Smacker to Bink wrapper \ VOGONS

Smacker to Bink wrapper

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First post, by IllidanS4

Posted on 2016-10-12, 09:08

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Hi, I am trying to polish the recently leaked Warcraft Adventures, and also the two newly found cutscenes from it. The problem (amongst many) is that the game uses Smacker, which is stated to be quite fast on one hand, but the quality decreases quickly with the compression ratio. So, my idea is to replace Smacker with Bink, which offers higher quality with smaller sizes, so exactly what the game needs. Has there been any attempts to accomplish this thing? I have checked the Smacker and Bink API, and they are fairly similar, with minor differences. I believe I could write a DLL that exports Smacker functions (at least those that the game uses), and calls Bink instead.

So what do you think? Is this possible, has anyone tried that before, or some tips what to take care of before writing anything?

Reply 1 of 9, by Jorpho

Posted on 2016-10-12, 13:34

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In today's high-speed world of gigantic hard drives, I don't think anyone particularly cares about having smaller file sizes. It would probably be easier just to write a DLL that mimics Smacker and that plays ordinary MPEG2 files. (Back when the ScummVM team was concerned about that sort of thing, you were obliged to use a conversion utility on Smacker-encoded videos before you could use them with ScummVM.)

Reply 2 of 9, by IllidanS4

Posted on 2016-10-12, 17:23

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Well, I would certainly prefer not having lots of 640x480 cutscenes taking 400 MB in total, when they could be of much greater quality with same or less size. And I think people would still care about file size when they have to download the whole thing. Not everyone has top speed internet connection.

MPG, AVI or OGV is another possibility, but I am not sure how well I would be able to program that in C, I am kinda out-of-necessity C programmer.

Reply 3 of 9, by DosFreak

Posted on 2016-10-12, 17:43

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What's the legal status of this game? I'm thinking not legal?

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Reply 4 of 9, by IllidanS4

Posted on 2016-10-12, 20:20

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Well, it wasn't ever released, so there was no license made for it, right? Anyway, it doesn't matter. Anyone has the latest Bink SDK, or a version of RAD Video Tools (binkc.exe) that produces files with the 0x66 ('f') revision?

Reply 5 of 9, by leileilol

Posted on 2016-10-12, 22:02

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DosFreak wrote:
What's the legal status of this game? I'm thinking not legal?

Blizzard certainly still owns it and will do takedowns of it no matter how "abandonware" and "unlicensed" it allegedly is. It'd also go against the very footer of every page on this forum

long live PCem

Reply 6 of 9, by SquallStrife

Posted on 2016-10-13, 06:03

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IllidanS4 wrote:
Well, I would certainly prefer not having lots of 640x480 cutscenes taking 400 MB in total, when they could be of much greater quality with same or less size.

How do you propose to increase the quality of already-compressed files?

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Reply 7 of 9, by IllidanS4

Posted on 2016-10-13, 18:33

IllidanS4 Offline

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leileilol wrote:
DosFreak wrote:
What's the legal status of this game? I'm thinking not legal?

Blizzard certainly still owns it and will do takedowns of it no matter how "abandonware" and "unlicensed" it allegedly is. It'd also go against the very footer of every page on this forum

I am neither posting nor requesting the game, so this doesn't go against it. This can be in general applied to any game.

SquallStrife wrote:
IllidanS4 wrote:
Well, I would certainly prefer not having lots of 640x480 cutscenes taking 400 MB in total, when they could be of much greater quality with same or less size.

How do you propose to increase the quality of already-compressed files?

Waifu2x can do wonders with some cartoony images. It took quite a time, but I have "enhanced" all cutscenes this way, and they look much better than the originals (+it removes noises and dithering).

Reply 8 of 9, by leileilol

Posted on 2016-10-14, 09:30

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IllidanS4 wrote:
so this doesn't go against it. This can be in general applied to any game.

you don't read EULAs much do you

long live PCem

Reply 9 of 9, by IllidanS4

Posted on 2016-10-14, 10:08

IllidanS4 Offline

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leileilol wrote:
IllidanS4 wrote:
so this doesn't go against it. This can be in general applied to any game.

you don't read EULAs much do you

Never. Do you know someone who actually does? Anyway, is there an EULA for this forum, or why are you asking? Can't we stay on-topic?

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