understanding binary storage

[artaxerxes]

Hi all,

since the exult dev team has had to sweat blood and tears to understand usecode etc, I'm sure you will be able to help me.

I am trying to understand the HSQ file format (used for the games Dune and KGB) in which they store text, picture and music.

Any idea of what the step would be to understand fully the structure? Right now, I've decoded that the first 2 bytes are a tag to identify uniquely a file. The next 2 are for the size of the file.

I've also looked on the web for a tool to uncompress HSQ (I am sure it is a compressed format) to no avail yet.

Any help appreciated!

Artaxerxes

[SimCon]

Which Dune? Do you mean the original Dune by Cryo that was heavily rendered? And KGB was an adventure game I think. Many old games used file formats developed in-house so maybe HSQ is just that unless you know for sure that it isn't. Can you give us some details about the year and publisher/developer of the games. I can't really find anything on them on game site archives.

[wjp]

This page mentions the format, and also mentions an unarchiver. I can't actually find it, though.

http://sorry.vse.cz/dimension/rdos/rdosplay

[artaxerxes]

wjp:

I saw that too... It is raging to see they mention UNHSQ but nothing to d/l !! Argghh!

Simcon:

I am talking about Dune I. The version when you play Paul Atreides and try to defeat the Harkonnens using the Fremen. It has really cool music and failry advanced feature given its age. Developed by Cryo and distributed in early 90's I think.

Artaxerxes

[Armchair_Avatar]

http://sorry.vse.cz/dimension/rdos/rdosplay/

This site mentions a program called "UNHSQ" that can unpack HSQ files.
It doesn't seem to be available for download, so you should probably try to contact the author:
roman@sorry.vse.cz