RSS Parrot

The most overengineered game codec

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/09/the-most-overengineered-game-codec/

Published: September 7, 2024 17:05

…as I’ve seen so far, of course, but the chances for it to keep this title are good. I’m talking about XCF format (found in ACF files of Time Commando game developed by Adeline Software). For starters, the format allows various commands that are related to…

Self-fulfilling excuses

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/08/self-fulfilling-excuses/

Published: August 31, 2024 13:49

There’s this old but annoying (and sometimes infuriating) thing called self-fulfilling excuses. Essentially it’s when somebody uses a deferred reasoning “this thing will not work, because I’ll be stonewalling it until it fails, and then I can proudly claim…

SMS is a new AVI

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/08/sms-is-a-new-avi/

Published: August 28, 2024 16:07

Since I’m still in a search of video formats for my na_game_tool, I happened to look at Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games and found an SMS file there (and then more for a demo version of Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure). The file starts with BLAH magic…

Looking at Nova Logic FMV formats

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/08/looking-at-nova-logic-fmv-formats/

Published: August 23, 2024 16:56

So there’s this company known mostly for helicopter simulators and those games use KDV format for animation. That alone is enough to make me look at the formats and what have I found? the original Comanche game used a simple FMV based on PCX RLE. It was…

On some German town names

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/08/on-some-german-town-names/

Published: August 19, 2024 16:29

One of my hobbies is travelling around and during my travels I see names that I find amusing like Geilhausen which can be translated as “Gay/kewl housing” or Waldfischbach (which translates to “forest fish brook” and it makes me think about what special…

Twenty years

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/08/twenty-years/

Published: August 14, 2024 16:53

On August 14th 2004 Mike Melanson committed to FFmpeg a decoder for TSCC codec that I sent to him. So on that day my official story of contributing to open-source multimedia has started. A lot has changed since then and not always to the best. Back then…

Watery format revisited

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/08/watery-format-revisited/

Published: August 10, 2024 12:51

I’m still picking unfinished and half-finished format for na_game_tool and there were some from Access games. While supporting animations from Amazon: Guardians of Eden is rather pointless (since they simply update pixels on some scene and do not have own…

Implementing Jack Orlando animation support

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/08/implementing-jack-orlando-animation-support/

Published: August 5, 2024 16:49

As I’m still working on my game tool, I decided to implement video format from the Jack Orlando game. So now na_game_tool has AVX support and I’d like to say something about the format. The format is a rather weird mix of different things. It starts with a…

Re-revisiting Actimagine VX

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/08/re-revisiting-actimagine-vx/

Published: August 2, 2024 16:17

As Paul said, I probably should do something more useful (and he should do something better than still messing with jbmpeg fork) but we’re all better at giving good advises than at following them. Recently I was contacted by a guy who asked for my help on…

Revisiting Talisman animation format

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/07/revisiting-talisman-animation-format/

Published: July 28, 2024 16:35

Back in the day I wrote a bit about this format and since it’s rather interesting I decided to implement its support in my game tool. Eventually I got it working except on two files that seem to have certain frame data unpacked incorrectly (it’s the…

NihAV Game Tool: the official release

https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2024/07/nihav-game-tool-the-official-release/

Published: July 21, 2024 16:00

I’m finally proud not too ashamed to present a side project I’ve been wasting my time on. The rationale behind it is simple: I sometimes write throwaway decoders in order to check if I understood format properly or if I really want to see the decoded…