rexhunter99
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Shake what ya momma gave ya!
Posts: 71
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Post by rexhunter99 on Aug 23, 2009 1:58:30 GMT -5
Okay first things first, Hacking and Modding are the same thing, to mod you must hack, those tools that make things 1000 times easier? They hack the files/games you mod, regardless of what they do its a form of hacking since it wasn't made by the original creators (or current License holders) So Hacking is not a bad word, let that sink in as you look in here. This topic is dedicated to the modding of Croc 1, since Croc 2 is all stored on the CD-Rom and only installs 5-7 files on your computer, it's unlikely I'll bother with editing files for Croc 2. I've been working on the files somewhat loosely, experimenting with them, etc and have managed to drag up some interesting notes on the files. To read these notes which are stored in an easy to read format on a webpage, just go here: Link: Croc File Formats<Space reserved for mod images> I'm developing a Command line tool to rip all of the resources from the files, I actually managed to rip several Croc voice overs, eg; his little grunts and shouts  Feel free to sniff about if you want and give me any advice/opinions/help. You can even try your hand at hacking as well, but first we need to work out the file formats a bit more before we edit anything to change the game :S |
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Tyguy
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Why is a parkway called a parkway if you actually don't run around in grass and swing on swings?
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Post by Tyguy on Aug 23, 2009 11:40:46 GMT -5
Heyy, that's pretty cool!  I've been waiting for something like this to happen for, like, five years. ;D Could you post the Croc sound effects somewhere? On the same note, is there anyway you could rip the backgrounds? I know I'm asking a lot of questions but here's my last one: would it be possible to create your own levels?  |
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rexhunter99
Junior Member
Shake what ya momma gave ya!
Posts: 71
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Post by rexhunter99 on Aug 24, 2009 3:56:55 GMT -5
Lol 10 years and counting now mate That's how long I've been waiting (I'm also working on Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exodus modding too XD) Well I don't have all of them, just about 10 (I have to manually edit the sound files to make them work on newer music players >.< so it's a tedious task) Not as of yet  I don't know how the images for textures are stored in the .PIX files yet... once I figure them out it'll only be a matter of time before I make a converter for them so you can edit them as .BMP instead |
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rexhunter99
Junior Member
Shake what ya momma gave ya!
Posts: 71
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Post by rexhunter99 on Aug 26, 2009 23:11:16 GMT -5
This double post seems relevant since It's an update and the last post was a little while ago... UPDATE! Check the formats link in the first post! I've started examining the maps (levels) and found a lot of interesting things, my first attempt at modding a level ended in disaster... the room wasn't loaded and Croc infinitely fell |
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Post by Forte Wily on Aug 27, 2009 19:34:57 GMT -5
I feel that I must point out (as I have had to in the past) that I do not welcome this here, as I do not believe disrespectfully ripping games to bits has any place on a site meant for talking about enjoying the games.
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rexhunter99
Junior Member
Shake what ya momma gave ya!
Posts: 71
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Post by rexhunter99 on Aug 28, 2009 4:09:26 GMT -5
So... you don't want me to enable people to add to the game? It may indeed be possible to make high resolution graphics for Croc, even allow players to experience testing levels, possibly use resources that weren't in the full game... so you don't want me to share this knowledge on one of the only forums that has a frequent set of members. I'm sorry... I really don't see the logic in that... I mean, isn't it good to discover new things about the game? Isn't it good to share that knowledge? If I may point you to a fan-forum for a game I play/mod Trescom the modding of an older game brings in new fans since they didn't know about the game or have forgotten it, I have another fan-forum for another game that came out the same year as Croc where the influx of fans was affected greatly by modding. I respect your opinion and if you want this all removed I shall do that, but please tell me why you don't see the good in this? I'm not hacking it so it becomes a completely different game, I'm trying to allow players to experiment and there are many players who desire a level editor, many more who want to experiment with the game textures and even more who want to see any left over levels that weren't removed before shipping. |
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Tyguy
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Why is a parkway called a parkway if you actually don't run around in grass and swing on swings?
Posts: 136
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Post by Tyguy on Aug 29, 2009 13:47:05 GMT -5
I think rex is right.
Forte, I know that you have a great respect for Croc and the people who made him. I do too. A VERY great respect. And I've always been interested in the backgrounds, the sounds and sights of the game, and the creatures. I personally have no intent of simply editing levels or the creatures or backgrounds. I think Croc has a 'magic' to it-and Croc feels like a real person to me-and if I were to edit Croc or the levels and textures, I think that that magic would be lost to me.
Mostly, what I want from all of this is to learn of things cut out from the game, rip the backgrounds and sound effects, and play beta levels. In all honesty, if I did believe that by doing this I would be disrespectfully ripping the game to pieces, I would not have any part in it.
One more thing: I feel like if we were to do this, then Croc: Legend of the Gobbos would be enjoyed to the fullest. We could view the beta levels, the cut level titles and worlds and entire levels that had to be cut from the game. All of these things that I just mentioned took time and effort for the Croc team to create, and I'm sure frustration was abundant when wonderful aspects of the Croc universe had to be removed and left on the cutting room floor. Through this modding, we can see what the Croc team made, left on the cutting room floor, and were undoubtedly proud of. Rexhunter is obviously a very experienced game modder-plus a hard-core Croc fan. If we were to waste this chance so see farther into the game, I doubt we would ever find another expert hacker who is so devoted to Croc.
Forte, I greatly respect your opinion. And I hope you can respect mine as much as I respect yours.
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Post by Forte Wily on Aug 29, 2009 18:48:39 GMT -5
So... you don't want me to enable people to add to the game? That is not quite correct. If you're capable of this, please share your results in the "Fan Stuff" section - that is why it's there. I will quote myself in a post from a while ago, to hopefully clarify what I mean; I personally think that games are for playing and enjoying, not for taking apart in the name of "discoveries" which end up destroying the magic (I'm sure you know what I mean with this description) inherent in some titles. I'd be disappointed to see the Croc franchise treated with such disregard. I also feel that "cracking" games isn't in the spirit of respecting the fun that the games, and the characters and stories contained therein, have brought to people over the years, and as such, I feel that such things have no place on a fan site. Although personally I see no advantage or appeal in "high resolution graphics", I think it's worth pointing out that those are already possible via numerous PlayStation emulators, along with numerous other niceties such as various effects that can be applied to the textures, and so on. The added advantage to this is that usable emulators are available for most operating systems. Coupled with the fact that the PlayStation version of the game is, to my knowledge, the one that sold the most copies, this makes for the easiest cross-platform experience of the game. Not everyone uses Microsoft Windows (and for that matter, the Microsoft Windows version has not run truly correctly on any hardware since that which it was hardcoded to use was available - this would need to be tackled too, I suspect), so to attempt to modify the Microsoft Windows version to do this (would I be correct in assuming, from your posts to date, that this is the version you have?  ) would likely be a bit of a wasted effort, so to speak. I'm certainly not saying to abandon the effort, by any means, but I personally don't think that it would be possible for the largest possible number of people to make use of it... One can't "experience" what was deemed unusable, if you ask me. I'll point to a post by myself in times gone by, again; How come? Almost all video games go through changes in development. It's not a big deal at all, nor is it particularly interesting.  It's not unusual at all, despite what some websites out there may claim. It happens with almost all games, and the reasons for it are almost always the same: Content that is removed is either unworkable, uninteresting, wasn't feasible to include before a tight deadline, or the underlying concepts and/or material just plain sucked. Sometimes it is a combination of some or all of these things. There really is no more to it than that. There is nothing particularly awesome about buggy unfinished code. It always pales in comparison to the real and finished thing, in the end. The above quotes should *hopefully* demonstrate my view on that. I personally don't see what's to be "discovered" - a bunch of stuff deemed useless is not worthwhile, in my view, and I think it would be a stretch to define it as "knowledge". Croc, unfortunately, seems to almost universally be regarded as a bad game (I do not agree with this, for the record). Anyone likely to enjoy it will already have discovered it and done so by now. I have my doubts that messing with it would bring in new people. If they didn't like it before, it's unlikely that changing it will make them like it now. I don't ask that it be removed - I ask that it is not done here. This is a site for playing and enjoying some old games, that's all it is. It's not meant for ripping filetypes to bits and looking at "content" that was considered not good enough to bother with. By this point in my post, hopefully you should see why I don't believe this is worthwhile, but this is of course my own opinion. I'm not trying to stop anyone from doing this, I just don't believe it has a place on a site for discussing playing a couple of old games. If you are able to make a level editor, change the textures, turn it into a completely different game, and suchlike, and wish to discuss the results (and share them, if you wish - so long as it's legal to do so), that is why this place has a "Fan Stuff" sub-forum. By all means, please do discuss those creations there - that's precisely what it's there for. However, I believe that your perception about people wanting to see unusable, useless "content" that nobody wanted to put into a finished, polished, retail game, may be incorrect. I suspect that it is unlikely that any significant number of people in the world care about some miniscule sequences of unused fluff in a game that is (rightly or wrongly) almost universally viewed as "bad". I think rex is right. Forte, I know that you have a great respect for Croc and the people who made him. I do too. A VERY great respect. And I've always been interested in the backgrounds, the sounds and sights of the game, and the creatures. I personally have no intent of simply editing levels or the creatures or backgrounds. I think Croc has a 'magic' to it-and Croc feels like a real person to me-and if I were to edit Croc or the levels and textures, I think that that magic would be lost to me. Mostly, what I want from all of this is to learn of things cut out from the game, rip the backgrounds and sound effects, and play beta levels. In all honesty, if I did believe that by doing this I would be disrespectfully ripping the game to pieces, I would not have any part in it. One more thing: I feel like if we were to do this, then Croc: Legend of the Gobbos would be enjoyed to the fullest. We could view the beta levels, the cut level titles and worlds and entire levels that had to be cut from the game. All of these things that I just mentioned took time and effort for the Croc team to create, and I'm sure frustration was abundant when wonderful aspects of the Croc universe had to be removed and left on the cutting room floor. Through this modding, we can see what the Croc team made, left on the cutting room floor, and were undoubtedly proud of. Rexhunter is obviously a very experienced game modder-plus a hard-core Croc fan. If we were to waste this chance so see farther into the game, I doubt we would ever find another expert hacker who is so devoted to Croc. Forte, I greatly respect your opinion. And I hope you can respect mine as much as I respect yours. I respect your view, Tyguy - it is just that I respectfully completely disagree. Whilst I can understand wanting to rip useful bits and pieces, frankly there is nothing to be "learned" from "beta" (which is such a misused term...) junk. I hope from the above, you'll be able to understand my point of view on this. |
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Tyguy
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Why is a parkway called a parkway if you actually don't run around in grass and swing on swings?
Posts: 136
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Post by Tyguy on Aug 30, 2009 22:48:52 GMT -5
Well, I want to learn OF 'beta' junk, not from it. And either way, we have nothing to lose, have we?  Anyway, rex, could you post those 20+ scrapped level names you mentioned over in Croc Trivia? Have you figured how to rip the backgrounds, or could you tell me how to rip the Croc voice overs? |
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SoniCroc
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Croc... can't... jump... higher... than... gobbo...
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Post by SoniCroc on Sept 3, 2009 20:23:53 GMT -5
... While I'm on Forte Wily's side here, I must point out that if you happen to get the sound effects off the CD, that would be nice. I could use them for my animation, most likely. However, I'm not sure I like the idea of making a level editor. Also, don't expect to have any fun playing unfinished levels... Trust me, it isn't fun. Because... they aren't finished.  |
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rexhunter99
Junior Member
Shake what ya momma gave ya!
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Post by rexhunter99 on Sept 10, 2009 3:23:37 GMT -5
(sorry for the long absence... I've been unable to access a computer and shouldn't even be on right now ) Okay I better understand your point Forte Wily, however I am still confused, I won't pester you for a better description as it both wastes time and causes hair to be torn from heads. Here is where I think I must shove in rather rudely, as an indie game programmer, I can vouch for many programmers on this point. The game, Jurassic Park Trespasser has oodles of content that was not used ingame, however, was not removed from the retail release. After asking the devs about it, they said that it would be a shame to remove things from their game even if it were unused, it was not useless to the game, just content that didn't have enough time to be implemented before use. Even the Beta testing level in this game was shipped and is accessible by players via an accidental discovery by an explorer. Another game, Carnivores, also had things in it that were not implemented but still there in the retail release. Oddworld Abe's Oddysee contains animations for characters that were not used and are there for the discovering, of which I have found 2 so far (the files are enormous) So unused content is not useless, not to me, not to others and certainly not the devs. Just because it's cross platform doesn't make it the better option, with a bit of work, a Windows game can easily be played on any operating system as well, but only for those dedicated enough to try it. Also, not all Emulators like the hardware in PCs these days, I know for a fact that all three of MY currently owned computers will not run ANY of the Emulators because of the GFX card and motherboards I use, it's a shame that the coders for the emulators don't really try hard enough to make their tools usable by most since it's easy as pie to code for a multitude of hardware these days. I agree that hacking a beautiful game to death, beyond recognition is horrible, I've played Halo 1 maps that ruined the Halo experience for me, but there are many GOOD hackers who elevate the play value of a game, for instance, Halo CMT maps make me want to play both the modded and original maps simply because of the differences and features, CMT has modernized graphics and the original has almost 8 year old graphics. Trespasser has many terrible maps that are a waste of bandwidth, but there are many more GOOD maps, such as the TC-Operations maps and the upcoming JPDS map which I've Beta-tested myself and even as a Beta it is extremely fun to play regardless of the bugs. Simply putting it, buggy, unfinished levels could be fun, or might not be. Fan made levels could be fun or terrible, it's all down to what it will be like at play time and our OWN opinions, not the opinion of one source, this is why I never rate a game on someone else's review or compare a game to another game, it's not right or fair. |
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Post by Forte Wily on Sept 11, 2009 19:30:33 GMT -5
(sorry for the long absence... I've been unable to access a computer and shouldn't even be on right now ) Welcome back - I was wondering where you'd gone. I'm afraid I can't make it any clearer. I don't really see what could possibly be confusing about it. With all due respect, I say what I say as someone who actually made such content for a was-to-be commercial game which was itself never released. You come up with more than you need, and if it works (or if everything is used), that's great - but if not, oh well, you go on with life. Sorry, but cross-platform is *always* the better option. Cross-platform covers all processors where something can feasibly work - ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, and what-have-you - after all, cross-platform does not mean "other operating systems that run on Intel's x86 architecture". Putting aside the fact that this approach applies solely to x86 processors, I suspect from this that you've never done this. Whilst it is indeed getting easier all the time in many cases, it still does not work for everything, and it's possible that for some things it never will. I already stated my view on unfinished stuff in my previous posting - that is the only part with which I disagree. That bit aside, I'm not disputing anything regarding fan-made levels, enhancements, and so on. As I said before, that is why there is a Fan Stuff section. |
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rexhunter99
Junior Member
Shake what ya momma gave ya!
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Post by rexhunter99 on Sept 17, 2009 18:19:24 GMT -5
Hmm okay then, but I still want to show off some of the Beta stuff here since it's not fan stuff. Don't kill me over it, there's some interesting stuff. Anyways, I'm getting help from a fellow named Andre who lives in Germany, he coincidentally started to do the same thing I'm doing at the same time I did, only thing he did better was actually play Beta levels in Croc without doing much more than editing a file in Notepad (it's all written in plain english and not code/bytes) Andre has registered here and wants to hang with us, both to work with me on this and to just be a normal Croc fan Forte, that's your area of training.  Both Andre and I are having a lot of fun experimenting with all the beta/unused levels and even the unused menu rooms for the Croc title screen. There's lots of interesting content and areas that look both beautiful and ridiculous, such as a room that is missing some textures, or another that has half waterfalls (water appears in mid-air xD) There's also a thing called 'funkymonkey' which Andre was mentioning to me, it's a buggy AI most likely but he'll have to explain it more in-depth since I've only tested 6 of the many many beta rooms (and none of the cut levels) |
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proog
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Post by proog on Sept 19, 2009 16:11:34 GMT -5
...editing a file in Notepad (it's all written in plain english and not code/bytes)... Well, they're still bytes, but I'd be interested to know what file that is, though. |
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rexhunter99
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Shake what ya momma gave ya!
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Post by rexhunter99 on Sept 19, 2009 18:11:13 GMT -5
Lol, well I meant as HEX bytes (god I hate HEX) MAPS.IDX just change the name of the files in that one, (making sure you replace the other file with it's name) and then play. For instance, I test this by changing And So the Adventure begins! which is MP010_00.MAP to MP005_00.MAP but I also make the original MP005_00.MAP into MP010_00.MAP All the MP005_##.MAP maps are some sort of unfinished Ice slide level sequence. It's pretty fun if not a little repetitive, and they went all out with decorations, there's houses, igloos, trees, bumps in the slide, fall logs, etc. So it's possible these were planned but scrapped levels that couldn't make it into the game by ship date |
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I don't know how the images for textures are stored in the .PIX files yet... once I figure them out it'll only be a matter of time before I make a converter for them so you can edit them as .BMP instead 
) would likely be a bit of a wasted effort, so to speak. I'm certainly not saying to abandon the effort, by any means, but I personally don't think that it would be possible for the largest possible number of people to make use of it... 
