Monopoly's huge .GCF file.

[bizzybody]

The TikGames Monopoly and Monopoly Here and Now games use a very large file named game.gcf

The original Monopoly version uses game.gcf 14,372 KB, MonopolyPB.exe 10,908 KB and a single DLL MonPlg.dll 776 KB

For Here and Now, game.gcf 12,788 KB, Monopoly.exe 1,710 KB, MonPLG.dll, 780 KB, and MonRes.dll 98 KB

It tickles my curiosity why the original version game uses a much larger executable and why the Here and Now version uses two DLL's vs one for the other.

If the graphics can be ripped, I'm planning on making my own Monopoly board game that combines the old and new versions.

[Mr.Mouse]

Can you use the FileCutter to cut some samples of this large file ?

http://www.xentax.com/downloads/tools/filecutter.zip

[bizzybody]

I don't know if that would do much good. I opened the files in notepad and the contents for the two versions are completely different. Here & Now's file shows up as mostly a bunch of inverted triangles while the original version's file looks more like what I've seen opening other binary files in notepad to see what, if anything, it has for header information that might identify it.

Here & Now version download. http://downloads.gamehouse.com/pub/MonopolyInstall.exe

Original version download. http://downloads.gamehouse.com/pub/Mono ... nstall.exe

Downloads are 22 and 20 megs. I got them on dialup.

[Mr.Mouse]

The archive has an index table that is ZLib compressed.

[Mr.Mouse]

Okay, so this is the format

Code: Select all

// Main Header

uint16	Uncompressed size of File info Header
uint16	Compressed size of File info Header
[data]	ZLib compressed file info header

	// Data

	Zlib compressed files

Uncompress the File info header and you will get a list of resources in this archive

// File info header

[1]	Version number?
uint16	Number of resources in the archive

	// Resource info
	
	[1]	Size of the filename string
	[n]	filename
	uint32	Compressed size of resource
	uint32	Uncompressed size of resource

[bizzybody]

And that helps me how? I'm not a programmer, I just want to extract the graphics.

[Rheini]

We need much more programmers ^^

[Mr.Mouse]

And that helps me how? I'm not a programmer, I just want to extract the graphics.

Well, programming a tool that will help you out costs time. Time usually is money, but not here, unless you want to change that. In any event, by posting the format (and not having time myself at that instance) I had hoped that some coder would have picked it up and programmed a tool to extract the stuff using my info. No one did, probably due to lack of unpayed time

[Zench]

If nobody else volunteers I might be able to whip something up (for free)…

[bizzybody]

The reason I'm wanting to rip the graphics is I have an idea for combining the original and here & now Monopoly games.

[Mr.Mouse]

If nobody else volunteers I might be able to whip something up (for free)…

By all means, please do !

[Zench]

Sorry that it's a bit late, but here's an small extractor for the original Monopoly that I threw together. It's command line, I hope that's okay. Maybe I will write a MexCom plugin for it sometime. Call it with the input file:

Code: Select all

GcfExtr game.gcf

[Mr.Mouse]

Nice work! I feel a newspost coming up , right?

[bizzybody]

Yay! Extraction works. Appears to also work on the Here and Now version.

But now I need to find an extractor for Shockwave Flash.

[bizzybody]

Found one that appears to work. Dcomsoft SWF Picture Extractor. http://www.dcomsoft.com/ It's free, as in *free*, not a "free" download of a demo or trial version.

It found 2202 images in game.swf from the original version of Monopoly.

Thanks, Zench!

Edit: Well poop! SWF Picture Extractor 1.7 has a bug. It correctly displays .bmp and .jpg files with transparency but when extracting them it converts the alpha channel to solid black. I sent Dcomsoft a bug report. Now to find a different .swf ripper.