Hi Octane

Hi Octane

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Levels?	Not editable
Tiles?	Not editable
Sprites?	Not editable
Fullscreen?	Not editable
Sound?	Not editable
Music?	Not editable
Text?	Not editable
Story/cutscenes?	Not editable
UI/menus?	Not editable
Demos?	Unknown

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List of mods Modding tips Cheats/Debug

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All related pages

Hi Octane is hover-car racing game. According to Sean Cooper it was made in 6.5 weeks using engine code from Syndicate and Magic Carpet. There are at least two releases of the game, the initial release (executable contains string Jun 10 1995 17:45:48) with 6 levels, and a later extended version (Oct 23 1995 15:57:32) with 9 levels, additional game modes, and slightly reworked levels. In certain file format details the used version makes a difference.

Tools

Level inspector and incomplete editor by movAX13h (contains all assets of the original game extracted/converted by srtuss): https://github.com/movAX13h/HiOctaneTools

File formats

The following file formats are used by this game.

Filename	Format	Details
sounds/music.dat	see below	Archive containing music files in different formats: XMI Format, GEN Format, ROL Format, WTB Format. There are five files per format : TGAME1, TGAME2, TGAME3, TGAME4, TINTRO2.

MUSIC.DAT

• read the INT32LE at EOF and seek to returned position
• count the N number of INT16LE that equals 0x0001, then read N of the following struct:

Data type	Name	Description
INT32LE	offTunes	Offset to the list of tunes
INT32LE	offTune1	Offset to the first tune
INT32LE	unknown	Unknown (always 0xC0000000, or 192)
INT32LE	lenTunes	Length of all tunes together, bytes

• for each of the former struct
  • seek to offTunes
  • read one of the following struct, its lenTune indicates the byte sum of tunes following
  • read as many of the following struct until their lenTune sum equals the one in previous step

Data type	Name	Description
CHAR	name[12]	File name of the tune, \0 padded
CHAR	padding[6]	Padding bytes
INT32LE	offTune	Tune relative offset
CHAR	padding[4]	Padding bytes
INT32LE	lenTune	Tune length, bytes
INT16LE	unknown	Unknown (always 0x5A00, or 90)

• you now have a catalog of a collection of tunes, e.g. five ROL songs, five WTB songs etc
• to extract a song, copy lenTune bytes starting at offTune1 + offTune, file name is name

RNC-compressed files

Many of the game's files are compressed using the Rob Northern Compression format; some of them such as SOUND\SOUND.DAT are a concatenation of many RNC archives simply glued together.

A command-line unpacker can be found here : Bullfrog games RNC Utilities (from Unpacking RNC files)

DAT/TAB pairs

Can be decompressed using Bullfrog games DAT/TAB Graphics extractor (they first must be decompressed if they are RNC-compressed).

DAT format:

Without a TAB file, it's raw pixels; with a TAB file it's a form of line by line RLE compression where only transparent pixels are compressed.

TAB format:

Data type	Name	Description
INT32LE	position	Image position in .DAT
INT16LE	width	Image width
INT16LE	height	Image height

TMAPS:

Contains powerups and some HUD elements but TAB format is different:

Data type	Name	Description
INT32LE	flat	Size of RNC stream unpacked, useless as it's contained in stream header already
INT32LE	pos	Position in DAT
INT16LE	index	Some index but can be duplicate, so likely a type or category instead

There are N+1 entries to be able to compute last item size in DAT.

Each image has the following format:

Data type	Name	Description
INT16	unknown	Unknown
INT8	width	Image width
INT8	height	Image height
INT8[]	pixels	Image pixels, 8-bit paletted

Game's files

Name	Format	RNC compressed	Notes
data\hfont0-0.dat data\hfont0-0.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Thin white font (SVGA)
data\hspr0-0.dat data\hspr0-0.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Editor icons (large)
data\intro.dat	Autodesk FLI animation	No	Game introduction
data\logo0-0.dat data\logo0-0.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Game logo (VGA)
data\logo0-1.dat data\logo0-1.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Game logo (SVGA)
data\mfont0-0.dat data\mfont0-0.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Thin white font (VGA)
data\mspr0-0.dat data\mspr0-0.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Editor icons (small)
data\olfnt0-0.dat data\olfnt0-0.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Large white font (VGA)
data\olfnt0-1.dat data\olfnt0-1.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Large white font (SVGA)
data\onet0-*.dat data\oscr0-*.dat	Raw VGA image, 320×200 and 640×480	Yes	Loading and selection screens
data\osfnt0-0.dat data\osfnt0-0.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Small white font (VGA)
data\osfnt0-1.dat data\osfnt0-1.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Small white font (VGA)
data\palet0-0.dat	VGA Palette	No	The palette of every asset of the game, unless specified
data\panel0-0.dat data\panel0-0.tab	Unknown format	No	HUD 2-players (SVGA)
data\panel0-1.dat data\panel0-1.tab	Unknown format	No	HUD 1-player (SVGA)
data\panel9-0.dat data\panel9-0.tab	Unknown format	No	HUD 2-players (VGA)
data\panel9-1.dat data\panel9-1.tab	Unknown format	No	HUD 1-player (VGA)
data\pfont0-0.dat data\pfont0-0.tab	Unknown format	No	Large green font (VGA)
data\pfont0-1.dat data\pfont0-1.tab	Unknown format	No	Large green font (SVGA)
data\point0-0.dat data\point0-0.tab	Unknown format	Yes	Editor cursors
data\puzzle.dat	Raw VGA image, 112×96	No	The cheat puzzle activated with CTRL-Tab in-game
data\sky0-*.dat	Raw VGA Image, 256×256	Yes	Horizon of each track
data\srch0-0.dat	Raw VGA Image, 32×32	Yes	Looks like a radar but seems to be unused
data\table0-*.dat	Unknown format	Yes	These files differ by at most a few bytes, their name suggests a sine table but this is pure speculation. The following pattern appears when they are interpreted as a 256 pixels wide image:
data\textu0-*.dat	Raw VGA image, 64×16384	Yes	64×64 terrain textures
data\title.dat	Raw VGA image, 320×200	Yes	The introductory screen
data\tmaps.dat		Yes	see above
data\tmaps.tab		No	see above
data\track0-0.dat data\track0-0.tab data\track0-1.dat data\track0-1.tab	Unknown format	No/Yes	Contain the images of the level minimaps that are shown in the HUD. The game does work without them, but then the minimap is not shown. Initial game version does not use RNC compression, extended version does.
objects/data/tex0-0.dat objects/data/tex0-0.tab	Hi-Octane Texture Atlas, 256×768	No	In-game textures
objects/data/tex0-1.dat objects/data/tex0-1.tab	Hi-Octane Texture Atlas, 256×88	No	In-game textures

Note: none of the TAB files are RNC-compressed.

Notes

General

The image formats above are partially decoded, they are still missing palette information.

All the images are paletted, 8 bits per pixels.

INTRO.DAT

Header can be fixed using Autodesk Animator FLI files fixer but since format is pretty old and that Autodesk Animation Player 1.10 is a legacy Win16 executable, it is not very convenient to use as of today.

Instead, the file can be converted by FFMPEG to either BMP or AVI,

Convert the animation to individual images, handle last invalid frame:

<syntaxhighlight lang="text"> ffmpeg -i INTRO.DAT -vframes 548 -pix_fmt bgr24 intro%03d.bmp </syntaxhightlight>

Convert the sequence of images to a raw AVI and respect the original frame rate:

<syntaxhighlight lang="text"> ffmpeg -r 14 -i intro%03d.bmp -vcodec rawvideo intro.avi </syntaxhightlight>

Note that since the underlying format does not handle audio, there won't be any.

CONFIG.DAT

Contains the configuration of the game, current state of game logic relevant variables (for example next selected race track), and the Highscore table. Obvious settings like graphics mode (VGA vs. SVGA) or if computer players are enabled are not stored in the configuration file, and are reset to the default value during each start of the game. The save game files reuse the same file format, but I believe for save game files some data fields will most likely be ignored or not used.

The advantage is that the users game settings are restored for each save game independently. The initial game release config file always has a size of 11449 bytes, the extended game release config file 137833 bytes.

Offset	Data type	only ext Version	Description
0x0000	Null terminated string	No	Current championship name (max 12 characters)
0x034D	UINT8	Yes	Current value for Death match lives (0 min up to 4 max)
0x034E	UINT8	Yes	Current value for Hot seat players (2 min up to 8 max)
0x034F	UINT8	Yes	Current value for Hot seat racing time (1 min up to 5 max)
0x0350	Null terminated string	Yes	Player 2 name (max 8 characters), If empty string Player 2 name not set
0x0370	Null terminated string	Yes	Player 3 name (max 8 characters), If empty string Player 3 name not set
0x0390	Null terminated string	Yes	Player 4 name (max 8 characters), If empty string Player 4 name not set
0x03B0	Null terminated string	Yes	Player 5 name (max 8 characters), If empty string Player 5 name not set
0x03D0	Null terminated string	Yes	Player 6 name (max 8 characters), If empty string Player 6 name not set
0x03F0	Null terminated string	Yes	Player 7 name (max 8 characters), If empty string Player 7 name not set
0x0410	Null terminated string	Yes	Player 8 name (max 8 characters), If empty string Player 8 name not set
0x094B	UINT8	No	Current selected player craft color scheme (0 = Madmedicine, 1 = Assassins, 2 = Gorehounds, 3 = Foofighters, 4 = Dethfest, 5 = Firephreaks, 6 = Stormriders, 7 = Bullfrog)
0x094C	UINT8	No	Current selected player craft (0 = KD1 Speeder, 1 = Berserker, 2 = Jugga, 3 = Vampyr, 4 = Outrider, 5 = Flexiwing)
0x094F	Null terminated string	No	Player 1 name (max 8 characters)
0x0977	UINT8	No	Current game difficulty setting (0 = easy up to 3 = highest difficulty)
0x097D	UINT8	No	Music volume (0 = Off up to 200 = max volume)
0x0981	UINT8	No	Sound volume (0 = Off up to 200 = max volume)
0x0994	STRUCT	No	Pos1 Highscore Entry (each entry 39 bytes, detail please see below)
0x09BB	STRUCT	No	Pos2 Highscore Entry
...
0x0C79	STRUCT	No	Pos20 Highscore Entry (last one shown in game table, but there are many more in file afterwards)
...
0x2996	UINT8	No	Shading Off = 0, Shading On = 1 (Default On)
0x299A	UINT8	No	Sky Off = 0, Sky On = 1 (Default On)
0x299E	UINT8	No	Renderer Setting 1 (TextureMapping lowest setting: 0x299E = 0, 0x29A2 = 0, 0x29A6 = 0; TextureMapping 2nd lowest setting: 0x299E = 0, 0x29A2 = 0, 0x29A6 = 1)
0x29A2	UINT8	No	Renderer Setting 2 (TextureMapping 3nd lowest setting: 0x299E = 1, 0x29A2 = 1, 0x29A6 = 1; TextureMapping 4th lowest setting: 0x299E = 2, 0x29A2 = 2, 0x29A6 = 1)
0x29A6	UINT8	No	Renderer Setting 3 (TextureMapping 5th lowest setting: 0x299E = 3, 0x29A2 = 3, 0x29A6 = 1 (default value); TextureMapping highest setting: 0x299E = 3, 0x29A2 = 4, 0x29A6 = 1)
0x2C76	UINT8	No	Current selected race track (0 = level 1, 1 = level 2, and so on)
0x2C7A	UINT8	No	Current selected game language (0 = English, 1 = German, 2 = French, 3 = Spanish, 4 = Italian)

Highscore Table Entry Struct Detail

• 1 byte for highscore value
• 3 bytes of unknown data
• 1 bytes for player assessement string table index
• 9 bytes for player name best lap, 9th byte = string termination char
• 25 bytes of unknown data

The player assessement string table (inside the executable) has the following order:

• Immortal
• Hardwired
• Outta Control
• Demon
• Deadly
• Wrecker
• Dangerous
• Tailgater
• Antisocial
• Dust Devil
• Upwardly Mobile
• Mediocre
• Too Slow
• Endangered Species
• Target Practice
• Back Marker
• Canyon Kisser
• Victim
• Scrap
• Smear
• Cheating Sucks (this is actually an additional entry, which is not possible according to the 20 different assessement point range)

Level file format

Many details about the Hi Octane level file format were found out in the past already, and are for example documented under the HiOctaneTools link mentioned above. One specific information that was missing until now is where to find the starting location for the race and type/location of chargers in the level file. The source code of the HiOctaneTools already contained the readout of a POI (point of interest) value from the map data which already pointed to the area of important locations, but was still lacking the information what type of location this exactly is, and what size it has in terrain cells. I found that the POI value points to certain file offsets in the level file.

POI value	Level file offset
992	246924
993	247009
994	247094
995	247179
996	247264
997	247349
998	247434
999	247519

Each entry at this specific file locations is 85 bytes long. This bytes have the following format:

Byte Nr	Data type	Name	Description
0	UINT8	Region type	1 = Shield charger, 2 = Fuel charger, 3 = Ammo charger, 4 = Race start location
25	INT16	X coordinate	X coordinate of cell right in the middle of the defined location
27	INT16	Y coordinate	Y coordinate of cell right in the middle of the defined location
46	UINT8	Region size in Cells in X direction	Counted from the middle cell to the outer edge of the region
48	UINT8	Region size in Cells in Y direction	Counted from the middle cell to the outer edge of the region

Credits (in alphabetical order)

Aybe

Malvineous

movAX13h

srtuss

Syndicate series unofficial fan site for the various utilities.

woalexan

Links

Game demo, Network and MPU-401 patches

Hi-Octane + General MIDI = crash?