freem/AJ

non-April Fools content:
I've recently started looking into technical details for HardBall 5, as it's a game I enjoyed when I was younger. Ended up making a tool to examine various formats used by the game, though some things are trickier than expected.

For example, graphics (found in .msh files) can be compressed. I've yet to fully understand this format, but it can encode runs of empty pixels. However, splitting those out from regular pixel sequences is non-obvious.

Apr 1, 2024 at 7:11pmWeb
Show threadfreem/AJApr 1, 2024

An example of an image in a MSH file. This is the copyright symbol from the MLBPA screen, shown with a ripped copy at 8x zoom.

The | bars represent the end of a pixel row. These are not "official" parts of the file. 0x00,0x00 doesn't necessarily mean a "next line" sequence...

Show threadfreem/AJApr 2, 2024
...on further review, the copyright symbol would've been better stored as uncompressed (9*9=81 (0x51) bytes), compared to the compressed data section being 92 (0x5C) bytes. Granted, it does work better on larger files.
Show threadvisyApr 1, 2024
@freem are there also MTX files? because iirc msh and mtx are a mesh and a texture format for the playstation
Show threadfreem/AJApr 1, 2024

@visy sadly no, not even in the PS1 port of the game (as far as I've checked)

it is funny that there are two 3D models hidden in the game files, though (MindSpan would later make HardBall 6 in 3D, and it appears to be using the same format, or at least, same file extension)