Heroes of Might and Magic II

Tue Aug 11 2009

Edit: As of November 2010, this information is grossly outdated and I haven't added much of the knowledge I gained on the subject yet.

Heroes of Might and Magic II Reverse Engineering

Recently, I’ve been trying to work out how the main files to Heroes of Might and Magic II (HoMMII) work.

Game Archive File: .AGG

I am able to unpack all files from a HoMMII type AGG game archive file.

HoMMIIAGGReader

There are the following file types in an AGG file:

  • 82M (Raw Wave Sound files)
  • BIN (?)
  • BMP (? Not a typical Microsoft Bitmap file)
  • FNT (? Not a typical Microsoft Font file)
  • ICN (Sprite Archives)
  • TIL (?)
  • XMI (Miles Sound System eXtended MIDI File)

Here is what I know about each of the file formats so far:

Raw Wave Sound Files: .82M

The .82M files can be played with any sound editor capable of reading raw wave data at a rate of 22050Hz / 8-Bit Unsigned / Mono.

I am now able to output the raw data as a standard Windows PCM Wave file.

Bin Files: .BIN

Unknown

BMP Files: .BMP

Unknown

FNT Files: .FNT

Unknown

Sprite Archives: .ICN

I’ve been creating a small application to read .ICN files and have made significant progress:

Heroes of Might and Magic II ICN Sprite File Viewer

ICNViewer2

There are still quite a few unknown control codes as well as pallete colours I have yet to discover.

Til Files: .TIL

Unknown

Music Files: .XMI

XMI files are similar to standard MID files and can typically be converted to MID

There are also certain files that exist outside of the main AGG game archive files:

  • MP2 / MX2 (Map files)

Map Files: .MP2 / .MX2

I’ve made decent progress with the HoMMII map file format, especially regarding the basic tile type, such as Grass, Ice, Swamp, etc.

I created a small Visual Basic demonstration application to test my findings.

Heroes of Might and Magic Mini-Map Viewer

Although I can distinguish the different tile types (Grass, Ice, Swamp, etc) I am unable to distinguish the various tile items that add shading detail to the mini-map (e.g. mountains, trees, etc).

Downloads

Extraction utility for reading the contents of Heroes of Might and Magic I AGG game archive files.

Heroes 1 AGG Extractor / Reader

Extraction utility for reading the contents of Heroes of Might and Magic II AGG game archive files.

Heroes 2 AGG Extractor / Reader

(Last updated: 4th Jan 2008)

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