[Initial D Arcade Stage 6 / 7 / 8] Avatar archive (.avt)

[Lordmau5]

Hey,

so first up thank you so much for all the work you're doing in regards to game modification.
UNXWB, for example, allowed (and still allows!) us to get custom music into the Initial D Arcade Stage games

Now, with card emulation, we've been fiddling around with modifying our avatars (different hairstyle / shirts / mouth / ...) via. hex editing the card files.
That works pretty well already.

When trying to get images of the individual "avatar parts" into corresponding .PNG files, GLIntercept just saved the avatar itself.
Example:

Which means that the avatar picture seems to be built dynamically ingame and it's storing this specific image in the cache / memory somewhere.
This avatar is in the main menu. The background is being appended apparently.

On the other hand, when you're in-game the background doesn't seem to be there...


Additionally, we're relatively certain that the individual avatar parts are in files in the sub-directory of the games (data/AVATAR).

I've uploaded the .avt files from each game (ID6, ID7 and ID8) here:
https://ufile.io/8hqrv

Opening them up with a hex editor shows some

Code: Select all

*mannequin*

string in a few locations...
I'm relatively sure there is a pattern in this, though I have absolutely no idea what the end result would be.

Assumptions were made that it could be some form of DDS structure, but neither of us knows.


Would be amazing if you could have a look into this

~ Greets

[aluigi]

This is the max I can do because it's a terrible format:
http://aluigi.org/bms/initiald_avt.bms

[Lordmau5]

First up, thank you so much for the quick response!

I ... did not expect it that fast, assuming you've never worked with this format before

Then again... You've been doing this for how long now?
It's probably easier to figure out repetitive patterns by now, haha



Can I assist you on this in any other way?
I've tried looking around the decrypted EXE that is needed to play the game through an emulator, so I assumed there's probably something useful in there.

However, since I don't really know much about reverse-engineering, I'm kinda lost on this :/

The only 2 occurrences with ".avt" in their text are the two first images in this imgur album:
https://imgur.com/a/Djfau

The rest seem to be the sub-methods / functions (according to IDA I assume?)

I'm not sure how useful this could be but if you are interested in continuing to look into this, I can upload the EXE and maybe you can have a look through it when you have some time?

Also, it seems to reference two files called "myfout.dat" and "myfout.tbl".
The first is "openly" available in the specific sub-directory data/MYFRAME/, but the other one isn't available somewhere...

I've tried extracting some of the .XAF files but haven't found it in either one of them, sadly.



Anyway, once again thank you so much for doing all of this