.pl8 files...What are they?

[BlackRat90]

I'm poking around my copy of Lords of the Realm 2 trying to "play around" with the resources to create a sort of clone of the game.
However I am confused with what to do with these .pl8 files. I figure they have got to be some sort of image or animation, but I cannot find anything on converting them or getting them to straight run.

Anyone know ANYTHING on .pl8 files, or what they could be?

[smartbei]

Several things you might try:

Running "file <filename>". 'file' will try recognising the file.
Opening it in a hex editor and searching some of the strings inside online. It might, for example, be a DLL with a different extension.
If those don't work, could you post the file? Or at least the first 512 bytes? I don't have a .pl8 file handy, but someone might be able to recognise the format.

[nvteighen]

I think it may be a (X)COFF compiled PL/8 file, PL/8 being a dialect of the PL/I language. Look at this: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.files/doc/aixfiles/XCOFF.htm

[BlackRat90]

Running "file <filename>". 'file' will try recognising the file.

I get this when I do file VILL.PL8 (one of hundreds of pl8 files)
VILL.PL8: MS Windows icon resource

A Microsoft icon file....that explains why it tried to view it as a image and failed.

Anyone know of a program to open or convert MS icon files???

[BlackRat90]

hmm... I almost noticed that some of them are just data

FLAGS.PL8: data

This is really boggling me.

[hakermania]

I've noticed that games, maybe on purpose, make strange files to store the i.e. videos between 2 levels, so as the user will find it difficult to modify it? i don't know really, but the only thing I have to say is that you shouldn't recognise a file from its extension, because

touch something.mp3 doesn't create an MP3 file, right?

[BlackRat90]

Based mostly on the names of the files, I would happen a guess at they are sprite or template files of some kind. Thats the closest I can get to it though.

[AlterEG]

That’s a long time ago in gaming history terms!

From my recollection
256 file were pretty much just dumps of an palette with a byte each for rgb
Pl8’s I think were similar but also had the possibility of being stored in a compress format.

I will have a look and see if I kind find anything for you!

I’m usually somewhat busy and so it could take a while however…

Regards

Simon


From the technical artist's resume, it seems they started out as PhotoShop/Illustrator files.

My guess is, for more complex ones, they represent each a single angle of view for a sprite. Like Fallout's FRMs, these contain animations in a layered form. FRMs also share the separate palette data.

I'd love to find a utility for making something usable of them. You'll find the same file format in the Caesar games.

Unfortunately, I've no idea how to go about reversing it.