About and Dependencies
This is a series of Python scripts to generate maps of Xargon, as well as extract most of the Xargon image resources. These scripts require the Pillow fork of the Python Imaging Library (PIL) and Python 3.x. This was tested with Python 3.9.2, but it does not use any recently-introduced features. As such, it should run with just about any version of Python 3. At the time of of updating to Python 3 in 2021, the oldest version of Python still receiving updates is 3.6, so I do not recommend anything older.
Windows and macOS users should be able to download Python from the
above links and use pip to install Pillow. Most Linux/Unix varients
should be able to install Python and Pillow via your package manager of
choice; Ubuntu users can install the python3 and python3-pil
libraries.
The scripts also obviously require Xargon, either the shareware or full versions. The full version has been released as Freeware, so it should be easy for you to get what you need.
A full development log for this tool is available on the VGMaps Forums, the logs folder at Github, or below. This tool was developed without the use of the Xargon source code by manually decoding the game resources, so some of the techniques may be useful for decoding other games.
Please note the palimage#.png image files are used to obtain the assorted Xargon colour paletted variations, and are required for this tool to work.
Please note the palimage#.png image files are used to obtain
the assorted Xargon colour paletted variations, and are required for
this tool to work.
Usage
There are two scripts included in the package that are intended to be
executed directly.
xargonmapper.py is the main map generation script,
xargongraphics.py is a script to extract the contents of a Xargon
GRAPHICS resource file. In addition to the three scripts above, several
supplimentary scripts can be run to gather debug outputs of one form or
another, and are listed under the Other Scripts heading.
The genep1.sh, genep2.sh and genep3.sh are pre-made shell scripts to generate map images for each episode of the game. You can edit these files to change the path to Xargon for alternate configurations. Sorry, no .BAT files are provided for Windows users, but the .sh files and the below instructions should get you going.
xargonmapper.py
Usage: python xargonmapper.py [Graphics File] [Tiles File] [Map File(s)...]
Generates map images for every Xargon map file indicated. Requires the
corresponding GRAPHICS file for the images to use, and the TILES file
for the map tile to graphics resource mapping. All files should be from
the same Episode of Xargon.
xargongraphics.py
Usage: python xargongraphics.py [Graphics File]
Extracts all graphics resources from the specified GRAPHICS file from
Xargon. Output is stored in the Episode#Images and
Episode#OriginalImages folders, where # is the episode number of the
input file. The OriginalImages folder contains the original 256-colour
images without any additional processing, while the Images folder
contains 32-bit RGBA images after colour index 0 has been set
transparent.
Other Scripts
xargonmap.py
Usage: python xargonmap.py [Map File(s)]
Generates the following debug information for each specified Xargon map
file:
- [mapname]_flat.png
- A false-colour image of the map, where each tile
value is represented as a different colour. - [mapname].csv
- A simple CSV containing each tile value
- [mapname]_info.csv
- Auxiliary information about a map from the footer.
Contains all the unknown header-type information,
as well as the strings. - [mapname]_objs.csv
- A full listing of all objects in the specified map,
and all their associated fields. - [mapname]_strings.csv
- A listing of all the strings in the map, as well
as the guessed mapping to object reference
values.
xargontiles.py
Usage: python xargontiles.py [Tiles File]
Generates a debug CSV file for the mapping specified in the given
TILES file from Xargon. Output is written to tiles.csv.
xargonfontgen.py
Usage: python xargongraphics.py [Graphics File]
Generates BDF font files for the two identified fonts stored in the
Xargon GRAPHICS file. The BDF files can then be converted to .pil files
for use in the main mapper via the pilfont.py script. The BDF files can
also be used in any software that supports BDF.
Download
xargonmapper.tar.gz (4.1 MB)
xargonmapper.zip (4.2 MB)
The development log is also available in either ePub or PDF formats:
xargonmapper_log.epub (4.1 MB)
xargonmapper_log.pdf (2.8 MB)
Source is available in GitHub, including the legacy Python 2.x version (under the v1.0 and v1.0a tags).
