Look folks, I'm not gonna mince words here: reverse engineering is cool, and I want to learn more about it. "OpenHarvester" aims to reverse engineer DigiFX Interactive's 1996 cult classic, Harvester, not because it really needs remastering, but mostly just so I can teach myself the process of reverse engineering.
Step 1 of OpenHarvester will be creating an asset viewer for the game.
To that end, HarvesterHarvester makes directly accessible all of files used by Harvester by first reconstructing the original disks that the game would've shipped with at release before then also extracting data from Harvester's own, proprietary dat files.
Currently, I'm working to reverse engineering each and every proprietary file format used by the devs. The good news is, it seems the devs largely relied on preexisting file formats for the game. Unfortunately for me however, they also removed the headers and other identifying information from said files, likely to save space. As one can probably imagine though, this does make things a bit more difficult, but I've been enjoying it nonetheless.
As of writing, only three file formats have been definitively reversed engineered:
As of writing, BM/PAL files can be converted into bitmap images using my BMtoBMP utility, while a utility for CMP files has yet to be developed (although I do hope to tackle that relatively soon).
After the completion of the asset viewer, I hope to port Harvester to a graphics library like OpenGL or an existing engine like Godot.
I have a pantheon of weird, (mostly) shitty games from my youth that I was, for whatever reason, obsessed with growing up. Even still, at [UNDISCLOSED] years of age, these are games I still think quite fondly of.
As an adult[citation needed], the way I reason about it is this: I have a soft spot for media and creators who try doing really big things, but be it monetary restrictions or lack of skill, they don't quite hit the mark. Seeing them try nonetheless is just really cool and oddly inspiring, I guess. "Harvester" is one of those games.