Sega Ages 2500 assets

Andlabs · Jun 1, 2012

Phantasy Star Complete Collection BMPs (some were uncompressed!) (183MB)

JP manual scans, JP/US (and some EU) box art, some flyers, large-size artwork (masters?) from the manuals, some cover art masters, some maps, and some concept art

Also strangely, there's both a "ps2tnei.bin" and a "ps2tnei_fixed.bin" (the Nei Text Adventure)... which appear to have a LOT of differences? (with a 1:1 binary compare, at least)... should I upload those?

(surprisingly there doesn't seem to be...any? leftover data)

Andlabs · Jun 2, 2012

Skipping Virtual-On for now.

Galaxy Force II: Special Extended Edition scans (34MB)

No concept art or leftovers this time, but we get:
Box scans - MD JP, MD EU, SMS EU, Saturn JP
Manuals - MD JP, SMS EU, FM Towns JP, Saturn JP
Flyers - MD JP, Arcade JP (several different ones, including a Sega News one?)
Other - MD EU manual cover, Saturn JP spine card

...the FM Towns GFII has a Competition mode?

Andlabs · Jun 9, 2012

Is there anyone who speaks Brazilian Portugese who can translate this?
http://gazetadealgol.com.br/_media/diversos/downloads/romhacking-compressao_lz_psg1_e_2.pdf
It's technical documentation for one of the compression formats used by earlier entries in the series; the tool on their website doesn't seem to work (for Nicole at least)? On top of that, the games bundle these files together with seemingly no way to determine where a file starts or ends? Thanks.

Kiddo Cabbusses · Jun 11, 2012

Google translate, save us! (Pfthahaha, yeah, right.)

Page 1:

Information LZ compression? PSG in a match - Po.B.R.E. RomHackers
http://www.romhackers.org/
displays
Information LZ compression? and
variants in Phantasy Star
Generations 1 and 2 [PS2]
Brazil, March 6, 2009
Rev. 0
Fl 1/13 Revision 0 - http://www.romhackers.org/
Click to expand...

Page 2:

Information LZ compression?
Used in the game Phantasy Star Generations
1 [PS2]
Each uses a header compressed file as follows.
CM (ASCII) = 2 bytes
(Uncompressed size) = 4 bytes
(Size tablet) = 4bytes
Home data = (compressed to the size indicated)
FLAG ID = (Soon I will explain what it is)
And first compression was slightly delayed for
find out, having to read a lot of documents informing other
compressions on LZSS (which almost no one thought to serve until
find one but I had understood it the hard way), LZ77, LZW, LZX, LZRW, LZP,
Constant Mixing (because I thought it could be the CM in the header) and
Huffman ("An insult to the brain of the human being").
In this paper I will demonstrate how compression works
pictorially for easy understanding of the compression and its
logic.
Click to expand...

Page 3:

Look at the archive's structure where it is the beginning CM (434D)
Click to expand...

Page 4:
STUFF IN THE PICTURES:
Yellow: Darling CM compressed? Constant Mixing? I know it ...

Red: Size of the data after the decompression

Pink: "Butter your bread" After I explain why

White: "and black and DATA DATA"

"Well, that D81D0000 reversing, the fact that the PS2's processor is
Little Endian is 0x1DD8 then it should be the file size
compressed, so let's see if it is proven."
Click to expand...

... Is any of this helpful so far?

Syniphas · Jun 12, 2012

Andlabs said:

Is there anyone who speaks Brazilian Portugese who can translate this?
http://gazetadealgol.com.br/_media/diversos/downloads/romhacking-compressao_lz_psg1_e_2.pdf
It's technical documentation for one of the compression formats used by earlier entries in the series; the tool on their website doesn't seem to work (for Nicole at least)? On top of that, the games bundle these files together with seemingly no way to determine where a file starts or ends? Thanks.
Click to expand...

SUP

Information about LZ?? compression used in the game Phantasy Star Generations 1 [PS2]

Every compressed file uses a header like so:

CM(ASCII) = 2 bytes
(Uncompressed size) = 4 bytes
(Compressed size) = 4 bytes
Data start = (until indicated compressed size)
FLAG ID = (I'll soon explain what it is)

Well first of all the compression took a little while to figure out, having to read many documents about other compressions about LZSS (which I couldn't find any that would help me but learned it by myself), LZ77, LZW, LZX, LZRW, LZP, Constant Mixing (because I thought it could've been that because of the CM in the header) and Huffman ("An insult to the human being's brain").
In this document I'll demonstrate how the compression works graphically for an easy understanding about the compression and its logic.

[psg1 boxart]

Look at the structure of the compressed file where its start is CM (434D)

[screenshot]

Now look at the screen showing the file structure

[screenshot]
[yellow] The dear CM. CoMpressed? Contant[sic] Mixing? I don't know...
[red] Data size after decompressing
[tan] "The butter of your bread." I'll explain why later.
[black] And the black is DATA DATA

Well, D81D0000 which inverted, for the fact that the PS2 processor is little-endian, is 0x1DD8 so that should be the compressed size, so let's see if that's so.

[screenshot]
I begin counting from the 11th byte for the fact that the 10 bytes are:
CM = 2 bytes
0C410000 = 4 bytes
D81D0000 = 4 bytes
Obviously: 2+4+4=20 so 11th is the start.

[screenshot]
At the end of the file, I was confused by the following fact:
0x1DD8 != 0x2056
That's more than obvious.

So let's look at the RAM, since the decompressed file is there.

*RAM dumping procedure" (doesn't contain more details in this document).
[screenshot]
Now I'll explain exactly how the compression works.
0B 00 01 00 -> I can't get it anywhere else (Of course, it's at the beginning of the file, isn't it)

Since we have 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 repeating so here comes the first
00 50 -> 00 means which byte I'll repeat - 50 breaking this byte in the middle makes 5 since the compression already uses 2 bytes in the file so it'd be useless using 0 or 1, so it'd be 05 + 2 + 1(since in HEX you count from zero) 8 bytes.

24 - no compression

00 00 00 you can "borrow" a bit behind.
03 00 -> being 00 = 00 + 3 (HEX begins to count etc) uses 3 bytes - 03 means to find the closest 00 00 00 right behind.

0B 01 00 00 00 00 00 is right behind so let's borrow it
0F50 -> 50 breaking the byte gives 5 being 5 + 2 + 1(HEX begins counting from zero etc) = 8, so get 8 bytes at 0F bytes behind.
[screenshot]
In LZ the zero counts as well -^ 0F -^

With that I don't even have to explain the other two, right.
But looking at this there's something missing. Where are the FLAGs? I don't see nearly any signs of use of compression or not, so it couldn't create a LZ randomly then.

Remember the "butter of your bread" right above? To save you the work of going up a few pages:

[super tiny screenshot]

Pay attention to the value, then the problem is simpler than you think. Let's count the size of the compressed data, remembering it's from the 11th byte because of the header.

[screenshot]
Stopping here giving the exact data value.
[screenshot]
So what would the other bytes be, doesn't seem to explain how many bytes to skip to the next LZUnknow[sic] compression?
Actually yes it does.

First of all the PS2 is little-endian, so we have to invert the data reading. Let's get an example with only the three bytes D0 41 ED. Use your OS's calculater and set it to scientific mode.

[screenshot]
Change the calculator value to HEXADECIMAL.
Since the PS2 processor and etc. reads the bytes and also bits the other way around be sure of that and let's put the borrowed bytes the other way around D041ED = ED41D0. Now comes the decompression key, change these bytes to binaries.
[screenshot]
Now explaing that:
0 = 1 byte uncompressed
AND
1 = 2 bytes indicating a LZ compression
That way reading right to left we have four zeroes, right? That way they're uncompressed,
Click to expand...

Code (Text):

0B 00 01 00

0 0 0 0

A 1 found followed by 0 and two 1:
Click to expand...

Code (Text):

LZ UNCOMPRESSED LZ

00 50 24 03 00

1 0 1

Playing a little more:
11000001
Click to expand...

Code (Text):

LZ LZ LZ

0F 50 05 10 5C 06 00 00 32 13 20

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

That way the bytes 0F 50, 00 32 and 20 02 are LZ compressions indicating each LZ section by binary numbers indicated by 1.

This explains the workings of the compression used in the Phantasy Star Generations 1 and 2 games [PS2].
The game can be modified without the necessity of a recompression, but the ISO would need to be reworked since the uncompressed data would be obviously, bigger than the original.
Click to expand...

(no it doesn't make much sense in portuguese either)

Andlabs · Aug 14, 2012

Reuploaded; thanks to SeanieB for hosting.
http://andlabs.lostsig.com/fzonebmp.7z
http://andlabs.lostsig.com/psccbmp.7z
http://andlabs.lostsig.com/gf2seebmp.7z

Also MAME 0.136u2 added the real Fantasy Zone II DX

Andlabs · Aug 17, 2012

And here is the long-overdue lzs2 decompressor source code that Treeki wrote a few months ago. (The only change I made was adding a comment "treeki 11 apr 2012" at the bottom noting what date the code was written, as I usually do with my code. I believe there was also a bugfix that he suggested that I made, but I don't remember exactly how that happened. Of course this entire parenthesized block is needless, but full disclosure)

http://andlabs.lostsig.com/lzs2decomp.c

It's a single C source file that doesn't have any external dependencies; just build and go.

Andlabs · Aug 21, 2012

Should I upload Monster World Complete Collection's assets or hold off because of Sega Vintage Collection? There is a TON of concept art and sheet music (quite possibly for the entire soundtracks) here.

Meat Miracle · Aug 21, 2012

I'm saving all of these archives, go ahead.

BSonirachi · Aug 22, 2012

Go for it. I've wanted to see MWIV's concept art.

MarzSyndrome · Oct 30, 2012

Just bumping to ask: what are the best and most convenient tools right now for extracting and decompressing files out of BIN.PAK archives?

I tried aluigi's QuickBMS and his Sega Ages 2500 script, but it doesn't seem to work completely right with Space Harrier Collection's BIN.PAK, stopping after a certain amount of files and reporting the following:

Code (Text):

Error: incomplete input file number 0, can't read 614400 bytes.

...so chances are other volumes could have this problem too.

(Also, I'm aware of the C script for the LZS2 decompressor Andlabs posted above, but I sure as hell don't know how you compile it.)

Andlabs · Nov 2, 2012

The format seems to have changed over time, so other than going in with the QuickBMS script's alleged format and using trial-and-ereror until you get the right results (which is what I did, but with a custom program), you're out of luck. I don't have access to anything Sega Ages 2500 right now so I don't remember what was changed in the last few entries, sorry. You might be lucky if you just start with figuring out where the file boundaries are without actually extracting anything, then changing something if some boundary doesn't look right.

Andlabs · Jan 24, 2013

Finally got around to doing the Monster World one.

original BMPs - http://andlabs.lostsig.com/mwccbmp.7z
170MB, decompresses to 732MB
md5sum 22173745208fc0513ae3fb4621f74136

converted to PNG and optimized (not fully, as pngrewrite stopped working for me for some reason) - http://andlabs.lostsig.com/mwccpng_opt.7z
186MB, decompresses to 187MB
md5sum cf34dd6d84a637401047865c756a1ecd

Loads of crap here: artwork, planning documents, sheet music, and box/cart/manual/flyer scans.

Enjoy!

ICEknight · Jan 25, 2013

Awesome, thank you very much!

EDIT: Holy shit, that was a lot of internal documents and scans even for games that weren't in this collection.

I guess that rules out the possibility of another Wonder Boy compilation with the rest of the games, unless they intend to pack no extras with it.

Also, wow, there's some scans of certain cartridge labels before they were even peeled out.

Meat Miracle · Jan 28, 2013

That gallery has everything to build the game off of except the actual source code. Impressive.

Rlan · Mar 9, 2014

Massive bump from a crazy old oldbie.

I've been doing some "art extraction" for some older games for a tumblr I'm running at the moment, and this is super awesome. the Phantasy Star art is super awesome, and the Monster World is great too.

Looking at this topic, it seems there were some issues with the Space Harrier collection? Did this ever get solved? I'd love to grab it.

Sega Ages 2500 assets

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