My .black project

History of .black – RAGE research project

Author: GooD-NTS
Nizhniy Novgorod, 2010

I started my .black project in May, 2008 when GTA IV’d been just released on xbox360. Right now I don’t remember why I’ve started it, maybe I just want to see how the Rockstar Games use the new engine.

It all started from a small program called OpenRPF, what I’ve made for opening RPF archives. It wasn’t functional enough because it could only open archives directly, not to decrypt anything (at that time I didn’t know about RAGE encryption). During the first days of May I was trying to find out, how the encryption is used in RAGE and how I could decrypt it. As this time I found one great man. His nickname was Listener. I am sure, you all know who it is. I began to ask him different questions about encryption but he refused to give me any information because it was confidential and offered me to find it by myself in assembler codes of GTA IV. He gave me the link to IDA and necessary plugins for it, and gave some pieces of advice.

Next week after that I was searching for it, I’ve never seen PPC ASM before, so it was hard. The whole week I was questioning Listener, and after a week I have done it. So I understood everything I wanted about RAGE encryption and got an ability to continue my work with archives. Also I have joined to Listener and small closed community (on sannybuilder.com) who’ve started the GTA IV research.

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So, openFormats testing continues. Today I’m releasing new version that is in addition to converting resources into openFormats also includes some of OpenIV functions.

Links, for download:

New version of openFormats BETA:  http://bit.ly/opnFRS4

New version of GISM scripts from 3Doomer: http://bit.ly/gismv095

List of changes in openFormats BETA:

[Release 3, Version 4, 18.12.2010]
+ Added cmd line param, “-noglass” to disable aero glass transparency
+ Added OpenIV Tools
+ Texture editor (*.wtd)
+ Collision viewer (*.wbn;*.wbd)
+ Models viwer (*.wdr;*.wdd;*.wft)
+ Expiry date: 31.12.2010
* Updated Readme.txt

Good luck in testing and don’t forget get feedback.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any news about OpenIV and .black but I found this coll video what I made in 2008 year. This video show real gameplay of first GTA IV mod for xbox360 what I made with OpenIV 0.6.

You can see it on my youtube:
Part one
Part two

okay, and one small screen from .black:

Okay, I’m don’t post anything news long time, need to change it:

1 – I’m Finally update WordPress on this blog to lasted version, but I sure you no interested this.

2 – Today I have stop to accept new beta testers for OpenIV. Maybe I have open accepting later, if is needed in future. If anyone send message to me, and I don’t have added you to beta test, please resend you message, maybe I have skip this.

3 – Now I have personal twitter, is anyone is interesting then follow me @goodnts.  Maybe there I will be posted some about OpenIV and .black.

4 – New category «.black» is added to blog, this for post about .black project.

And no any news yet, .black and OpenIV is developing but unfortunately not so fast.

And lasted. Today I have found some old funny video on my ftp. This video I have made in 20 April 2009 do get begin work on GTA IV map viewer/ editor.

Enjoy:

You still can download this: Liberty_Eye.mp4