Has anyone tried to get PS1 modles using 3DRipperDX?

[Verdite]

Thanks alot for trying :)

[starlord]

Hi there! Sorry for necrophreading, but it so happens I too have a question on the topic:

I'm trying to extract models from psygnosis's G police, colony wars and blast radius titles. However, our tries with colony wars ended up with a few problems:

Ripping the game with PSX Multirip and TMD Rip gives you two TMD files, but both files are corrupt. I can't open them with MilkShape 3D 1.8.2. TIF files are no problem, but they're just textures.
 
Now I remember searching for a way to rip the 3D "on screen". There are programs that can do that. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with the PS1 because it renders 3D "on a flat screen", meaning you'll get all 3D "points" data on a flat surface.
 
This is where I left my research. The game uses either a custom format, or it encrypt its TMD file :
- One file is 12,6 Kb, while the other is only 152 bytes. Maybe the first is a compilation of every ship model in one single file ? (models without textures don't weight heavily... but again, that's just a guess.)"
 
might anyone have any suggestions?

best regards.

[HwitVlf]

Howdy! I am a big G-Police fan too- nice to know there's still interest in it.  I don't know much that's helpful. I tried various rippers on G Police and didn't even get textures. Did you get the textures from the US PS1 version?

Looking at the PS1 disks, it seems likely that the models are in the RES.RDT file. The STR files are movies and XA are sound. "FRONT" and "GAME.BIN" seem too small to have any significant data.  Also, FYI The RES.RDT files on disk 1 and 2 are identical.

There's a PC version of G-Police (I have it) and I think there's a free demo available on game sites. It seems to use RDT archives also, but there's a tool here that says it can extract from G Police RDTs.  If the models aren't is a standard format, it would probably be easier to remake them from screen shots than to decipher the proprietary format.

What do you want to use these models for? 

[starlord]

hey! a g-police fan!

Actually, I was counting on bringing at least the g police models (and perhaps a few more) into a ship pack for the freespace SCP platform! Hopefully then, either me or someone else could have created a campaign starting after the events of G police 2 and wrap up the saga! I was especially counting on involving the excelsior and a bit more space combat!

Also, the same would apply to colony wars (and by extension blast radius)... could you confirm those also use .RDT files?

[Verdite]

I'm pretty good at making 'space music' if you need that, and by space music i mean sci-fi music, not music to get high to.

[starlord]

We may perhaps need that but at some point! First of all, model assets are the primary concern! Should those be preserved, then we will ensure that the colony wars/G police series will never die, given the modular nature of FSopen!

[HwitVlf]

hey! a g-police fan!

Actually, I was counting on bringing at least the g police models (and perhaps a few more) into a ship pack for the freespace SCP platform! Hopefully then, either me or someone else could have created a campaign starting after the events of G police 2 and wrap up the saga! I was especially counting on involving the excelsior and a bit more space combat!

Also, the same would apply to colony wars (and by extension blast radius)... could you confirm those also use .RDT files?

I looked into the 2 G Police titles and the 3 Colony Wars titles: Both GP titles use a RES.RDT archive. The CW titles use a similar GAME.RSC file. The other files on the disk are music/movies/dummy etc so it's very likely that the models are in these archives. I don't think the 'archives' are compressed; they're just a bunch of files lumped together.

Such 'lumped together' files often have a table of contents at the beginning. Looking into it, the Colony Wars RSC files have an easy to decipher table of contents with the model locations noted (see picture, the addresses are reversed ie 3c4e81 = 814e3c). I can tell where the 'block' ends by looking where the next block begins. When going to the indicated location, it looks like the data is a proprietary bundle of resources used for the named model (textures+ mesh+variants etc) , and I see the TMD tag several times in each block.

When I search the GP RDT file for TMD, I see the tag repeatedly also. It's likely that they're both using a TMD model with a modified/stripped header which means you'll need someone familiar enough with the TMD format to sort out Psygnosis' custom version. 

I can't help you with that. Attached is the extracted "L Destroyer" resource block as an example. The guy who runs swordofmoonlight.NET has been learning about the TMD format in order to extract Armored Core models (they're in a modified TMD format also). He might help you, but I wouldn't count on it.

Personally, I would just remake them from scratch. I know it may seem daunting if your new to 3D modeling, but spaceships are some of the easiest models to make because they are usually straight and symmetrical. metasequoia has some easy features that would really help like mirroring, lathe, and the Pipe plugin. :)

[starlord]

Well that's already something quite useful! have you any idea how to contact that person you mentionned?

Also, did you discover anything regarding the G police table of contents?

Again, thank you for your advice!

[HwitVlf]

Just post on his forum here to contact Mick. He's trying to modify the Sword of Moonlight game making engine to let it make Armored Core style games, so he was ripping AC models to use as resources.

I couldn't make out anything definitive in the GP files. There are several places that are obviously tables of some sort, but they could be for anything since there are no name-labels.  Please keep me updated on this project. It has some neat potential :)

[dmpdesign]

If I may offer some advice, when you contact him refer to him as Holy Diver instead of Mick ;)