Cartooners File Viewer

Closed

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Originally Posted by Peter Swinkels

Looking for a challenge I decided to try and reverse engineer Cartooners' (a game by: ITDA/Electronic Arts, 1988) actor file format. After a lot of hard work, I have figured out about 99 percent of the file format and wrote a program called the Cartooners File Viewer. This program allows the user to view, export, modify and import actor templates for the game's MS-DOS version. A document describing the format for *.act (actor) files is also included with the program.

Major update:
The program is now called "Cartooners File Viewer" instead of "Cartooners Actor Viewer" and has the following features added:
1. Full support for viewing Cartooners' preferences and movie menu file.
2. Limited support for viewing movie (*.mov) files.
3. Limited support for viewing movie (*.mus) files.
4. The document describing the actor file format now also contains what is known about the file types mentioned above.

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Mind blowing. Any way you can provide a compiled version since I don't use VB? I found a post you made somewhere else about cracking .ACT files and Googled your name to find this.

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Originally Posted by Streaksy

Mind blowing. Any way you can provide a compiled version since I don't use VB? I found a post you made somewhere else about cracking .ACT files and Googled your name to find this.

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Just open the project and click "Run". You don't have to know how to program in VB (though it's extremely simple to figure it out just by reading it) to open it and run the program.

My gawd, it's brilliant. If this was around back in the day Cartooners would have had a lot more scope. Thanks so much for sharing this. :D

Oh, sorry.. to answer your question... I remake a lot of stuff, aswell as generally collect media of nostalgic games. So.. I want to export all the actor frames in bulk instead of screenshotting every single frame of every single actor. And I like how your import system works and I think I'll be tempted in to making a new actor or adapting an existing one just for the hell of it. :D

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I do it to amuse myself and 99% of the time only show a couple of people I know. It's just hobby. There's a few little clips on my YT channel, if you're interested... but not much worth seeing. The Mega-lo-Mania remake is probably the longest video. Aside from what's there, I started an Omnicron Conspiracy sequel, a remake of Elvira Mistress of the Dark with the original media, egh, I dunno, all sorts.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGvjb0HrxmY <- Dune Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_yG0eSSjZA <- Mega-lo-Mania

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6CH3_jBmCY <- BBC Micro game sequel I tried to put out but they changed their mind

Come to think of it, there's stupid old Cartooners stuff on my channel too I think... I think that's everything but I'm being rushed off the pc...

Hey, did you ever crack any other DOS proprietary formats?

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Originally Posted by Streaksy

Hey, did you ever crack any other DOS proprietary formats?

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No, most stuff worth cracking had already been cracked.

EDIT:
And come to think of it:
1. Cartooners was originally not released for MS-DOS but Apple GS/OS.
2. My program probably is already in a legally gray area. I have no intention to discuss cracking other proprietary formats further, DOS or not.

Yeah, fair enough.

Hi! peter, im in a hard search of this game, im a spanish artist that have worked with this video game in the past. I lost the game so many years ago and the internet version are incompleted with not all actors, my interest on this game is so hard, cause i produced some films that i would like to get back. Im know that the problem is a little bit impossible, cause my game included space actors (these actors was included in other version) and i remember the game was traduced to spanish.

even knowing my desire is hard difficulty, i would like ask you for some information.

thanks.

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Originally Posted by Lexit

Hi! peter, im in a hard search of this game, im a spanish artist that have worked with this video game in the past. I lost the game so many years ago and the internet version are incompleted with not all actors, my interest on this game is so hard, cause i produced some films that i would like to get back. Im know that the problem is a little bit impossible, cause my game included space actors (these actors was included in other version) and i remember the game was traduced to spanish.

even knowing my desire is hard difficulty, i would like ask you for some information.

thanks.

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Hi Lexit,

Sorry for the very late reply, I don't know of any legal way to get a complete copy of the game. You might be able to find a site selling old games by searching with Google.

Peter

Okay, I decided to reopen this after a long while. Bump. See top post for more.

So I've been interested in this program for a while, but I never got how to use it. I checked out the comments on myabandonware and saw that you updated it. Can I have it? Or have a look at it? I really like The Cartooners and I think this would be a great program to have.

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Originally Posted by paladin83

So I've been interested in this program for a while, but I never got how to use it. I checked out the comments on myabandonware and saw that you updated it. Can I have it? Or have a look at it? I really like The Cartooners and I think this would be a great program to have.

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Here.

An updated version. There is also the GitHub page at http://github.com/peterswinkels