Technical Information

This page is a reference on the files found in Purple Moon's games. We hope that it will be of use to anyone who wants to try datamining or modding them.

Resource Storage
The four visual novels' main game files are stored in a RESOURCE folder on their respective disks. The resources for scenes and choice screen animatics, as well as the title sequences, main menu screens (which are referred to internally as "Housekeeping" screens), backpack journal entries, and some areas of the hidden hallway are stored on the first level, while resources pertaining to individual characters' locker items are stored in a separate folder labeled "IDL" and named an abreviated version of the name of the character they pertain to. (e.g. "ARNO" for Arnold, "ROCK" for Rockett, etc.)  The files for the teachers' lounge or cubbies are all in one file ("TEAC"), as are truth glasses screen resources in later games ("IDGLASS"). "IDL/GEN.prx" is where all of the general files for the Hidden Hallway are stored, including the backgrounds for various notes, music loops, sound effects, and general locker graphics.

All graphical and audio resources are stored in combination PRS/PRD files (New School only) or PRX files (every other games). These are proprietary archive file formats used exclusively by Presage Software, the company that developed the games for Purple Moon. (Other games created by Presage around the same time, in particular Lode Runner 2, use the same file types. Two members of the LR2 community, Anthony Kozar and Toastline, have created documentation on PRX file structure as well as several command-line utilities for extracting and converting the files within them. These programs do not work with Purple Moon files.) PRX files are standalone archives, while PRS/PRD are a combination of an archive (PRS) and a header file with a table of contents and offset data (PRD). For utilities capable of unpacking the PRS/PRD/PRX files, see the link to Luna Purpura below.

Graphics
There are three main graphics formats used in the Rockett games: XPK, XMV, and CLU.

XPK files contain the game's raster graphics that occur outside of the animatics. These can be a single static image, a large image broken up into sections, or an animated image. They contain height, width, and (in the case of animations) sequencing information, but not color information. For that, the game consults various Color Lookup Tables; cooresponding .CLU files. (Every CLU file contains 256 colors, hence why the games will give you a warning if your system is not in 256 Color mode.) All scenes have their own .CLU file. As does the main menu, the title sequence, the animatic control graphics, and the Hidden Hallway. Locker items in the Hidden Hallway consult the latter's .CLU file.

XMV files appear to be some sort of movie file format and appear to be used for more complex animated sequences in the lockers. Little is known about them at the time of this writing.

Also included in the files for every scene is a .DIB file. .DIBs are "Device Independent Bitmaps" and are the precursor format to the more well-known .BMP. It is unknown at this time what purpose they serve.

Audio
All audio in the Rockett games are stored as .AIF files. (Most of which are mono tracks recorded at 22050 Hz with a 8-bit signed integer.) Some of it is uncompressed and can be played in any audio program that supports the format. The rest, however, are compressed and contain a COMM chunk of "SQS2". SQS2 is a compression scheme developed for the 3DO. Little is known about it at this time.

The type of files that use compressed or uncompressed audio changes with each game. Some sound effects and background music loops are usually left uncompressed. Animatic audio and locker VOs are always compressed. In some games, the VOs that play on the choice screens are compressed, but are left uncompressed in later games. The Truth Glasses VOs were also left uncompressed.

Animatics
The graphics and audio for each of the games' animatics are stored as .SMF files. The audio is off the same format as the rest of the games' audio, and is compressed in the case of Tricky Decision. It is unknown what format the graphics are in.

Locker Text
Also included in the locker files in Tricky, Invitiation, and Dance are plain text files. These contain the text for most of the journal entries and notes that appear in students' lockers and the teachers' cubbies during the game. The file names indicate what locker they appear in, which "book" it appears in, and what scene and choices trigger it. For example, Arnold's files in Tricky Decision contains the file "arn_j5_s6a4u.txt". "arn" is an abbreviation for Arnold. "J5" indicates that it is the 5th entry in the "J" book, which is the green Whistling Pines planner that most of the students have. The file will appear if the player gets to Choice 4 (4) of Scene 6A ("s6a"), and chooses the "u" emotion. (Earlier games abbreviate emotion choices to a single letter.) A file's "book" indicator is used to determine what background the text appears over. Most texts have the "J" indicator. Notes that are written to a character are labeled as part of the "n" book. The background that these notes appear on appears to be assigned elsewhere in the game's coding. Here is a list of known "books" used in the games. The text for Rockett's Secret Diary entries are stored in a separate folder from the rest of Rockett's locker files. In Tricky, they use a separate naming scheme. (Eg  "pbjournal_42f")
 * AB - "Address book", used by multiple students.
 * BB - Nicole's "boy book".
 * CJ - "CSG Journal". Miko's customized journal with the CSG logo on it (not to be confused with the private report book).
 * D - Nicole's "diary" in Tricky; Mavis' secret notebook in Invitation and Dance.
 * FJ - Nakili's private journal in Tricky. "Family journal"?
 * LB - "Log book". Used exclusively by teachers. The teacher version of "J" texts.
 * MJ - "Main journal", entries for Rockett's secret diary (in her backpack) in Invitation and Dance.
 * NB - Mr. Pill's personal "notebook".
 * PJ - Sharla's "private journal".
 * PRB - The CSGs' "Private Report Book".
 * RB - Ruben's (blue spiral) notebook.
 * SB - Mavis' "Secret [Note]Book" in Tricky.
 * T - To-do lists written by Max and Whitney. Presumably uses one of the notepad backgrounds.
 * TD - Nicole's to-do lists.
 * TG - Hints for the "truth glasses" scavenger hunt segment.

New School's locker texts are stored as XPK graphic files.

Secret Paths in the Forest
The game's data is contained in .DXR and .CXT files. These are file formats used exclusively by Macromedia/Adobe Director. Which means that the entire game was probably made in it. Animatics are stored as uncompressed .MOV files and can be viewed in any video program that supports the format.

Luna Purpura
Luna Purpura aims to be a free and open source reimplementation of Purple Moon's games and their engines. At the time of of this writing, the project is still in its very early stages, as not all file formats are fully decoded.

Resources

 * Anthony Kozar's Lode Runner 2 page
 * Luna Purpura on GitHub