ARM Backup/Ar tonelico 2 retranslation/Tools

Text copied from Yahoo's cache. Original link: http://at2.limitedwish.railsplayground.net/pmwiki.php/Main/Tools

=Tools=

RPK.BIN
Archive file containing much of the game data.


 * exar2rpk - First tool for extracting and repacking this file. Has seperate binaries for NA and JP versions.
 * rpkextract.rb - Extraction-only tool with a variety of command line options.

*.afs
Contains game music


 * AFS Explorer - Tool for playing and extracting sounds in .AFS files
 * Cube Media Player - Tool for for playing and extracting PSOne and PS2 music and videos

*.evd
Contain text and display instructions for most events.


 * exar2evd - First tool for extracting and repacking these files. Crashes on a small number of files.
 * evdextract.rb - Extraction tool primarily designed for continuing investigation of the evd format.
 * evd Synchro-Tools - A pair of programs for extracting and repacking .evd files that places the NA and JP lines side-by-side for easy comparison. Extremely finicky in what filenames it expects for input.

*.fp
A sub-archive file containing large quantities of assorted data, including many of the game's images.


 * exar2fp - First tool for extracting these files. Unpack-only.
 * FP tools - A pair of programs to unpack and repack these files.

*.ipu
A PS2 movie format used by the game. Also for things like "single frame movies" used for some in-game screens.


 * ps2str - An official ps2 devkit utility for creating ipu + pss files. See this post for more information.
 * IPUCONV - Tool from the "Singstar Hacking project" for converting IPU files to M2Vs, "which are needed to re-encode the edited changes to a new IPU.". More information here.

*.lzr
Compressed file format, mostly seen for images. Has similarities to the LZSS algorithm? Tests by TerraBreaker have found that the game will not load uncompressed images.


 * unlzr - First tool developed for decompressing these files.
 * FakeLZR - Does not actually compress files, but adds a valid LZR header which will allow the game to read them.
 * CUE-LZR - Utility created by Spanish hacker CUE. Allows to compress and decompress LZR files. Currently available only in Spanish.

*.sfd
Movie format used by the game. More information here.


 * AddAlphaToShatterImage - Tool for adding alpha to "shatter" frames from one of the cosmosphere movies.
 * CsSubtitleAdder - wizzardx's Cosmosphere subtitle utilties
 * Latest version of DivX - for playing .sfd movies
 * Big media codec packs like K-Lite - also for playing .sfd movies, with subtitles.
 * Cube Media Player 2 - Extractor/convertor for PS2 multimedia
 * Prism Video Converter - Video converter reported to work with .sfd movies

*.tm2 (TIM2)
A common format for images in PS2 games.


 * OPTPiX iMageStudio - A powerful and versatile commercial program for handling these and other image files. Costs $3500 o.O
 * TimTool - Open-source tool for TIM2 images. Known to be able to convert .tm2 files from AT2 properly, but the user interface is incredibly opaque and documentation non-existant.
 * lilie - Japanese program to extract image files from a number of Gust games. Costs money, with no obvious way for those outside Japan to purchase a copy.

Misc/Support

 * Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable - Required for many of Asmodean's tools.
 * Ruby - Required for Morganite's tools.
 * JWPce - A free Japanese word processor.
 * MadEdit - Open-source hex editor. Also the only hex editor Morganite's found that will display two-byte characters in hex mode dump. Also has a pretty good "Find in files" function supporting two-byte text.
 * Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 - for developing the C++ utilities. Visual C++ express (free version of VC++) should also work.

See this page for a instructions on using various tools.