Xargon
| Levels? |  Editable |
|---|---|
| Tiles? |  Not editable |
| Sprites? | Not editable |
| Fullscreen? | Not editable |
| Sound? | Editable |
| Music? | Editable |
| Text? | Editable |
| Story/cutscenes? | Editable |
| UI/menus? | Not editable |
| Demos? | Unknown |
Xargon is a game that has several code and game play similarities to Jill of the Jungle, with support for CGA and EGA removed, and a few minor additions such as palette animation. The two games share many other features, such as the file formats for game levels and graphics.
Allen Pilgrim the programmer for Xargon mentions the following regarding the similarities:
"Note: I did not use the "Jill of the Jungle" engine to create Xargon. Tim helped me learn C programming when I wrote Kiloblaster and was a great help when working on Xargon. He provided support routines like sound and graphics. I wrote my own code. When I wrote Xargon, I did copy and paste some routines because I was using the same support code. I wrote the bulk of the code for Kiloblaster and Xargon. I did all of the Game Design for both games. -Allen Pilgrim
I, Allen Pilgrim, the Game Designer and Programmer for Xargon, released the "Xargon Level Editor" on April 1st, 2024, with substantial documentation. It can be downloaded from the RGB Classic Games archive."
Xargon is now open source, and the released code has also been useful in reverse engineering Jill of the Jungle.
Tools
The following tools are able to work with this game.
| Name | Platform | Group/archives | Levels | Graphics | Music | Sounds | Text | Saves | .exe patch | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camoto | Linux/Windows | N/A | Edit | Read | Edit | No | No | No | No | |
| Xargon open source | SDL (Linux/Mac/Win) | N/A | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| Xargon Mapper and Resource Extractor | Python | N/A | View | View | No | No | No | No | No | |
| xMod | Windows | N/A | Edit | View | No | Edit | Edit | No | No | |
| Built-in editor (April 2024 version only) | DOS | N/A | Edit | No | No | No | Edit | No | No |
File formats
This section lists the major file formats used in the game. The file extensions .xr[0123] refer to a specific episode - this will be .xr1 to .xr3, and .xr0 for a "global" file that is used by all episodes.
| File name | Description |
|---|---|
| config.xr[123] | Configuration file in CFG Format (Jill of the Jungle) |
| song_*.xr[0123] | Music in CMF Format |
| tiles.xr[123] | Tile information in DMA Format |
| board_*.xr[123] map.xr[123] demo?.xr[123] intro.xr[123] story.xr[123] |
Game levels in Jill of the Jungle Map Format. map.* are the overhead maps, demo* are the demo levels, intro.* are the main menu backgrounds and story.* are the backgrounds behind the in-game story screens. The overhead map is saved into board_t.xr[123] when entering a level, so that it can be restored when the level is complete (so this file is regularly overwritten by the game.) |
| *_mac.xr[0123] | Input macros for demos in MAC Format (Jill of the Jungle) |
| graphics.xr[123] | Shapes (images) in SHA Format |
| audio.xr[123] | Digitised sound and PC speaker effects in VCL Format |
| save_[0-9].xr[123] | Saved games - just dumps of the entire level in its current state (same format as actual levels) |
| screen_[12].xr0 | Images used for episode selection menu, in PCX Format |
| screen_3.xr0 | B800 Text screen shown after quitting the episode selection menu |
A palette is also located at offset 0x26b32 in each episode's .exe file (i.e. xrfile0[123].exe.) The offset is the same for each episode, and there is only one known version of each file. The palette is 768 bytes long in 6-bit VGA format. This palette however, does not appear to be used, and is likely a leftover from Jill of the Jungle. The game's main palette is stored in graphics.xr[123] as tile #0 in tileset #5. (There is also another palette in tileset #53, tile #0, but its purpose is currently unknown.)
Notes
- The text image shown during init (when detecting and configuring hardware) is stored inside the .exe in "TheDraw Crunched Screen Image" format. At first glance this appears to be a relatively simple RLE-based format. It appears to be the only type of compression used throughout the entire game, so reverse engineering it is perhaps not so important. (The decompression code was not included in the source release.)
Further information
Allen Pilgrim released Xargon as freeware on 4 August 2008, and included the source code in the release. It can be downloaded from the Classic DOS Games archive.
Allen Pilgrim released a version of Xargon that contains the original built-in level editor used to make the game's levels on April 1, 2024. The release includes detailed instructions for using the level editor as well as two new levels. It can be downloaded from the Classic DOS Games archive. This release also restores the ability to record a demo macro.
K1n9_Duk3 released xMod in August 2024, a modern GUI-based tool for Windows that simplifies the process of editing many aspects of Xargon, including levels, game text, and sound effects. Some users may find this tool easier to use for editing the game's content than the original built-in level editor. A similar tool, jMod, exists for editing Jill of the Jungle.
The code is currently being ported to SDL so it will run natively on modern platforms (latest code is at https://github.com/Malvineous/xargon)
See also
- Jill of the Jungle - the forerunner to Xargon (which shares many similarities and file formats)