alice-tools

This is a collection of command-line tools for viewing and editing file formats used in AliceSoft games.

Building

First install the dependencies (corresponding Debian package in parentheses):

• bison (bison)
• flex (flex)
• meson (meson)
• libpng (libpng-dev)
• libturbojpeg (libturbojpeg0-dev)
• libwebp (libwebp-dev)
• zlib (zlib1g-dev)

Then fetch the git submodules,

git submodule init
git submodule update

(Alternatively, pass --recurse-submodules when cloning this repository)

Then build the tools with meson,

mkdir build
meson build
ninja -C build

Windows

alice-tools can be built on Windows using MSYS2.

First install MSYS2, and then open the MINGW64 shell and run the following command,

pacman -S flex bison \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-meson \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-pkg-config \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libpng \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-libwebp

To build the GUI, you must also install Qt:

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-qt5

Then build the executable(s) with meson,

mkdir build
meson build
ninja -C build

The alice executable (located at build/src/alice.exe) should be standalone and portable.

The galice executable requires some extra files to be shipped with it due to Qt. Run the following commands to copy the required files for Qt,

mkdir deploy
cp build/src/galice.exe deploy/
windeployqt deploy/galice.exe

At this point, there are still some DLLs missing from the deploy directory. You can run the following command to determine the required DLLs,

ldd build/src/galice.exe | grep mingw64

Installation

From Source

If you’ve followed the above instructions to build alice-tools from source, run

ninja -C build install

to install it.

Nix

alice-tools can be installed via nix with the following command:

nix profile install git+https://github.com/nunuhara/alice-tools.git?submodules=1

You must have flakes enabled (consult the nix documentation for how to enable flakes).

Windows

The provided Windows builds are portable, so no installation is required. Simply run the provided executable (alice.exe) from a command prompt.

Usage

All of the tools are accessed through the single alice executable. Running alice or any command without arguments will print the relevant usage instructions. E.g.

alice
alice ain
alice ain dump

The currently implemented commands are:

alice acx     build     - Build a .acx file from a .csv
alice acx     dump      - Dump the contents of a .acx file to .csv
alice ain     compare   - Compare .ain files
alice ain     dump      - Dump various info fram a .ain file
alice ain     edit      - Edit a .ain file
alice asd     build     - Build a save file
alice asd     dump      - Dump a save file
alice ar      extract   - Extract an archive file
alice ar      list      - List the contents of an archive file
alice ar      pack      - Create an archive file
alice cg      convert   - Convert a CG file to another format
alice cg      thumbnail - Create a thumbnail for a CG file
alice ex      build     - Build a .ex file
alice ex      compare   - Compare .ex files
alice ex      dump      - Dump the contents of a .ex file
alice flat    build     - Build a .flat file
alice flat    extract   - Extract the contents of a .flat file
alice project build     - Build a .pje project file

Editing .ain files

See README-ain.md

Editing .ex files

See README-ex.md

Editing .acx files

See README-acx.md

Editing .flat files

See README-flat.md

Extracting archives

See README-alice-ar.md

Building projects (.pje)

See README-project.md

Known Limitations/Bugs

• aindump only supports dumping to a single file, which can be quite large.

Source Code

The source code is available on github.

Reporting Bugs

You can report bugs on the issue tracker at github, contact me via email at nunuhara@haniwa.technology, or find me on /haniho/.

Version History

Version 0.13.0

• Add asd dump and asd build commands for save file editing
• Properly implement packing of afa version 1 archives
• Fix bug when same output directory is listed multiple times in archive manifest
• Allow specifying options in manifest file (e.g. #BATCHPACK --afa-version=1 --backslash)
• Improve handling of non-ASCII command line inputs
• Fix a bug when using the --split option to ex dump
• Fix bug affecting Oyako Rankan archive files

Version 0.12.1

• Fix issues with extracting .dcf and .pcf images from Dohna Dohna
• Add option to ain dump to dump HLL stubs for xsystem4

Version 0.12.0

• Add GUI viewer (“galice”) for archives, ain files, ex files, and more
• Implement support for AAR archives
• Implement proper DCF image support
• Implement PCF image support
• Add cg thumbnail command for thumbnailing AliceSoft’s image formats
• Fix issue that prevented opening Healing Touch ain files
• Various compiler improvements

Version 0.11.1

• Implement file size check for AinInput and PactInput in .pje files
• Implement support for pact archive modding
• Fix issues affecting .flat files

Version 0.11.0

• Add --function option to ain dump for dumping a specific function only
• Add ex edit command for making incremental edits to .ex files
• Allow listing .txtex files as part of .pje build process
• Allow specifying archive source directories in .inc files
• Allow (limited) directory wildcard patterns in .inc files
• Allow specifying .jam source files in .inc files
• Implement bytecode injection feature for .pje builds

Version 0.10.2

• Fix encoding issue when using quoted strings in manifest files

Version 0.10.1

• Support extracting DLF and ALK archives
• Fix issues with Japanese file names on Windows
• Allow using quoted strings in archive manifest files
• Various improvements to the .jaf compiler

Version 0.10.0

• Add “BATCHPACK” manifest format for ar pack command
• Support ain v1 files (Mamanyonyo)
• Add tools for editing .flat files (flat extract and flat build)
• Support bytecode function replacement (.jam) via .pje project files
• Support building archives and .ex files via .pje project files
• Add project build command for building .pje files (replaces ain edit -p)
• Add cg convert command for converting between CG types
• Various improvements to the (still experimental) .jaf compiler

Version 0.9.1

• Fix encoding issue when using the ar pack command on Windows

Version 0.9.0

• Change naming of ain v12+ instructions/types to better reflect their semantics
• Implement ain v14+ versions of various macros
• Automatically dump .ex/.pactex files when extracting archives
• An archive’s table-of-contents can now be overridden when extracting
• The ain edit command now processes files in the order given on the command line
• The ain edit command now accepts a –jam option for patching the code section
• Many improvements/fixes to the (experimental) .jaf compiler
• Various bug fixes

Version 0.8.0

• Add ar pack command for creating AFAv2 archives
• Fix issues with ALD files on Windows
• Support indexing string table by value when using ain edit -t command

Version 0.7.0

• Combine all commands into the single binary ‘alice’
• Fix issue with the Dohna Dohna trial version .ain file
• Fix issue with unescaped carriage returns characters in output
• Improve error messages

Version 0.6.0

• Add acxdump/acxbuild tools for editing .acx files
• Support extracting .ogg files from afa v3 archives
• Fix crash when extracting CG archive from MangaGamer version of Sengoku Rance
• Support dumping/editing .ain files for Hentai Labyrinth and Evenicle 2 Clinical Trial Edition

Version 0.5.1

• Fixes issue when dumping ain files with ascii-incompatible encodings

Version 0.5.0

• !!! Breaks bytecode compatibility with previous versions !!!
• Removed --inline-strings options from aindump and ainedit
• Strings are now inlined in S_PUSH instructions, etc.
• Added a few more bytecode macros

Version 0.4.0

• Added alice-ar tool for extracting archive files

Version 0.3.0

• Now supports ain files up to version 14 (Evenicle 2, Haha Ranman)
• Improved ex file compatibility, now works with Rance 03, Rance IX and Evenicle 2
• aindump now emits macro instructions by default (makes bytecode easier to read)
• Most error messages now include line numbers

Version 0.2.1

• Added --input-encoding and --output-encoding options to control the text encoding of input and output files
• Added a --transcode option to ainedit to change the text encoding of an ain file
• Fixed an issue where the --split option to exdump would produce garbled filenames on Windows

Version 0.2.0

• Added exdump and exbuild tools

Version 0.1.1

• Fixed an issue where non-ASCII characters could not be reinserted using ainedit -t

Version 0.1.0

• Initial release
• Supports dumping/editing .ain files up to version 12 (Rance X)