Introduction
Area 51 (stylized AREA-51) is a game that was developed by Midway Studios Austin (formerly Inevitable Entertainment) starting in 2002 using a proprietary engine/toolset/art pipeline (apparently didn't have any part of Unreal Engine) and it was published by Midway Games for the PS2/Xbox and was eventually ported to PC in 2005; this is not to be confused with the very original arcade version of Area 51. The game was released as freeware some time in 2008 and thus can be freely distributed; after GameSpy servers went down, online play was once again enabled by changing the gamespy URL to the openspy URL within the game's EXE using a hex editor. If someone would like a copy to play/examine, and if that determines whether or not it will peak their interest in helping with this project, feel free to get it here.
What We Would Like To Achieve
- A better understanding of Area 51's engine, archives, etc.
- The ability to properly extract/convert/edit the game's assets as well as successfully re-import them back, i.e. new multiplayer maps and models.
- Possibly modify the game's campaign after being granted such knowledge.
- Subject to be updated/changed.
What We Know- This is the PC version.
- The game uses RAD Game Tools: BINK for in-game videos and Miles Sound System for audio.
- Despite this thread, I had no such luck with WATTO Game Extractor.
- A link to my Google sheet with all(?) of the file formats and a potential description for each, here. Within the game's root folder lies five 000 archives (COMMON, HIRES, PRELOAD, RESOURCE, & STRINGS) and four of their respective DFS files (with the exception of RESOURCE.DFS, as well as a folder for the AUDIO and the campaign/multiplayer LEVELS (which both contain more 000/DFS files). I've packed up the root folder containing all of the 000/DFS files and it can be downloaded here.
- Using a script, posted by Mr.Mouse here, in MultiEx Commander or with quickbms, I was able to successfully (I think) perform an initial extraction from each 000 archive within the game folders, which can be downloaded here.
- It is somewhat possible to extract from the .AUDIOPKG files using this quickbms script, which extracts the files as .RAW audio files that can be imported into Audacity. Although, in most cases the script runs into an error - for example, using the script with "SFX_MENU_INGAME.AUDIOPKG" (audio archive extracted from "HOT.000" which is found in the "AUDIO" folder) it results in 24 audio files - at least 2 of which are broken - and gives this error:
Which leads me to believe it's an issue with the script itself(?)
Code: Select all
Error: impossible to write 0xffd8003d bytes (total 0xffd8003d) Check your disk space Last script line before the error or that produced the error: 83 log NAME OFFSET SIZE - The .RIGIDGEOM files are meshes - info about that and a QuickBMS script to convert them to 3DS (can be opened imported into Blender) can be found here. AlbinoLeopard is updating PS23DFormat here.
Resources & Links- "Area51UnDFS and XBMP2TGA": Simple programs created by a user that goes by the name jTommy. One can extract from 000 archives without using MEX/quickbms scripts (I had better luck with the script by Mr.Mouse that I linked above.); the other EXE is used to convert XBMP textures to TGA (and TGA back to XBMP). The TGA files can be opened in Photoshop.
- "GOBREAD": Apparently another tool that can be used to extract from 000/DFS archives ONLY if you're on a 32-bit system.
- PCGamingWiki page for Area 51.
- XeNTaXWiki page for Area 51 DFS files.
- 3D Architecture, courtesy of PS23DFormat.
- Other thread on XeNTaX relating to Area 51. (If someone still has this patch, or a working link, I'd love to see it.)
- Other thread on XeNTaX relating to Area 51.
- Other thread on XeNTaX relating to Area 51.
- Other thread on XeNTaX relating to Area 51.
- More game info, courtesy of Moby Games.
- Hopefully more to come...
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Morti