ROM Hack How can I open .dat files?

blueYOSHI

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Now, im using Tinke v0.9.2 and trying to rip some M&L Bowsers Inside Story Sprites and I only found .dat files (and some folders of course), how can I open them? Theres no text at the bottom or top that says what type of file it is, is there a way to open/extract these files?
 

FAST6191

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.dat is one of the most generic extensions going (probably second only to .bin), and any dev could have made up whatever format they liked and called it .dat.

Now you did say the game which is helpful, however I am not geared right now to pull apart DS games, I will say though that Mario games tend to get hacked a bit so you might want to see if there are some of those out there. My quick search did not get much but it seems others have looked at other games in the series.

Likewise if you are ripping sprites you can use an emulator too -- no$gba and desmume should have vram viewers you can rip things from, and you can always use cheats to make things happen sooner ( https://tcrf.net/Mario_&_Luigi:_Bowser's_Inside_Story even having some stuff from cheats that was cut from the final versions).
 

blueYOSHI

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Ok, what exactly do I need to search for these hacked version? I didnt heard of that before (sry if its a stupid question... ^^')

DeSmuMe only shows blackscreens on "View Tiles" and "View Maps", I tried multiple stuff, sometimes it shows some weird mess of colors but never a real picture
 

blueYOSHI

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I dont know if I did something wrong but I just got a one-line output that said that its a data file.
I just opened CMD in the same folder the program is in and typed in "file [file, like "BObjUI.dat"]" and it gave that
 

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I used "file -d BObjUI.dat" to get this output, but I have no idea if any of the debug information accurately reflects the contents of the file.
 

Ryccardo

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"{filename}: data" means basically "I have no idea", not surprising since it's likely a one-off format for a single game or maybe at best ten; I would also believe that most files in the romfs are false matches

The "file" program is awesome (try it on an entire rom...), but it's only as good as its database allows it to be
 
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blueYOSHI

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"{filename}: data" means basically "I have no idea", not surprising since it's likely a one-off format for a single game or maybe at best ten; I would also believe that most files in the romfs are false matches

The "file" program is awesome (try it on an entire rom...), but it's only as good as its database allows it to be
So, theres no way to open these files?
 

Ryccardo

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So, theres no way to open these files?
You would need a dedicated editor (which you may have the privilege of being the first and sole developer) ;)

If you're sure they contain sprites, try a tile editor like yy-chr (trying all the BPP settings), but no guarantees - they might well be encrypted, compressed, etc
 

blueYOSHI

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You would need a dedicated editor (which you may have the privilege of being the first and sole developer) ;)

If you're sure they contain sprites, try a tile editor like yy-chr (trying all the BPP settings), but no guarantees - they might well be encrypted, compressed, etc
I downloaded and opened it but there are weird characters everywhere, thats definitly not english! I already looked at the official Tutorial that says I need to rename a file but there are already mutiple language files, what do I need to do there?
 

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blueYOSHI

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