PSX DAT files

[thatguy]

who knows about the PSX dat files? Mainly how to get the lha archive out, working on it occasionally.

[santa_claus]

Please before ask something here, try searching about...
easy, easy... just type your doubt in search box 

ps: this forum do not need duplicate topics!

thanks + best regards

Santa

[Cyberman]

1) Find information using the search function in technical for DAT files is extremely difficult, this is not because the search function doesn't work it's because there is no way to look for just DAT
2) The PS1 DAT file is fairly well detailed now and consists of 7 sections it is compressed using LZS it contains the entity list the script the dialog walkmesh field scene tile information, camera matrix triggers, and combat encounters. The last bit isn't known yet.

Cyb

[thatguy]

trust me i've looked through almost every thread and looked on the wiki
it's tough to decypher the gears pdf file too

especially since noone seems to care about the PSX support and has moved
to using the PC data files since ficedula has documented that well, sort of

again, help me with STARTMAP.DAT and being able to hex-edit out the archive
and unarchive it PSX version, hopefully also on linux

[Akari]

trust me i've looked through almost every thread and looked on the wiki
it's tough to decypher the gears pdf file too

especially since noone seems to care about the PSX support and has moved
to using the PC data files since ficedula has documented that well, sort of

again, help me with STARTMAP.DAT and being able to hex-edit out the archive
and unarchive it PSX version, hopefully also on linux

Didn't you tried to look at source of Q-Gears? There are DatFile class that handles reading info from Dat file.

[santa_claus]

let me understand you Thatguy..

Do you wanna know what? structure?
do you wanna translated the game script?

regards!

[Cyberman]

trust me i've looked through almost every thread and looked on the wiki
it's tough to decypher the gears pdf file too

especially since noone seems to care about the PSX support and has moved
to using the PC data files since ficedula has documented that well, sort of

I'm sorry I think you are very confused. I doubt you have looked very hard since you said this.
If you really looked you would have found quite a bit of detail along with the Q-gears source code providing more. Script data, opcodes, the walkmesh, some of the tilemap, the camera matrix, and on and on.  There are some unpolished features (bugs with high priority?), in the wiki but most of it is 100% correct.

again, help me with STARTMAP.DAT and being able to hex-edit out the archive and unarchive it PSX version, hopefully also on linux

Errr... you are going about things the wrong way.  First You should read up on LZS compression, second you need to examine the first DWORD of the DAT file for it's length.  You then load the file in and DECOMPRESS it.  Yes you have to decompress it honestly.  The PS1 DAT files have a 7 DWORD header, that are memory locations (not offsets) for the 7 sections of the file it would be advisable to use these to compute the offsets into the file for each section.  MIM and BSX are the two sections that the authors of FF7 for the PS1 didn't load into the DAT file (but are in the PC version).  As for hex editing out etc. etc.  Maybe you should rewind your train of thought too.. what are you trying to do?  Q-gears runs under linux so... that's a non issue.  I recomend you start small with these things, because you won't be able to use a hex editor to do much with the PS1 data at all. You will have to decompress edit and recompress to a file system that's editable and be certain you do not change the size of any file beyond a 2K (sector) boundry. If you do all you work will be in vain.  The original engine used LBA addresses to find things (IE the IS9660 structure was just there).

Cyb

Cyb