my adm <-> dat converter

[dengus]

Since editing the adm files in notepad was turning out to be rather inconvenient, I made a converter that converts either way between the two formats.

It's command-line, and usage is simple: just pass it the filename of the file to convert as the only argument. It will add or remove .adm from the input filename to produce the output filename, depending on if you passed it a dat or adm file.

I tested with converting and replacing a few of the files in Pak.zip, and it seems to work just fine, thought I don't guarantee anything.

I included the source code in case anyone is interested.

edit: I updated it to fix a couple minor issues and made it use CRLF instead of just LF for newlines, so that notepad can read it correctly.

http://rapidshare.com/files/300890118/tldat-2.zip

[Rick]

Hah, good timing. I just finished writing my own. Guess I'll hold off on posting it then.

[SilverD]

You guys are awesome, thanks so much!

[Rick]

Oh another thing to clarify, not all ADMs are DATs. There are quite a few .ANIMATION.ADM, the format is the same, just a different extension.

[PuceMoose]

Thanks for doing this! I'm eager to begin poking around in some files since the editor release date has not been nailed down for sure yet.

[Csimbi]

Nice, thanks, but it does not compact the files properly (decode one, encode it and compare with the original).

[throumbas]

You dont need to convert the files in adm for the game to use them.

Anyway this is pretty nice, one annoyance tho is that the text is continuous with no breaks, which makes it really tough to read in editors.

edit: nevermind this only happens in notepad for some reason

[Rick]

You dont need to convert the files in adm for the game to use them.

Anyway this is pretty nice, one annoyance tho is that the text is continuous with no breaks, which makes it really tough to read in editors.

edit: nevermind this only happens in notepad for some reason

Notepad doesn't support unix line endings is why, you can hack his code to do \r\n instead of just \n to fix that.

[Vis]

Can you post a sample command line using this so I know the format?

[dengus]

Can you post a sample command line using this so I know the format?

Actually, it's easiest if you just extract the tldat.exe somewhere and choose "Open with" on the .adm file then browse to the extracted tldat.exe. That way, you can just unzip Pak.zip and double click the .adm files to convert them to .dat.

But a sample command-line anyhow is tldat.exe SPIDER.DAT.adm

[hillin]

hi dengus, thanks for this tool. it works great when I'm trying to convert an adm file into a dat file, however, when I finished modifying the dat file and attempt to convert it back, there is an encoding problem occuring. the dat file is ucs-2 encoded, which supports CJK(Chinese, Japanese and Korean) characters, but when I place the adm file which I have just converted back into a mod pack, all CJK chars are showing incorrect in the game, the 2-byte CJK chars are shown as 2 splitted latin chars (e.g. a char, 0x7684 in unicode, is shown as 2 chars in code 0x76 and 0x84). I am wondering if this is caused by the convert tool or it is the game it self reads the adm file in that way. I looked into the source of your tool and got no idea.
thanks a gain.

[Csimbi]

I do not think it's the tool.
It appears that there is no real unicode support in the game.
Have a look at these older threads here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2811
and here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2718

[hillin]

I do not think it's the tool.
It appears that there is no real unicode support in the game.
Have a look at these older threads here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2811
and here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2718

Yeah I have read those posts. I believed the game supports unicode because it could handle most unicode chars in the .layout files correctly (except for the color formatted ones, I think it's because the regular expression don't support unicode). Maybe they just don't read the .dat.adm files in a proper way.

[dengus]

I tested with a few Unicode characters, and confirmed that my tool correctly stores them in the .adm file (it pretty much does a byte-for-byte copy). But there's really no need to use my tool to convert them back into .adm files, it's better to put .dat files in the mods directory rather than modifying Pak.zip, and then the game will make the .adm files itself.

I believe they're fixing some Unicode support in the next patch?

[Daviex]

Hi, i use that program and all ok.

You can't modified that convert all file on one folder? thanks

[mysteriono]

it just flashes for a sec and closes when i try to use it, any help?

[dengus]

Hi, i use that program and all ok.

You can't modified that convert all file on one folder? thanks

Try this - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2985

[hillin]

I tested with a few Unicode characters, and confirmed that my tool correctly stores them in the .adm file (it pretty much does a byte-for-byte copy). But there's really no need to use my tool to convert them back into .adm files, it's better to put .dat files in the mods directory rather than modifying Pak.zip, and then the game will make the .adm files itself.

I believe they're fixing some Unicode support in the next patch?

I didn't know the game could make the .adm files automatically. Hope the unicode problem will be fixed soon. Thanks a lot.

[Olympic]

Nice work man!

[theduke]

it just flashes for a sec and closes when i try to use it, any help?

having the same issue, windows 7 ultimate