What's new

Metroid Prime .pak format?

BlueFalcon7

New member
i have seen image gallery 1 and 3 in the game, i never got image gallery 2, i cant wait to look at it on my PC, and anything on metroid prime 2 textures? also anyone ever notice how close metroid prime is to halo PC with the halo .map files, someone should just make a spark edit for metroid prime
 

boxing

New member
Cool update. I'm still more curious about the single mipmap DXT1 textures... I still play with the swizzling every once in a while but can't find the proper unpack.

Hopefully soon.
 

thakis

New member
Here's the updated texture converter..."soon" is a long time sometimes :p

edit: txtr files in format 4 don't work with this version... :-|
 
Last edited:

BoggyB

New member
*delurk*

Nice program thakis! I'm currently writing a PAK explorer thingy in VB based on your code. It's not much at the moment - all it does is list the files in there. I plan to add a hex viewer and dumper to it, and maybe a texture viewer... see how it goes.

One thing I've come across while coding: did you know there are duplicate entries in the pak files? For example, in Metroid1.Pak on Metroid Prime, entry id 0x00392179 tag TXTR is listed twice. It appears that your program overwrites the file extracted from the first entry with the later one. I only found out as I was using the id as a unique key.
 

thakis

New member
I didn't notice it, or I can't remember that I did notice. Do the two keys refer to different data chunks as well?
 

BoggyB

New member
They refer to different sections in the file. Haven't checked if the contents of the two locations are actually different.
 

SarahHarp

New member
Once the compression algorithm for MP2 has been cracked, work can begin on it (actaully, I'm pretty sure it uses the identical file structure as MP1) so basicly, once the decompression has been finished, the viewers and everything used for the first Prime will work for it aswell.
 

BoggyB

New member
Argh, the cable modem ate my last post.

Basically, the .PAK format in MP2 is the same, and can be extracted with the tools for MP1. I think it still uses zlib compression as well. However, the format of the files inside is not the same. I haven't checked that many, but I know that the TXTR and STRG formats are different to how they were in MP1.
 

erix920

New member
Nice, when you try to decompress MP2 txtr files it says error in the decompressor. However the pakextarctor works beautiful.
 

BoggyB

New member
Hmm. I could have sworn it was standard zlib, but then again I may be mixing up files from the two versions.
 
OP
E

Elpenguino

New member
It isn't. I don't have a clue what it is, though. I'm not exactly a genius when it comes to compression formats.
 

SarahHarp

New member
That's becasue each of them must be overlayed over a group (or groups). It's just the way Metroid Prime does things I suppose. It might be because the models mainly all use 256x256 sized texture, combing all the textures for a particular object might result in a really large image size, so they minimize size by having smaller, but more textures.
SSBM also does this, but to an even greater extent. A typical character model from MP has about 8 groups, using about 14 textures (which includes shaders, specular maps, etc), while in smash bros, the trophie Young Link has 52 groups, using 39 textures.


Lol and that's not the best example you posted, because I only see 3 textures, not 40 ; )
 

erix920

New member
There are atleast 40 files in that folder. There may be 3 groups buts there arn't three textures.. Can't wait for that mp2 extractor :).
 

SarahHarp

New member
Textures are located inside the model files. Models files (though incomplete still) are read by my Smash Bros viewer. Texture support is only at about 80% though.
 

Someone!

Hullo!
Where can I find the viewer?
Is there an exporter? Beacuse I can't do it with GCMTool (unknown formats and such, dunno which ones are the models)
 

SarahHarp

New member
The Metroid viewer is still under development. You're going to have to wait (for how long? I'm not sure) Until I get the texture placement sorted. Then there's not much left to do with the models, therefore the viewer can be released.
 

Top