RGB Classic Games Forum

Some time ago on the PCKF forums, I posted a topic about ripping CMF files from some games such as In Search of Dr. Riptide (Registered version). The CMFs I extracted (using a hex editor) from RIPTIDE.DAT are available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kym21ixrgj21x ... c.zip?dl=0
The Riptide music was composed by Dan Froelich and is very similar in style to his music in other games. OXYGEN.CMF sounds close to SONG_4.XR3 from Xargon.

Anyway, I was also still wondering if there would be a way to extract data, such as the CMF files, from Highway Hunter (developed by Omega Integral Systems and published by Safari Software/Epic MegaGames). Shareware Highway Hunter has a 1.DAT file, and the registered version, which seems to be abandonware, has a 123.DAT file. I don't know the exact format the files are stored in...I assume they're compressed in some way. Any information on this would be appreciated.

If the files aren't compressed, you can feed them through a utility called a ripper, which searches within files looking for signatures - certain patterns of data - and then extracts ("rips") any matching files.

I recently wrote a utility called Ripper 6 which can do just that, and it is capable of extracting CMF files among other formats.

EDIT: Just fed the Highway Hunter .DAT file into Ripper6 and it extracted a bunch of CMF files. Some of them were corrupt - not sure whether this is a problem with Ripper6 or whether they are non-standard CMF files - but certainly it extracted a number of songs, sound effects, and what look like PBM format images.

I just added support to Camoto for extracting the files in the Highway Hunter .DAT file. Compared to using a ripper, this way you get the original filenames.

Those CMF files are weird though. The reason Ripper6 extracts too much data is because the files have some invalid fields in them. I had to update the Camoto CMF player to ignore the invalid fields so the files would even play. There are also remnants of MIDI files inside the CMFs (perhaps from the original MIDIs used to create the CMFs) and there is even a message in the middle "Helv (c) Copyright Microsoft Corp. 1987. All rights reserved." - no font data though, it's sandwiched between two chunks of MIDI data.

Almost looks like they used a homebrew utility to produce the CMF file from a .mid and didn't do a very good job of it, so leftover bits of memory buffers also got written to the CMF files!