sf_megaextract — An extractor for SimFarm's datafiles

sf_megaextract is a simple program which extracts SimFarm's data files, which are stored in the MEGADATA.IDX and MEGADATA.EEA files. I've only tried it with the MS-DOS version, so if the other versions have different file formats, it may not work.

Compiling it and running it should be a breeze:

1. Download sf_megaextract.c.
2. Compile it with cc -o sf_megaextract sf_megaextract.c
3. Run it (in the game directory, or another directory containing the MEGADATA files):
   ./sf_megaextract
4. Enjoy rummaging through the files! :-)

For the most part the files are in custom formats, but there are a few viewable/editable ones. You'll see a mixture of:

• .voc sound files (typically 8-bit at ~11KHz)
• .xmi MIDI tracks. These are used by the Miles Sound System
• .pal files, containing a 16-colour, 6-bit VGA palette, one byte per channel.
• .bmp files, a custom bitmap format containing 4-bit planar EGA. See sf_bmp2bmp below for a program that can read these.
• .dat files, which are typically text files of some description. CSV formatted data is common.
• …and several other file formats, yet to be deciphered.

The sf_bmp2bmp program can convert SimFarm's .bmp files into standard Windows .bmp files. It requires SDL 2.0 for the bitmap I/O.

Compiling and running it involves:

1. Downloading sf_bmp2bmp.c;
2. Compiling it with cc -o sf_bmp2bmp sf_bmp2bmp.c `sdl2-config --cflags --libs`
3. Running it with ./sf_bmp2bmp [input bmp] [palette] [output bmp]
   (for example, ./sf_bmp2bmp about.bmp simfarm.pal about.new.bmp).

These are pretty hacky programs — my apologies — but hopefully someone finds them interesting!

Have fun,
— David