Area 51 - A call for help. Thread

Hello everyone,

Someone suggested this community for me as "my best bet", so here i am.
3 years ago i was playing a game that i've always been playing, called Area 51 (Midway). After Gamespy shutdown, they decided to also shutdown all the servers for the games they supported as well, including this particular game.All the players that used to play that game raged on facebook by simply making groups and pages to *censored* and demand that the game should come back online again. After a lot of research i succeeded in bringing it back by looking trough the game for every gamespy address and used the hosts file in sys32 to redirect them to an open DNS. It worked.Now it's been a couple of months that the game is back online and almost all the players are back and playing it again.The thing is, this game was made in 2005 and it dosen't have a lot to offer to the players.Being a very difficult coded game, i spent again time to look up how i can open all of it's files and try and edit and add things into them. (If you know this game you know how complicated it is to extract files and repack them, or maybe you thought it was impossible)Anyway, i did extract the main files (.DFS & .000) and edited some of them, only now... i'm stuck.
Inside of every DFS or 000 file, there is more archives in another extension, for example, the multiplayer avatars are archived into one single file called "MP_AVATAR_BIND.SKINGEOM"I also discovered that the game has more Multiplayer maps hidden in it, or that they took them off before releasing it.What i'm trying to do now is to get more maps inside of this game by duplicating a map and replacing it's files with other files. (Yes i have done this for XBMP files and worked, so it's possible) using a script, along with adding/editing the avatars for more choice of characters.
The only problem is that for every single extension i need a certain unpack/repack BMS script.Does this project interest any of you gentlemen out there?(I'm trying to make a whole new version of this game called "Area 51 Reborn)

I honour what you are doing a lot. I loved the game myself, and I sincerely wish I could help you but sadly need to admit that I can't. I really hope someone else will read this and actually have a better comment to make than this: Good luck

I loved Area 51 and played to for a long time. This project definitely interest me, but I don't have the skills you are looking for. I do wish you the best of luck on finding someone who can make this possible and maybe we will all have the chance to play Area 51 Reborn in the future. I will say this however; watch out for copyright laws. That's something I would check on if I were you.

Hello everyone.
It's reassuring that atleast a couple of people managed to reply to this post, i haven't got any replies from anyone yet, and i posted in several other forums too!
Thank you for those kind words, and i will sure keep trying.. i'm doing it everyday and learning new things as i go. (started not even knowing what a mesh is!)
This game is sure is a unique specimen, i haven't found anybody that is familiar with those file formats!
The only files that i have managed to open were the BINK, PSH files Bink is special video compression made by RAD GAME TOOLS, and PSH is just an extension that can be opened with notepad.
Still, all of this dosen't help out in changing the avatars, FP hands, and fonts.
These are the extensions i have not yet been able to open:

.m3d.asi.flt.file.audiopkg.dat.decalpkg.envmap.font.fxo.rigidgeom.skingeom.rel.bin_level.decals.zone.lev_dict.playsurface.rigidcolor.templates.tmp_dct

If anyone has any idea about any of these files, please do let me know.
Also, i could post the script used to unpack the DFS/000 files using quickbms, if anyone is interessted, might give you an idea on what i really need.

I've got a couple of ideas for the .DAT file type:

1.) Try to open it with notepad++ (Notepad-plus-plus.org)
2.) If that doesn't work, you can try with MS Word or Excel
3.) If that doesn't work either, try MS Outlook
4.) If that doesn't work, maybe an IDE (Itegrated Development Environment) could help.

Very sorry if none of those work but those are all programs certain types of .DAT files opened with for me.

Sorry for the late response,
The .DAT file still isn't viewable even in notepad++, but i believe the .DAT file is not something of importance for now.
The main problem is more about how can i make some of the campaign mode maps playable online. I have tried switching the .PLAYSURFACE of an MP mode map with the .PLAYSURFACE of a Campaign mode map, but only shows me black screen with the FP hands.
I'm sure that they had a software made especially for this particular game, hence why there is a .DLL file called A51.dll, among the bink32.dll (bink video) and mss.dll (miles sound system), but it's not like it's impossible to mod this game, is it?
So far, with the BMS script i have, i can only edit stuff out of the already existing maps and the textures, and that is it.
I have been told by one of the engineers of this game that everything i'm trying to do is possible, but nothing more.
Thank you for the help though.

Edited by: XanPa

That's a lot of help telling you it's possible but not giving you a hint on how. That's typical developer -.-

If there is anything in specific I can do for you, let me know because I would really like to get into it as well and help you with this.

I think he was just annoyed because i sent the message to him trough his personal facebook.
But anyway, one of the many things i'm planning to do in this game is the font, and i do not mean the actual font, but the symbols assigned to unicode characters. Because those symbols is a part of what makes the frequent players enjoy this game. There aren't many hidden symbols, but all of the symbols in the game are very used by the players for their profile names, for example: the midway logo, inevitable logo, bold font midway, star icon, lock icon..
What i know about this is:
There is a file called UI_A51FONTLEGAL.FONT, this file contains the actual unicode characters, then there is another file called: UI_A51FONTLEGAL.XBMP, this second file if converted to TGA you get this:

The two files are related, i believe. Each character in the .FONT file is assigned to a particular symbol in the image (AKA UI_A51FONTLEGAL.XBMP)
Note that the UI_A51FONTLEGAL.XBMP is not displayed as shown in the picture on top, it has an alpha layer and 3 other layers, for one contains 1pixel points that i believe determin when a symbol begins and ends.
What i want to do with all this, is to add more symbols and logos, for example, making a poll with all the clans in the fan site and then all of the active clans get to design their logo and i can add it to the game. However, when i try to edit/add the .FONT file, nothing changes in the game, sometimes if i remove a character, the game dosen't let me type anything and won't show any text.
I tried editing the XBMP file by converting it to TGA and back and forth. If i add more symbols, nothing shows up. I wanted to see if the game actually responds to this file and just ereased the middle of the that INEVITABLE symbol, converted it back to XBMP, add it to the game, and it showed up as i edited it.
So now, i'm confused.

Downloads:
UI_A51FONTLEGAL.FONT
UI_A51FONTLEGAL.XBMP (CONVERTED TO TGA)

Anyone has any idea or solution for this?
If i wasen't too clear on the explanation, please let me know and i'll try to retype in a more brief or detailed way.

Edited by: XanPa

That sounds awesome! I would suggest making a spiritual successor in Unity.

Edited by: iambosh