Extracting nds rom

[yosuke30]

Hey all,

just want to extract the nds rom Hotel Dusk - Room 215 by using taxahan (or dslazy, dsbuff whatever).
I can open the rom and extract it:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/440/viewp.gif/

actually i´m searching for an special artwork ingame (the picture "Angel opening a door").

The extracted files are many .wpf, .tbl, .bin files.
This is where i get stuck.
Is there (a simple) way to open/extract these files?

Sadly neither google nor nintendo themself had this special artwork i'm looking for.
I would highly appreciate every effort.

Thanks in advance


PS: Forgive my english, i'm german...

[Ryusui]

It takes a little bit of work. Console and handheld games don't store graphics in formats that typical graphics programs like Paint or Photoshop can open on their own.

You'll need something like Tile Layer Pro or Tile Molester - and that's assuming the graphics aren't compressed. Once you find the graphics, you'll also need to find the palette data: it might be in the same file, or it might be in another. The easiest way to tell if a DS file has palette data is to open it and search for the magic ID (that's a real term, BTW) "TTLP" - that's "PLTT" ("palette") stored in little-endian format.

[henke37]

I actually checked the pwf/tbl file pairs this morning. It doesn't seem like a very complicated archive format. Just fixed length strings, pointers and such. I think I might write some parsing code when I am done with playing the new zelda game.

[Auryn]

@Henke:
I am merge this and the PM from Court Record answer.

He need splitter and decompressor.

Yes,  the tbl are the file list and the the offset in the wpt file (even if the files names are repeated on top of each file inside the wpt).

The text files use probably a slide window compression because there are FF every 8bytes but I don't know if the graphics use the same compression.

[yosuke30]

It actually doesn't matter if it'll take a lot of work or not.
When i know, what i have to do and how, it can take as long as it want to. 

It takes a little bit of work. Console and handheld games don't store graphics in formats that typical graphics programs like Paint or Photoshop can open on their own.

You'll need something like Tile Layer Pro or Tile Molester - and that's assuming the graphics aren't compressed. Once you find the graphics, you'll also need to find the palette data: it might be in the same file, or it might be in another. The easiest way to tell if a DS file has palette data is to open it and search for the magic ID (that's a real term, BTW) "TTLP" - that's "PLTT" ("palette") stored in little-endian format.

Yes i thought so. I tried Tilemolester, but it couldn't open any files in the unpacked ds rom (now i know why).

I actually checked the pwf/tbl file pairs this morning. It doesn't seem like a very complicated archive format. Just fixed length strings, pointers and such. I think I might write some parsing code when I am done with playing the new zelda game.

You mean the wpf and tbl files of Hotel Dusk? Does writing a "parsing code" mean decompress the wpf files?
How much work would that be?

He need splitter and decompressor.

Yes,  the tbl are the file list and the the offset in the wpt file (even if the files names are repeated on top of each file inside the wpt).

The text files use probably a slide window compression because there are FF every 8bytes but I don't know if the graphics use the same compression.

I did only understand the first sentence, sorry... 




Decompressing this wpf/tbl files is a lot harder than i first thougt...
There seems to  be no chance for me alone to do this.
I'm really relying on you... i need this artwork really bad.

[Auryn]

My post was for Henke...some technical stuff :p

I told you before it will not be so easy.

And there is still the shadow of not finding it as you want.

I tried to look on the net if there is some wallpaper too but bad luck.
Cing has gone backrupt some years ago and even their site is gone.

[yosuke30]

My post was for Henke...some technical stuff :p

I told you before it will not be so easy.

And there is still the shadow of not finding it as you want.

I tried to look on the net if there is some wallpaper too but bad luck.
Cing has gone backrupt some years ago and even their site is gone.

And i have no contact adress from any of the staff of Hotel Dusk, neither has Nintendo.
I searched nearly every corner of the internet for contact information, but no success.
That's all i could do... that's why i'm here 

[henke37]

It isn't a lot of work to write a parser. Technically a parser doesn't mean that it supports unarchiving the file, but it is so close that you might as well group both under that name.

As for the difficulty, it is not hard at all. If you are able to use memcpy then you are qualified for this.

[Auryn]

Here a pic of the compressed text file, maybe the same used for graphics.

[yosuke30]

It isn't a lot of work to write a parser. Technically a parser doesn't mean that it supports unarchiving the file, but it is so close that you might as well group both under that name.

As for the difficulty, it is not hard at all. If you are able to use memcpy then you are qualified for this.

I would highly appreciate if you could write the parser for me.
Of course playing Zelda is more important, thous i still think that
Ocarina of Time on N64 is still the best (i even bought my own ocarina because of that game).

[What Defines A Monster?]

You know, if all you want is the image, there's an easier (or rather, I should say, less technical) way to get it.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but...

Couldn't you just get an emulator and a gamesave (you already have the ROM), and load the save from near where the image appears you want ingame? Then just do a screengrab of that?

In fact, if I am guessing correctly which image you want (the painting), the save on GameFAQs is right at the beginning of Chapter 10, which means you can get that image in less than five to six minutes of playthrough.

[yosuke30]

Good idea, but sadly you never see the whole painting ingame, because it's always blocked by
some random scenery. That's why you won't find it anywhere on the net.

It's the painting from minute 6 on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=89pkgp1qsp4


Here is it again:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/26/0823hotelduskroom215usa.png/

[What Defines A Monster?]

Good idea, but sadly you never see the whole painting ingame, because it's always blocked by
some random scenery. That's why you won't find it anywhere on the net.
Here is it again:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/26/0823hotelduskroom215usa.png/

Knowing what I know about development, and given the perpetually shaky finances and time constraints Cing suffered under- even if you extracted every image from the game I would wager a bet that anything more than you've got there never got "painted" at all... They wouldn't spend time on something the public wouldn't ever see. The closest you'll get is most likely the monochrome painting displayed at the very end of the game that spans two screens.

[yosuke30]

Knowing what I know about development, and given the perpetually shaky finances and time constraints Cing suffered under- even if you extracted every image from the game I would wager a bet that anything more than you've got there never got "painted" at all... They wouldn't spend time on something the public wouldn't ever see. The closest you'll get is most likely the monochrome painting displayed at the very end of the game that spans two screens.

I hope so bad that you're wrong...
Did you ever tried to find something so hard, that you could'nt even sleep at night?
That's excatly my feeling right now, if there is just the tiniest chance that this painting could be in the
rom, i won't give up...

[Klarth]

Good idea, but sadly you never see the whole painting ingame, because it's always blocked by
some random scenery. That's why you won't find it anywhere on the net.

It's very possible that only that portion of the painting exists in the game.  Have you tried toggling BG/sprite layers (probably won't work) or inspecting VRAM (should work).  Ripping it from VRAM should be pretty easy.

[yosuke30]

Ripping it from VRAM should be pretty easy.

If you know how to do it, then maybe yes. 
Sadly i don't know how to do it.

[yosuke30]

It isn't a lot of work to write a parser. Technically a parser doesn't mean that it supports unarchiving the file, but it is so close that you might as well group both under that name.

As for the difficulty, it is not hard at all. If you are able to use memcpy then you are qualified for this.

Hi Henke,

you're kinda like my only hope here.