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Extracting Gears of War 2 screenshots

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:04 pm
by HaLo2FrEeEk
Ok, I plugged in my Xbox 360 HDD to my computer again last night after installing a game to the Hard Drive, just to see what it would look like. I was messing around and I found the Gears of War 2 folder with all the screenshots taken in-game. Just like Halo screenshots, they are simply in JPG format inside the CON file, so I opened it in a hex editor and extracted the screenie. Now, I know nothing about programming in C, VB, etc, but I'd like to make a program that will extract the screenshots from those files, just for fun. Here's what I know:

The shots are in container inside the folder Partition3/content/[profile id]/4D53082D/00000001/shot_[shot id, I think]
The jpg file always starts at offset E000 and starts with the hex values "FF D8 FF E0 00 10" and goes through to the very end of the CON file.

It's an odd JPG format though, I tried simply putting my own JPG hex code in there and putting it back but it didn't work. In hindsight, I did forget to resign it.

Anyway, what could I do to make a simple, small app that will open and extract those JPG files for me? Maybe a batch feature, and if I really want to get into it, I can choose between loading files from different games, like Halo 3, as well.

I'm sure I could do something web-based that opened the file using PHP and extracted it, but who wants to upload their CON files and go through all that? Besides, that's a security risk.

So, can anyone help me? Like I said I know nothing of C, C++, C#, VB...etc, but I'm willing to learn what it takes.

Re: Extracting Gears of War 2 screenshots

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:34 pm
by HaLo2FrEeEk
Please, anyone? I think 24 hours is long enough to at least get 1 reply. It's possible and it's probably simple, but I need a boost getting started, please help.

Re: Extracting Gears of War 2 screenshots

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:01 pm
by Tural
Halomods Rules wrote: Do not...
Double post, where possible. Use the edit button.
Bump old topics. Topic creators must wait 5 days before bumping their own topics.

Re: Extracting Gears of War 2 screenshots

Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:26 am
by Eaton
There is already a public tool that can extract them.

Re: Extracting Gears of War 2 screenshots

Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 5:07 am
by HaLo2FrEeEk
I'm not doing this just so I can extract my screenshots, I could do that with a hex editor, I want to do it so I can learn a little bit about programming. Like I said, sure, I could upload them to my server and have a php script that takes care of it, but that would be too easy and I wouldn't learn anything, I want to start trying my hand at client programming. I installed VB and Python but VB won't let me start a new project and Python doesn't seem to have what I need. I need some recommendations on what I should use to do this.

Here's what I've learned: The gears of war screenshots are always at offset E000 in the CON file. Why can't I get help from someone to start me coding an app that would do this? It can't be hard to do, a program that extracts from offset E000 to the end of the file? I told you I don't know the first thing about coding like this. I'm great at web development, but not this. Please, help me.