This is a quick post to clarify things regarding Telltale Explorer and my other Telltale-related tools. A few people have asked me when new versions of my programs will be released, supporting Sam and Max and the new directors cut versions of the Bone games.
The short answer is probably never, or at least not for the foreseeable future. Here’s why: All the newer Telltale games have encrypted datafiles, both the main .ttarch archive and the files within it are encrypted. The older Telltale games used this encryption only on lua scripts and images – which is why images in Out From Boneville appeared corrupted.
Recently John_Doe managed to figure out this encryption. This was a pretty amazing feat; the encryption was very complicated, especially in the newer games. Thanks to John_Doe I was able to update Telltale Explorer to add support for all Telltale Games and to fix many existing problems such as the image corruption in Out From Boneville.
However Telltale have requested that I don’t release the new version. This is a perfectly legitimate request, they were very nice about it and I will respect their wishes. Having a program floating around that decrypts all Telltale datafiles could cause them problems and I have no wish to encumber Telltale. The point I want to stress here is that Telltale didn’t do a Lucasarts on me. I wasn’t put under any pressure and I wasn’t sent a cease and desist notice; they made a request and I was happy to agree to it.
To clarify then: its highly unlikely that Telltale Explorer, Telltale Ttarch Creator and Telltale LangDB Editor will be updated. I probably will update the Telltale Music Extractor though.
Yeah, you can see Telltale’s point of view on this. Still, it’s a shame though.
In any case, congrats on cracking the format. That’s the most satisfying part, in a way.
Hello there, I have downloaded Scumm quick and easy, and the Vdm sound quick and easy to run my copy of full throttle, and every time i choose a path and click run, nothing happens on the vdm sound…Scumm q&e wont even recognize the folder either.
My copy of Full Throttle is on an origianl disc, it will play, but no sound.
Just use ScummVM on its own. Those two tools are now outdated/discontinued.
wow! Amazing!
with that, can you change the subtitles?
multilanguage version of the game…Amazing!
(any chance you can extract the subtitles, I translate them, and you put them back in the game?… mh, I know. But I had to try!)
What can I say… beyond telling your users that those tools won’t be updated anymore I don’t see the point of saying that you managed to crack TellTale encryption of S&M resources, and not helping even a bit with it to others.
My only intention is making an unofficial translation of the S&M games to Spanish. It wouldn’t be the first time I translate a game, and although I do not have a special degree I’ve always tried to make my translations as professional as possible. Many people wants to play this game but are unable because of the language barrier. Their situation isn’t nice at all: the last S&M game in Spanish was ‘Hit The Road’.
It’s just terrible. Seven new S&M games have been made and all this people have been completely forgotten.
I imagine that this secrecy is because the Sam and Max 3D models must be encrypted in the same way and making public the source code – or even binaries – of software which can decrypt them is risking to suddenly have lots of people messing around with these valuable characters, or even worse, making amateur games with them. Just guessing.
It’s a shame… i was trying to find some way to translate the text into my language. Is there any way you can send me the updated version, if I don’t use to anything else but the translation?
(or perhaps, a restricted version, that would allow only the extraction of texts?)
Hope you didn’t delete the new version. You should keep that for when Telltale goes out of business (see: never).
Some games really need something like this, especially some of the newer Strongbad games. Would really help in finding the items.
“I imagine that this secrecy is because the Sam and Max 3D models must be encrypted in the same way and making public the source code – or even binaries – of software which can decrypt them is risking to suddenly have lots of people messing around with these valuable characters, or even worse, making amateur games with them. Just guessing.”
You can’t get the source code – there’s no way you can. The executable file (also called the binary) is compiled FROM the source code, but Telltale didn’t include the source code with the game, because end-users only need the binary.
You could get the LUA scripts they used and modify those though, and yes, that would probably allow you to make some sort of stupid fangame.