I.M.Meen (1995 PC/DOS) ANI format

[Darkfox]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/xsl64g

This is the intro animation to the game. The format is very similar to that used in the CD-i Zelda games. The compression is RLE7 I believe. And the palette is ALSO RLE compressed, but some places in the decompression currently comes up distorted. As seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8hTgBD-Ad8

Here is what we have so far.

Intro.ANI as in link above is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekkk8sVajqE

Minus the background which is a separate PCX image.

From KiiroBomber

Want some info ?
It's in RLE, same format as the Zelda CDi.
It's even almost the same for the pallette, it's RRGGBB (but it gets a 00 between two colors, it's like : RR GG BB 00 RR GG BB 00).

Could somebody fill in the gaps that makes it distorted?

[NotAnS]

I would really like to work on this, but I'm not really experienced, so I might not be of much help.

From the other topic:

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4 bytes string -> Signature ANI.
4 bytes unsigned long -> FileSize+6
4 bytes string -> Signature HDR.

I'm trying to find some more things about the header, but can't find anything for the dimensions of 320 or 200 (those are the dimensions that dosbox shows) which is anywhere near the beginning of the file

[Darkfox]

320x200 is also the size of the PCX backgrounds.

[NotAnS]

320x200 is also the size of the PCX backgrounds.

Maybe DosBox is only 320x200 because of the PCX file, because it seems like the PCX files are larger and better resolution. Unfortunately, I don't have a screenshot of one of the ani files, so I can't play around with it to find the actual resolution
EDIT: No, the actual animation is also 320x200

[Darkfox]

Yeah, it'd have to be to fit the background.

[NotAnS]

Yeah, it'd have to be to fit the background.

No, it can't be because at 320x200, the pixels are exactly the same size, horizontally and vertically. Not to mention, the animation hits the top, bottom, and sides of the image, which means it can't just be a smaller image.
Here's a screenshot that shows most those things

[Darkfox]

O_o You are saying it is 320x200, I'm saying it is 320x200 and yet you seem to be disagreeing? Or are you thinking I'm saying that the animation frames are being stretched? I'm not saying that.

[NotAnS]

O_o You are saying it is 320x200, I'm saying it is 320x200 and yet you seem to be disagreeing? Or are you thinking I'm saying that the animation frames are being stretched? I'm not saying that.

Oh sorry about that. I misunderstood what you said

There's something weird in the executable about the pallettes

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ANIM_PAL.PCX..Cannot open animation palette ANIM_PAL.PCX..Cannot read animation palette from ANIM_PAL.PCX

I can't find anything about an anim_pal.pcx, but if that's where the palletes are, then what is this at the beginning of the file?

[NotAnS]

Here's something that might be the pallete
It's 640 (assuming it counts the first line as 0) lines, and I tried looking for 640(280 in hex) in the header, and it showed nothing until a while

[Darkfox]

The palette data is within the ANI file. However the palettes unaccounted for are for the image files. The palette mentioned may in fact be the palette for the animated sprites (just a thought) which would also be greatly useful.

[NotAnS]

I'm going to try to find the exact colors in the intro via recorded video, then see where they all are in that pallet data I posted before.
I'll also try looking for that number of colors in the header, and hopefully something will pop up.

If you didn't know, the game can be used as a player by replacing the logo animation with other animation.
Also, is there an in depth description of how RLE7 works? I can't find one anywhere, and that CD-i site doesn't give anything more than an already compiled RLE7 viewer

[LuigiBlood]

RLE7 format :

CD-i's RLE 7

The CD-i RLE7 is similar to CLUT8 but it's a compressed format. However its size is generally smaller, its palette may not contains more than 128 colors (against 256 for CLUT . RLE is one of the simplest compression methods. Here are the rules.

If the first bit of the byte is false, the next 7 bits are the color code (reffering to the palette) to be drawn 1 time.
Else, the next 7 bits are the color code (refering to the palette) to be drawn x times. x actually is the following byte.
In the second case, if the following byte is 0 then draw the color to the end of the image's width.



For example, we have an image 2x4 pixels with two colors. if the pixel part is the next 5 hexa bytes : 0x80 0x00 0x01 0x00 0x81 0x00, the output will be :

0 0 0 0
1 0 1 1

Source : opt_fr_'s CD-i website

About the pallette :
http://i326.photobucket.com/albums/k425 ... EN-PAL.png

Pallette Data seems to be after PAL data and always beginning with FF FF FF 00.
Format :
RR GG BB 00 and it continues like that : RR GG BB 00 RR GG BB 00...

Now you can have ANI files working.
(By the way, i'm KiiroBomber)

EDIT :
Here's something to use with QuickBMS :

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Set Size 520
FindLoc PALoffset String "PAL data" 0
Math PALoffset += 16
log "Meen.pal" PALoffset Size

[Darkfox]

Thanks a lot for clarifying, man!

Edit: And the QuickBMS script!

[LuigiBlood]

The contents of this post was deleted because of possible forum rules violation.

[Darkfox]

Having some problems with the QuickBMS scripts. Is it because it is QuickBMS 0.2?

Fixed! Yup, just needed to update.

That one doesn't seem to extract palette data.