Kirby Cosmic Chaos demo files - Can someone look into these?

[Joe Forster/STA]

The .dat files seem to be a collection of files, with a header and a directory. There are file names ending with .mesh and .skeleton, those are probably the 3D models. There are also PNG's in the .dat files and their "%PNG" "IHDR" and "IEND" signatures are clearly visible so the .dat files are not compressed. However, if you can extract the 3D model files, you still don't know their internal format.

[3dmodelingmodest]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

The .dat files seem to be a collection of files, with a header and a directory. There are file names ending with .mesh and .skeleton, those are probably the 3D models. There are also PNG's in the .dat files and their "%PNG" "IHDR" and "IEND" signatures are clearly visible so the .dat files are not compressed. However, if you can extract the 3D model files, you still don't know their internal format.

Wait how are you able to see the DAT file? what did you use to open them yourself? Can you tell me?

[Joe Forster/STA]

Originally Posted by 3dmodelingmodest

Wait how are you able to see the DAT file? what did you use to open them yourself?

A hex editor, of course. I'm attaching a small program (C source and Windows executable) that can unpack those .dat files. Use it like

azounpack XXX.dat

and its contents will get extracted into a directory called "XXX" (same as the .dat file but without ".dat" extension). If you're not using Windows, you should be able to compile the C source with gcc.

(The name "azo" comes from the first three bytes of the .dat files.)

[3dmodelingmodest]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

A hex editor, of course. I'm attaching a small program (C source and Windows executable) that can unpack those .dat files. Use it like

azounpack XXX.dat

and its contents will get extracted into a directory called "XXX" (same as the .dat file but without ".dat" extension). If you're not using Windows, you should be able to compile the C source with gcc.

(The name "azo" comes from the first three bytes of the .dat files.)

Hey thanks! I tried to reach you via PM but I got no reply from you yet. So I check back here to see if you responded and I am very glad to see you are still active here and willing to help me! The only problem is I am not a technical expert as much as you and I have very little experience with using the terminal but I will try to follow your instructions you provided here and see if it will work for me! If not I will come back here to you and let you know if something didn't work for me. Again, thanks for your help!

This was a cancelled fan project by a Japanese American Kirby fan. Minon used to be the artist and modeler for the game. Problem with this guy he had a unhealthy relationship with the their own dev team. They were such a very small team and they started working on the game since 2007 and development been dragged on for only 3 years and still never completed (OUCH). The team disbanded around 2010 and eventually the project itself quietly cancelled after Minon made a sudden announcement on the blog page that "It's about time to closed shop huh?" only because the developer was too happy to see Star Allies released and doesn't seem to care about their audience who wanted Minon's game instead. Thankfully and luckily for us, Minon generously shared a few demos but Im afraid its not all of it as Minon confirmed theres one more demo from 2013 still unreleased to this day! I tried to contact Minon about that last demo and never got a response since Minon is hardly active around social media sites since Minon abandoned their Deviantart page but did not delete their account so their artwork for the game still remain there except for GBA Kirbster a friend of Minon's was the only member who left and Kirbster's artwork become "lost media" thankfully I saved at least some of Kirbster's work including 3d renders of models that would not likely be found within these demos since Kirbster was only involved with models not related to the project such as experimental 3d models and lots of sketch art I saved lol.

I like Cosmic Chaos because there going to be unique abilities and helpers that wouldn't appear in the official Kirby games! Such helpers and abilities only for this project are new characters inspired by Touhou as you can see Minon is a HUGE FAN of Touhou so its no surprise this game Cosmic Chaos was to feature some Touhou stuff there including a stage likely inspired by a similar setting in Touhou called Gansokyo a forest with pink trees better known as cherry blossoms I think? one of the helpers named Shippu was based on the Tengu creature from popular Japanese folklore with yokai and also another Touhou character named Aya who is part girl part Tengu lol.

This fan project sadly only end up like another Mother 4 did, lots of potential and creativity went down to waste with no sign of returning to it. The project Cosmic Chaos was made with Dark Basic for 2 years of development. By 2010, they switch to C+ whether this was intentional to make their assets harder to extract or not is unclear and unknown to us, the main reason for this change was difficulty with development. As you can see Minon was still in class at the time and not a full fledged programmer like most other hard working indie devs out there would who are often much more successful than fan devs these days and sadly.

The only good thing that makes these demos exist are not only around to preserve a lost proof of concept game but also a resource for us to research and find whatever we can to pull out and save from what could have been lol. Thankfully, the Dark Basic demos were easier to get models from and only the last one released from 2010 was the only demo I am unable to get models from yet but that might change if you could help me more! 👍

While the SKELETON files might not be necessary to keep, we only need the MESH files in order to view and preserve the 3d models! This is the original file type for the 3d models they were made with Ogre 3d modeling software and it seems likely that the artist Minon might have switch to Ogre without us knowing for the newer models that Minon made for the later models!

Before 2010, Minon used to model with Milkshape so the models used to be .X which I already convert myself with Blender to Collada but I plan to go back and make GLB for those models now that Collada is no longer supported and its already been considered outdated by today's standards with 3d modeling and game development lol. 👍

I would appreciate more help from you if you can look further into these folders? if this is all you could find for me, I like you to do me a favor and see if you can figure out any other program that might help view or convert MESH faster than the way I am doing it? In order to view a MESH model you have to use the programs they used to view or edit! They used Ogre but I am not sure if the latest version of Ogre will work with 3d models made in 2010 but we'll see!

Anyway very nice to meet ya and hope we can communicate more often on PM or just here if that's alright with you? Thanks! 👍

[3dmodelingmodest]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

A hex editor, of course. I'm attaching a small program (C source and Windows executable) that can unpack those .dat files. Use it like

azounpack XXX.dat

and its contents will get extracted into a directory called "XXX" (same as the .dat file but without ".dat" extension). If you're not using Windows, you should be able to compile the C source with gcc.

(The name "azo" comes from the first three bytes of the .dat files.)

If you can see any image on these 3 PCXs let me know and convert them into png if you possibly can!

https://www.mediafire.com/file/vjnh5...00004.pcx/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/8gq99...00005.pcx/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/55djb...00006.pcx/file

[3dmodelingmodest]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

A hex editor, of course. I'm attaching a small program (C source and Windows executable) that can unpack those .dat files. Use it like

azounpack XXX.dat

and its contents will get extracted into a directory called "XXX" (same as the .dat file but without ".dat" extension). If you're not using Windows, you should be able to compile the C source with gcc.

(The name "azo" comes from the first three bytes of the .dat files.)

So I used your thing and all it give me is what I got, only mesh and tga they are parts of the map! but strangely the very disappointed thing is NO CHARACTER MODELS how come? One thing I noticed about your tool it doesn't extract everything Game Extractor does with the icons and textures but at least your method did bring us something and thats only few of the MESHs but why only background objects and not any of the characters? I have a weird feeling that the character meshes must be still in the dat's, only what we are doing so far is not the right solution or not powerful enough to dig deeper! We must find something that will unearth more files from the DAT! one thing I did before was using a online DAT viewer and while it does not extract or pull anything out, it did find something they are GZIPs! Maybe they contain the hidden character meshes we are looking for? we got to get those GZIPs out! I found them on KCChA where the character textures are located and there might be more of those GZIPs? let me know if you got something we could try to pull those GZIPs out from DATs! Again thanks for your help but stop from there I want you to keep figuring out more if there other things you can do to try getting character models from the DAT.

[Joe Forster/STA]

(You have to unpack all eight .dat files!)

There's nothing more in the .dat files than the files my little tool can extract from them. I can load the extracted .mesh files into OGRE mesh viewer or Ogre Meshy and see the 3D models, including Kirby and his sidekick.

The GZIPs were false detection, there's no GZIP-compressed data in the .dat files. The compression algorithm of PNG pictures and GZIP archives is similar ("deflate", a derivative of LZ77) but that doesn't make PNG pictures special cases of GZIP.

[3dmodelingmodest]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

(You have to unpack all eight .dat files!)

There's nothing more in the .dat files than the files my little tool can extract from them. I can load the extracted .mesh files into OGRE mesh viewer or Ogre Meshy and see the 3D models, including Kirby and his sidekick.

The GZIPs were false detection, there's no GZIP-compressed data in the .dat files. The compression algorithm of PNG pictures and GZIP archives is similar ("deflate", a derivative of LZ77) but that doesn't make PNG pictures special cases of GZIP.

What? you kidding me? I want you to take a look at this. Compared with your own tool, Game Extractor has done a very impressive job unearthing all of the textures and icons in the first two folders for the characters! I believe this must be all I could find for the textures and icons. As for 3D stuff I don't think GE was made for that and thats why we need another tool for the job but unfortunately it seems your method wasn't good enough but it was nice try though! I only wish theres more people answering my questions involved but Im afraid you're the only one I could find who can help. So if there is anymore you can do with a .DAT file besides extracting what very little it can pull out, I like you to try what else you can come up with because Google and Github are not giving me the best results with my search! I only hope you or someone else might figure this out.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/75axu...p+new.zip/file

This is what the Game Extractor got for me. I also used Dragon Unpacker which doesn't open DAT sadly. So GE did a better job than Dragon Unpack and only that your tool did got me at least few of the MESH files of only the background objects such as floors and plants but no characters yet!

[Joe Forster/STA]

Originally Posted by 3dmodelingmodest

Compared with your own tool, Game Extractor has done a very impressive job unearthing all of the textures and icons in the first two folders for the characters!

Apparently, my tool didn't extract all files. (This is a very simple program I wrote upon reading your initial request. Game Extractor works very differently.) I found a bug that possibly cause this and fixed it; please, try extraction again with the program attached.

For each .dat file, the total size of files extracted from it must be at most a few kilobytes less than the original size of the .dat file. (The missing size is the directory in the .dat file that lists the files inside it.)

[3dmodelingmodest]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

(You have to unpack all eight .dat files!)

There's nothing more in the .dat files than the files my little tool can extract from them. I can load the extracted .mesh files into OGRE mesh viewer or Ogre Meshy and see the 3D models, including Kirby and his sidekick.

The GZIPs were false detection, there's no GZIP-compressed data in the .dat files. The compression algorithm of PNG pictures and GZIP archives is similar ("deflate", a derivative of LZ77) but that doesn't make PNG pictures special cases of GZIP.

Unless I did something wrong on my end, I'll try again to be sure! What I did was dragging the DAT to your tool where it extracts the DAT. a black screen appeared and it did extract but why I am only getting MESHs of the background and not the characters doesn't make sense to me? That's why I am going to try again and if I am not getting character models from this I might ask you to try sending them to me instead? I think that should do! Let me know if you can send me the character models you got from your extracting if your tool didn't work for me. Just send yours over to me and I'll take a look what you got! 👍