override data tester

@nonconventionally-creative, on Oct 5 2008, 01:52 AM, said in override data tester:

Yes; not possible.

how is it not possible? do you mean, not possible to winNova to open these files?

it seems very possible and probable that it will be the easiest way. two formats is just ludicrous for one game. is there an instance(for evc, evo or evn) when the data fork and resource fork both has data in it?

if i could just focus on resource forks, then windows users could then use the conversion utilities so winNova can use them.

This post has been edited by Tycho : 04 October 2008 - 10:33 PM

@tycho, on Oct 4 2008, 09:31 PM, said in override data tester:

does EVNEW do PICT's?

I believe both EVNEW and the Windows version of the game handle PICTs by calling to QuickTime for Windows, which offers some of the same features as the Macintosh's graphics routines.

@tycho, on Oct 4 2008, 09:31 PM, said in override data tester:

also, i'm looking into opening resource forks on linux/windows. it almost seems easier than going the .rez way.

It is possible to read the resource fork as binary data, and working from a .bin file, you could even conceivably do this on Windows (remember, an un-encoded resource fork can not even exist on any non-Macintosh platform).

I even have the format somewhere, and considered taking this approach in MissionComputer at one point. It is, however, a very complicated binary format. It was designed under the assumption that no one other than Apple would ever access it directly, since the system provides means for abstract manipulation of individual resources; it is far more difficult to read than .rez, and even more so to write.

@tycho, on Oct 4 2008, 11:30 PM, said in override data tester:

two formats is just ludicrous for one game.

It's for this reason that I've lobbied on various occasions for the Macintosh version to support .rez, but though this would be much more feasible than the other way around, it would still be a good bit of extra work, and I'm not at all confident that it will come about.

@tycho, on Oct 4 2008, 11:30 PM, said in override data tester:

is there an instance(for evc, evo or evn) when the data fork and resource fork both has data in it?

No, the Escape Velocity games never use both the data and resource forks to store information. The Macintosh versions store all their data in the resource fork, and ignores the data fork, while .rez stores everything in data, and has no resource fork. (It is, of course, quite possible for a Macintosh file to have both data and resources, but these games do not take advantage of that possibility.)

thanks for the clarification David.

based on this, i am thinking:
extract resource fork via:

cp "Override Data 1/rsrc" "Override Data 1.rsrc"

thus basically, allowing a resource fork to exist as a data fork.

use Tempelmann's resource fork reader:
http://www.tempel.org/rb/#rsrc
mac, windows, linux compatible.

implement resource.GetPicture, resource.GetSound, etc
Tempelmann's code only does GetResource. possibly just use quicktime as you mentioned.

am i missing something obvious?

This post has been edited by Tycho : 05 October 2008 - 10:07 AM