LBA File Information website launched

[ChaosFish]

If you're one of these people who can't just settle for playing their favorite game, but have to understand how it works and how to modify it - this news is for you.

LBA File Information is there to be the source of information on everything and anything related to the technical aspect of both LBA games.

The new site has been developed by Zink and is based on the old LBA File Info project by ChaosFish. It is designed to be user friendly and easy to comprehend, even if you don't know squat about programming and software development.

You'll find information about all the programs that you can use to modify the games. If you're really hard core, even technical specifications of the formats the games use. But the coolest feature of this site is the information about all the entries of all the packages of the games.

The site still doesn't have all the information of all the files; but anyone can just submit any information that's missing using the right form. An administrator will add it to the site along with credits to the submitter.

More information (which we already have) will be added to the site in the next couple of days.

For any other discussions about LBA moding, the MBN's LBA Modifications forum is still there waiting for you!

[morshem]

Nice .

It's nice to see that the modifications scene is still in action

[ChaosFish]

Yeah, it's definitely still in action.

Thanks El for correcting my grammar

[Zink]

At last, after 3 years of development with one almost complete rewrite of the engine somewhere along the way, it's finally there .

It's not finished though, I plan to add many more features to the engine in the future

[LBAWinOwns]

Originally Posted by LBA File Info site

*.LIM (LBA images)
Contain full screen images. They has always dimensions of 640x480.

Correction, it can be 256*256, 512*256 and of course full screen 640*480.

512*256 I think always are using the Main palette, and exist in only LBA2 I think.

[Quetch]

LBAWinOwns is right many textures are in 256x256 format

[Zink]

Corrected, thanks

[Kobold]

This site looks just great.

Why is LBA 1 > lba_gri.hqr > entry 123 marked as a repeated entry?

[xesf]

Exactly! That entry in this file is the exact same as the entry 122.

Btw, I though we would wait a bit till have more information to release .
Well I still have the File3D specification unfinished there.

[LBAWinOwns]

It is pretty common and imo good that the logo in top left corner is clickable and that it leads to the start page.

[morshem]

Yeah, this should be made a standard I guess

[ChaosFish]

I just realized we didn't give El Muerte credits for starting the original file information project (with LBADeCOMP). Oops. Sorry!

Fixed That.

(wasn't really sure what to link to in your contact though)

[ChaosFish]

Originally Posted by LBAWinOwns

It is pretty common and imo good that the logo in top left corner is clickable and that it leads to the start page.

I'm guessing it couldn't hurt. Made the logo clickable, ok by everyone?

[Zink]

Alexfont, don't worry, it was just too much time under construction to wait more, since the engine was ready to release. You can add that info later.

[Homeless]

Great stuff! * Homeless cheers

[Jast]

Ahh! This is all too complicated for me.. all these wierd names and files..
Still, it looks good.. if I had a clue what everything ment I suppose it would be useful

It seems there are a lot of other LBA websites, it's great that everybody is keeping LBA alive!

[Zeth]

Nice! Heh, I'm really liking the mod tools and stuff, but you don't reckon you'd be able to make a downloadable version with all the info from the archives on the LBA '.HQR' stuff in a single file? That'd be handy.

Also, I think it would help if you could (not straight away, make it a work-in-progress) make a modding tutorial on the sites.

[ChaosFish]

There's no way to download the information from the site right now, but you can still download an outdated version here.

LBitA has a few tutorials.

[LBAWinOwns]

Originally Posted by LIM description

Contain full screen images and textures (as RAW colour plette indexes). They can be in dimensions: 256x256, 512*256 and 640x480 (full screen).
In LBA 1 they are always 640x480, and they have size of 307200 bytes, each byte represents one pixel (not encoded in any way).

Holomap is 256*256 in LBA1

edit: also, note the "*" and "x"

edit2: Ops, just found "correct info" button at down of the site. I'll use that instead from now and on.

[Battler]

I think, that the site should also specify the names of the three compression algorithms:
0 = Store (no compression);
1 = LZSS;
2 = LZMIT.
These are the original names of the three LBA compression algorithms.

[LBAWinOwns]

Lol, what is the source for these 'original names' ?

[Kobold]

Originally Posted by LBAWinOwns

Lol, what is the source for these 'original names' ?

Maybe it's the Japanese version, the one which had this outsourced material.

[ChaosFish]

If you're talking about LZSS/LZMIT, I'm pretty sure these are common compression methods and aren't "original" or anything.

(at least I think so..)

[edit] I should read better.

Sorry, erase that..

[Battler]

- LBAWinOwns: The original LBA compression, and de-compression, codes?

[xesf]

Fishos, OBras means that LBA decompression algorithms are based in those methods, so each decompression type have its own name. They (Adeline) also mention this in their source code.