49b5870170
I think I found the source code, at list big part:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=316f ... 49b5870170
http://read.pudn.com/downloads35/source ... ic.c__.htm

[mathusalem]

Thanks !
ouch ! This is a graphic designer you are talking to, not a coder (and I can't fathom what I could write in C)
Well, GMZombie has managed to send me a good bunch od the images in png a while ago. But you haven't worked in vain : I will go back to you if we find out that we have some mising images.