Wipeout The Game POD5 and other files

Extraction and unpacking of game archives and compression, encryption, obfuscation, decoding of unknown files
rexat
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:19 am

Wipeout The Game POD5 and other files

Post by rexat »

Hello, I've recently been getting into modifying games I used to always play when I was young, one of them being a Wii game based off the TV show Wipeout. Most of the game's files are stored in POD5 files, in which there is a script available for on the QuickBMS page. However it can only extract one or two of the POD files successfully, when I try to extract the rest, QuickBMS brings up an error and only extracts a few files from them.
Inside the files I've found other formats, most of which don't have a header with the kind of file it is, such as TEX, and phys2b. Some common files can be edited with stuff like Notepad++, since they seem to be scripts. (XUI, DANTE, lvl for example)

Here are some samples I've uploaded to Google Drive:

POD5 file that can be extracted w/ the POD5 script (WIISOUND) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hglric ... 9RvSV/view
POD5 file that can't be extracted w/ the POD5 script (WIIMODEL) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a0jGH8 ... npUgj/view
XUS file that seems to not have a filetype in the header [EDIT: Opened in a hex editor, It starts with XUIS] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OM3hMs ... GysWI/view
Another file that might be an archive of sorts, but not really sure what it is (Starts with WDF2) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F54DtP ... mP9DS/view

Sorry if I've asked anything that may already be known, if I referred to anything incorrectly, or put this in the wrong place, I'm new to this kind of stuff.
rexat
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:19 am

Re: Wipeout The Game POD5 and other files

Post by rexat »

Sorry for the bump, I didn't feel like making a new thread for this was needed, but looking through the files I've found a file archive I have been overlooking, mainly for audio files it seems. I've tried comparing it to other archive formats, but haven't had any luck. It is in the WIISOUND.POD linked above, and the file itself is attached to this post.

Another thing I've found out over the last few months is that some of the raw files were originally more common formats (for example .tex used to be .tga). If necessary I can link samples of those to see if anyone else can find out how to preview them.
Acewell
Posts: 706
Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2014 1:06 am

Re: Wipeout The Game POD5 and other files

Post by Acewell »

rexat wrote:Here are some samples I've uploaded to Google Drive:

POD5 file that can be extracted w/ the POD5 script (WIISOUND) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hglric ... 9RvSV/view
POD5 file that can't be extracted w/ the POD5 script (WIIMODEL) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a0jGH8 ... npUgj/view


try this modified bms script. :D
Wipeout_Wii_pod.zip

there was 4 compressed files in WIIMODEL.POD sample which errored with clog
so i just have them written as-is to a folder named "COMPRESSED" until
someone else can figure that out. :)
rexat
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:19 am

Re: Wipeout The Game POD5 and other files

Post by rexat »

Thank you, the new bms script works well with all of the POD files! :)
I've also found out that the demo.snb file I sent above is just a fraction of the WIISOUND.POD file. Maybe there is still a way to extract the wav files inside it though?

Speaking of those, most of the files inside the POD archives are encrypted in some sort of way. They used to be other, more common file types. These are the two I know of:

.smp were .wav files - the smp files can be imported as raw data in programs such as Audacity, but obviously don't have very good quality when played that way.
.tex were .tga files - found this out while looking through the COMMON.POD files, as when loading texture files in menus, they use .tga instead.

I've linked a zip of samples for these two file types, plus some other ones I don't know too much about. I put three different files inside for formats that have multiple files, that way it could be easier to tell differences between the files. (40 files in total, 14 different types) Something that might help with researching these is that there's an unused game intro that says "Infernal Engine", which I'm assuming is what the game was made with.

ZIP with many different kinds of files in the game: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Pfa8I ... sp=sharing

EDIT: Found out that VGMStream supports the .smp files and they can be converted to .wav that way (I already tried converting a file when I first looked at the .smp files a few months ago, but it was an outdated build, and I never upgraded it until now)