Kirby Cosmic Chaos demo files - Can someone look into these?

[3dmodelingmodest]

Hello. I am trying to get the 3d models and all I could find in there are only textures and icons! This is the current 2010 public demo and strangely unlike the older demos, this one makes the 3d models more hidden! The developer changed from Dark Basic to C+ making it more complicated to find the models. I am only interested in the 3d models. I already got the textures and icons so no need for those! I only want the 3d models. Thanks!

https://www.mediafire.com/file/epoxs...ublic.zip/file

if the 3d models are not in the DAT files please try to look at other files around the folder!

[Joe Forster/STA]

The .dat files seem to be a collection of files, with a header and a directory. There are file names ending with .mesh and .skeleton, those are probably the 3D models. There are also PNG's in the .dat files and their "%PNG" "IHDR" and "IEND" signatures are clearly visible so the .dat files are not compressed. However, if you can extract the 3D model files, you still don't know their internal format.

[3dmodelingmodest]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

The .dat files seem to be a collection of files, with a header and a directory. There are file names ending with .mesh and .skeleton, those are probably the 3D models. There are also PNG's in the .dat files and their "%PNG" "IHDR" and "IEND" signatures are clearly visible so the .dat files are not compressed. However, if you can extract the 3D model files, you still don't know their internal format.

Wait how are you able to see the DAT file? what did you use to open them yourself? Can you tell me?

[Joe Forster/STA]

Originally Posted by 3dmodelingmodest

Wait how are you able to see the DAT file? what did you use to open them yourself?

A hex editor, of course. I'm attaching a small program (C source and Windows executable) that can unpack those .dat files. Use it like

azounpack XXX.dat

and its contents will get extracted into a directory called "XXX" (same as the .dat file but without ".dat" extension). If you're not using Windows, you should be able to compile the C source with gcc.

(The name "azo" comes from the first three bytes of the .dat files.)

[3dmodelingmodest]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

A hex editor, of course. I'm attaching a small program (C source and Windows executable) that can unpack those .dat files. Use it like

azounpack XXX.dat

and its contents will get extracted into a directory called "XXX" (same as the .dat file but without ".dat" extension). If you're not using Windows, you should be able to compile the C source with gcc.

(The name "azo" comes from the first three bytes of the .dat files.)

Hey thanks! I tried to reach you via PM but I got no reply from you yet. So I check back here to see if you responded and I am very glad to see you are still active here and willing to help me! The only problem is I am not a technical expert as much as you and I have very little experience with using the terminal but I will try to follow your instructions you provided here and see if it will work for me! If not I will come back here to you and let you know if something didn't work for me. Again, thanks for your help!

This was a cancelled fan project by a Japanese American Kirby fan. Minon used to be the artist and modeler for the game. Problem with this guy he had a unhealthy relationship with the their own dev team. They were such a very small team and they started working on the game since 2007 and development been dragged on for only 3 years and still never completed (OUCH). The team disbanded around 2010 and eventually the project itself quietly cancelled after Minon made a sudden announcement on the blog page that "It's about time to closed shop huh?" only because the developer was too happy to see Star Allies released and doesn't seem to care about their audience who wanted Minon's game instead. Thankfully and luckily for us, Minon generously shared a few demos but Im afraid its not all of it as Minon confirmed theres one more demo from 2013 still unreleased to this day! I tried to contact Minon about that last demo and never got a response since Minon is hardly active around social media sites since Minon abandoned their Deviantart page but did not delete their account so their artwork for the game still remain there except for GBA Kirbster a friend of Minon's was the only member who left and Kirbster's artwork become "lost media" thankfully I saved at least some of Kirbster's work including 3d renders of models that would not likely be found within these demos since Kirbster was only involved with models not related to the project such as experimental 3d models and lots of sketch art I saved lol.

I like Cosmic Chaos because there going to be unique abilities and helpers that wouldn't appear in the official Kirby games! Such helpers and abilities only for this project are new characters inspired by Touhou as you can see Minon is a HUGE FAN of Touhou so its no surprise this game Cosmic Chaos was to feature some Touhou stuff there including a stage likely inspired by a similar setting in Touhou called Gansokyo a forest with pink trees better known as cherry blossoms I think? one of the helpers named Shippu was based on the Tengu creature from popular Japanese folklore with yokai and also another Touhou character named Aya who is part girl part Tengu lol.

This fan project sadly only end up like another Mother 4 did, lots of potential and creativity went down to waste with no sign of returning to it. The project Cosmic Chaos was made with Dark Basic for 2 years of development. By 2010, they switch to C+ whether this was intentional to make their assets harder to extract or not is unclear and unknown to us, the main reason for this change was difficulty with development. As you can see Minon was still in class at the time and not a full fledged programmer like most other hard working indie devs out there would who are often much more successful than fan devs these days and sadly.

The only good thing that makes these demos exist are not only around to preserve a lost proof of concept game but also a resource for us to research and find whatever we can to pull out and save from what could have been lol. Thankfully, the Dark Basic demos were easier to get models from and only the last one released from 2010 was the only demo I am unable to get models from yet but that might change if you could help me more! 👍

While the SKELETON files might not be necessary to keep, we only need the MESH files in order to view and preserve the 3d models! This is the original file type for the 3d models they were made with Ogre 3d modeling software and it seems likely that the artist Minon might have switch to Ogre without us knowing for the newer models that Minon made for the later models!

Before 2010, Minon used to model with Milkshape so the models used to be .X which I already convert myself with Blender to Collada but I plan to go back and make GLB for those models now that Collada is no longer supported and its already been considered outdated by today's standards with 3d modeling and game development lol. 👍

I would appreciate more help from you if you can look further into these folders? if this is all you could find for me, I like you to do me a favor and see if you can figure out any other program that might help view or convert MESH faster than the way I am doing it? In order to view a MESH model you have to use the programs they used to view or edit! They used Ogre but I am not sure if the latest version of Ogre will work with 3d models made in 2010 but we'll see!

Anyway very nice to meet ya and hope we can communicate more often on PM or just here if that's alright with you? Thanks! 👍