Entry 240

STRT.BIN played: the demo discs' screens

2026-09-27video

Filescrates/piney-stream/src/load.rscrates/piney-stream/src/lib.rscrates/piney-game/src/loose.rscrates/piney-game/src/stream.rscrates/piney-game/src/main.rsdocs/disc/outbreak.md

Asked for: a way to see Outbreak's STREAM/STRT.BIN, the six scenes no code opens (worklog 239).

The viewer

A stream normally comes from the stream tables: a Def names the archive by its type, and each Entry gives the offset, size and kind. STRT.BIN is in no table. Nothing new was needed to play it, only the records:

• piney_stream::load::scan reads an archive's records off the archive itself. A member starts on a sector with a gzip header, and its record takes:

  • the CCSF file's own name (after CCSF at +0x0c);
  • its bytes to the next member;
  • its inflated length.

• load::loose_streams groups the records into streams. A setup file (...e) goes with the scene of its stem; it gets type 0 and flag 16, as the tables' strNNNNe records have. Every other record is a last scene (type -1).

  The first try left flag at 0. The setup file then went into the scene list rather than the preloads, and the stream sat at frame 0 drawing nothing.

• load::read_in reads a member from any archive path.

• Stream::loose plays records from an archive path under stream 47's number (a strdummy: no music, no effect task). from_files gained the path.

• piney-game --mode loose[:PATH][:N] (LooseMode) plays stream N of STREAM/STRT.BIN or another archive, at the event streams' rate 2. It starts over when the stream ends, and START goes to the next. It prints the streams it found; --shot and --every work with it.

The test outbreak_strt_scans_into_five_streams checks the six names, str9999's inflated length, and the grouping into five streams.

What they are

These are demo discs' title and menu screens and a release teaser, left on the retail Outbreak disc. The pictures were checked in contact sheets of --every shots.