The Modding thread.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 06/10/2008 10:51:33

Sol wrote:But then, as far as I know there is no possible way to load the CSH into compiled (published) SWF, so I wonder if are they really used or just left for editing/junk? Because the bonus.swf works flawless without its CSH file as far as I can see.

You could try deleting all the CSH files from the archive and seeing if the game still works. (On all three platforms!)

But actually, I thought Actionscript 3 was all about loading the external content. When Flash 9 first came out, it was actually easier to find an AS3 tutorial about loading a dynamic image gallery as part of a web page, than to find a tutorial that explains how to make one of those loading bars for the SWF itself. There's some security features you need to appease if you're loading content across domains, but in general, Flash 9 loves to load images and it loves to load movies. I don't see why CSH files would be excluded from that design policy...

You are right about AS3 prefering to load external content. The problem is it doesn't support CSH files. CSH files are custom shape files that you can load into your paint software. They are shape packs, ie: contain stars, triangles, squares, usually more complex shapes. They don't contain any color or thickness, etc. info. Flash doesn't use them.
And I am getting quite sure that they are just junk, deleting all of them does nothing. The game plays fine on Vista without them (Since I am on my game machine, I can't really bother to try in Linux, etc.

). Afterall, SWF files are platform independent so I doubt OS will change anything. But as I said, tomorrow, I'll decompile and give more info, promise!
If anyone is curious and they have a paint software installed (Photoshop or Illustrator, I guess?), you can install the shapes and check them out. Here is a little tutorial for how-to:
CSH Tutorial Link

Note: "If" they are really custom shape files, then they are not "really" junk. They may contain templates which can be edited and integrated into Flash. Like, basic mouths, eyes, etc. But considering game-wise, they are useless.

Ok, one more update to the HHA tool: support for creating archives. The created files are about 0.5% larger than the official ones, but that is good enough for me. The tool is now feature-complete as far as I'm concerned, so this should be the last update for a while.

Again, a Linux version is available (hha-0.3-linux32.gz) and a Windows version (hha-0.3-win32.zip).
There's also source code: hha-0.3.tar.gz (commit)

By the way, did anyone manage to mod anything interesting yet?

I decompiled SWF files and examined them. I can easily change anything in them. All cinematics are editable as well. You can even change the mini games if you like.

What remains a mystery is the CSH files. I thought them to be custom shape files but even Photoshop CS3 cannot open them. It seems they are something else. Does anyone have an idea?

I know what they are

and I will never tell... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I am sure you will eventually figure out what they are...

I am impressed by your work so far. As an aside it took me a day to cook up the hha format, the writer is about 50 lines of python code

.

Grover wrote:I am impressed by your work so far. As an aside it took me a day to cook up the hha format, the writer is about 50 lines of python code .

You should've posted the file format then; would have saved us a lot of time.

In retrospect, the HHA file format is very simple and very clean, and it's surprising it took so long to figure it out. If any obfuscation/encryption was used, we wouldn't have had a chance at figuring it out (or at least not without examining the game binary which uses the files).

I guess there's no point in releasing my version now.