Individual resources can be stored in one of two ways: Either in resource files (which, surprisingly, are called something like "resource.000" or "resource.001"), or in external patch files (not to be confused with "patch" resources). The external files are called something like "pic.100" or "script.000", and they take precedence over data from resource files.
There is also a file called "resource.map", which contains a lookup table for the individual resources, and another file, "resource.cfg", which contains configuration information; neither of those is used by FreeSCI.
Resource information stored in external patch files is not compressed and therefore easily readable. It is, however, preceeded by two bytes: The first byte contains the resource type ORed with 0x80, the purpose of the second byte is unknown (but it appears to be ignored by the original SCI version 0 engine).
As stated before, external patch files take precedence over resource resource files. Applying those external files as patches is an option since FreeSCI version 0.2.2.
The resource files, however, are more complicated. Each of them contains a sequence of resources preceeded by a header; these resources may be compressed. It is, also, quite common to find resources shared by several resource files. The reason for this appears to be that that, back when hard disks were rare and hard to come by, the games had to be playable from floppy disks. To prevent unneccessary disk-jockeying, common stuff was placed in several resource files, each of which was then stored on one disk.
Top
You can help keep The Sierra Help Pages and its affiliates alive by helping to defray some of the costs of hosting this site. If it has been of help to you, please consider contributing to help keep it online.Thank you.
The Sierra Help Pages | Sierra Game Help | Walkthroughs | Hints, Tips & Spoilers | Utilities | Links | SHP Forums | Search
© 2013 to present The Sierra Help Pages. All rights reserved. All Sierra games, artwork and music © Sierra.