The Blues Brothers Sprite Format
| Format type | Tileset |
|---|---|
| Hardware | EGA |
| Max tile count | 65,535 |
| Palette | Default EGA |
| Tile names? | No |
| Minimum tile size (pixels) | 0×0 |
| Maximum tile size (pixels) | 65,535×65,535 |
| Plane count | 4 |
| Plane arrangement | Graphic-planar |
| Transparent pixels? | Unknown |
| Hitmap pixels? | No |
| Metadata? | None |
| Supports sub-tilesets? | No |
| Compressed tiles? | No |
| Hidden data? | No |
| Games |
This file format is used by The Blues Brothers to store its sprites and foreground tiles, which have at most 16 colors.
File format
A file in this format starts with the number of sprites in the file:
| Data type | Description |
|---|---|
| UINT16LE count | Number of sprites in the file |
It's followed by count records in the following format:
| Data type | Description |
|---|---|
| UINT16LE height | Height of the sprite in pixels |
| UINT16LE width | Width of the sprite in pixels |
| BYTE[height * (width / 8) * 4] | Sprite data in graphic-planar EGA format with four planes |
Ripping
To rip a file use the following tools:
(you need .NET Framework 4.5 to run them)
Example for an image from SPRITE.SQV:
- unsqueeze the file (UNSQZ)
- extract the sprites to PNG (Sqv2Png)
- extract the palette from the right source (PngPaletteExtractor), for this example right source is MAG.CK1 (unsqueeze, convert LBM to PNG, extract the palette)
- change the palette of the sprites (PngPaletteChanger)
Note: to convert from LBM see LBM_Format for converters
Credits
This file format was reverse engineered by Frenkel. Ripping process and tools (except UNSQZ) by Aybe. If you find this information helpful in a project you're working on, please give credit where credit is due. (A link back to this wiki would be nice too!)