Talk:CC Format

The compression format looks a lot like LZW compression - is it a known algorithm like this or is it custom? -- Malvineous 10:57, 23 August 2011 (GMT)

Argh, I feel so stupid! Yes, indeed it's the LZW compression. The only notable difference being the 0x1000 key which is used for dictionary reset and not errors. -- Driedfruit 19:31, 23 August 2011 (GMT)

Is the 140 entry limit a hard limit, or just coincidence that no archives have more than this many files? i.e. will the game fail to run if you put 300 files in the archive, adjusting offsets as appropriate? -- Malvineous (talk) 09:51, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

The maximum number of entries encountered is 136. The number 140 comes from the fact only that much (1122 bytes) is read as FAT by the game, so, yeah, I assume adding more entries will not work. -- Driedfruit (talk) 12:15, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

BTW, I would love libgamearchive/Camoto to handle this format for me, because writing full extractor/compressor is a PITA, but I unfortunately wouldn't be able to add this support myself. -- Driedfruit (talk) 12:17, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Happy to add support since the format is quite well documented. One question though, as a technicality - do you think the compression is part of the CC format itself or not? As in, should Camoto transparently compress and decompress files, or should the files be inserted unchanged and you would already have compressed versions of them as the compression is part of those files' formats? I ask because it says the game will read files outside of the .cc archive, but they have to be compressed. This suggests to me that all the file formats in the game are compressed with the same method, and the .cc format just groups them together, without technically compressing anything. What do you think? -- Malvineous (talk) 21:34, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Great question. I think on principle, extracted files should be kept archived, for the reasons you outlined. However on practice, that is very inconvenient for both modders and tool writers (i.e. simple image conversion tool becomes a tad more quite complex with that approach). For my simplistic tool I went with full decompression, but I'm not 100% convinced I did the right thing. The decision is yours. BTW, since I posted that comment, I bit the bullet and did write the full set of tools. I know this is not the right place to ask about it, but should I create/post an article about them on this wiki? The thing that irks me is that it's not a single program, so I'm not quite sure how to go about that (they do form a set and will be distributed in a single .zip archive). Can I create an article called, for example, "openkb tools" and explain how to use them all together? Again, sorry for asking in the wrong place. Driedfruit (talk) 07:02, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Good point - might be better to handle compression in the archive format so none of the other formats have to worry about it. Camoto isn't a single program either, so I have created a single page called Camoto which lists them all, and then I link to that page in the table of tools (figuring people can work out which of the programs they need to use.) I'm sure you could do the same for openkb tools. Just remember that the ModdingWiki isn't meant to be a blog, so explanations and tutorials about how to use your tools are most welcome, but things like version history, compile instructions and other info should stay on the web site for your tools. -- Malvineous (talk) 09:11, 7 December 2014 (UTC)