Some info about CC! files

[ruben-balea]

I just wanted to let you know that Infogrames never used the ".CC!" extension and also ask you a question about CC1 files.
I know there's a copy of Eternam out there with an "AVE.CC!" file but it was a backup of the original "AVE.CC1"
The new "AVE.CC1" file is patched to bypass the copy protection.

There was a release in French, English, Italian and German, it allows to select between AZERTY, QWERTY & QWERTZ keyboards and another in English and Spanish that did not have that feature.

The Steam and GOG releases are of the first type but they also include the CD version of the game that for some reason includes the Spanish and English texts files, so they can be in Spanish without downloading or "stealing" the file from other places so Steam and GOG shouldn't complain for using files they don't have the rights to distribute.

I modified the file "INFO.TAT" to add support for all five languages (French, English, Italian, German & Spanish) and I used the version that allows to select the keyboard layout just in case somebody wants to run it on a physical computer with French or German keyboards, I don't know if that matters for DOSBox or other emulators.

The file "INFO.CC1" already came in 5 languages but it turns out the text that appears at the bottom of each screen like "Choose your sound card" and so on is not in Spanish but in Guarani, but I had no idea what language it was so I pasted it on Google translator and tried all languages until I found that Guarani was translating perfectly to English, it seems in Paraguay both Spanish and Guarani are official languages.

The menu entries are in correct Spanish, I guess they Spanish translator was from Paraguay and has a lapsus or was smoking "something" ;-)

That file is compressed, I tried your decompression tool found here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=96223 and it works but it would need to be recompressed, I've zero C++ knowledge and even less knowledge about data compression, don't you happen to have a program to re-compress the files to the original format?

[LowLevelMahn]

thanks for beeing the first ever ask anything about this hobby project :)

I just wanted to let you know that Infogrames never used the ".CC!" extension and also ask you a question about CC1 files.
I know there's a copy of Eternam out there with an "AVE.CC!" file but it was a backup of the original "AVE.CC1"
The new "AVE.CC1" file is patched to bypass the copy protection.

nice detail from the past

That file is compressed, I tried your decompression tool found here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=96223 and it works but it would need to be recompressed, I've zero C++ knowledge and even less knowledge about data compression, don't you happen to have a program to re-compress the files to the original format?

regarding compression: i started working on understanding the uncompression more detailed (so far i only reverse that code from a game and cleaned it up to this current state) so that im maybe able to come up with an compression routine - but that will take some time (maybe weeks or month) - i have a good understanding how the uncompression works but the compression is much more complex - do you know maybe a game that also compresses files with this algorithm?

The new "AVE.CC1" file is patched to bypass the copy protection.

maybe the one is to find who created this new AVE.CC1 ?

[ruben-balea]

Many thanks but I don't think it's worth the effort just to be able to correct a line of text at the bottom of the screen that everyone will probably ignore, also it's easy to understand, it looks like French with typos, also the menu options are self-explanatory, the only options are Adlib - Buzzer for the sound and AZERTY - QWERTY - QWERTZ for the keyboard.

It's the text in that dark blue line at the bottom:

The new "AVE.CC1" file is patched to bypass the copy protection.

maybe the one is to find who created this new AVE.CC1 ?

It seems you can patch it without decompresing it, that part of the code (and a few bytes before and after) is the same compressed and decompressed...
Since I didn't know how the files were compressed, I thought that perhaps that part was not compressed, now that I know that it is, I'm quite surprised that it decompresses correctly after modifying the compressed data 😮

I've the original game but the floppies were damaged so I downloaded a copy in the late 90s when I got internet access for first time, I don't know where I got it but it was patched at 0xF9E3 while the GOG version (with the CC! file) was patched at 0xF9E5 but I didn't like those patches so I tried to make my own one... I swapped the JNE/JNZ instructions at 0xF9DD and 0xF9E4 with JE/JZ
I used some emulator with integrated debugger to find the copy protection code, then I searched for the same bytes in the AVE.CC1 file and they were there and it seems to work, I played the game at least twice without any problem.
My patch bypasses the "window" to input the code and accepts the default 000 code but allows Tracy (the female NPC) to continue her speech.

[LowLevelMahn]

Many thanks but I don't think it's worth the effort just to be able to correct a line of text at the bottom of the screen that everyone will probably ignore

i also want to get the compression working - its at least the only real check if the reversed code from the uncompression is completely valid - i will update this issue if i get the compression going

It seems you can patch it without decompresing it, that part of the code (and a few bytes before and after) is the same compressed and decompressed...

yes - the compressed data can contain several uncompressed blocks of data, the to patch code seem to be right in such an uncompressed block

[LowLevelMahn]

UPDATE:

the compression is still not understand but i started to test if re-creating the CC container files with only uncompressed blocks is enough for the game - seems so - so i can't recreate the very same files but useable ones :)