Yeah... I found a crapload of unit graphics over at infoceptor and I'd love to be able to use some of them in my mod. Of course I'm trying to contact the authors for permission. Anyway they're almost all in CWAD/SEWAD format, which was way before my time. How does one execute, let alone extract files from this old format. I was under the impression that StarGraft had something to do with them, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to open them with it.

Oh and does anyone know the current email address of Yoshiboy? He's made a unit graphic that I absolutely want to use but both the email addresses he's provided don't work (y0shib0y@aol.com and y0shib0y@hotmail.com)

First of all, I don't think you'd really need permission for the graphics posted on infoceptor. They uploaded them for a reason, which, is for other people to use. As long as you don't claim them as your own, you should be fine. (unless the author specifically wants you to ask him permission, of course.)

Anyway, there's an old program called cwad 2 exe, though, I'm not sure where to find it. Alternatively, there's a few infoceptor graphics uploaded in the old Maplantis download DB.

I remember using cwad 2 exe to convert Infoceptor graphics. In fact, I've used it to upload an Infoceptor graphic or two up to Maplantis.

If you do find it and use it, ignore any errors that might pop up. Nothing will be botched if the program shows an error, just restart.

I take it neither of you have cwd 2 exe? Ah well, thanks anyway. I guess I'll get to googling...

EDIT:
Damn, well... No luck in finding this mysterious cwad2exe program. I guess I'm sunk

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 31 2009, 11:07 pm by Lord_Jeremy.

I have information on the format and some code for using it. If no one has that program anymore, I suppose I could put something together.

You're looking for the wrong title. It's called Exe2Mpq at least in our database.
http://www.broodwarai.com/index.php?page=tools#exe2mpq

Oh thank you thank you thank you bajadulce!

EDIT:
Ah crap... It seems this very old program doesn't like running under vista very much. I refuses to run unless I select Run As Administrator. And then when I try opening a cwad it says it copied the files to the same directory as an mpq file but no mpq file appears in the directory... Something to do with the Vista appcache perhaps? I'm really not sure what's going on... I may try running this program under wine back in Mac OS X to see if I have better luck.

2ND EDIT:
Well nevermind, it seems that when I tried running the SEWAD (and it closed promptly reporting that my StarCraft version was incompatible) it extracted it's components to the directory, including a pat, a dat, and another exe. EXE2MPQ was then able to work its magic on this second exe. I really don't know what just happened but it seems to have worked

3RD EDIT:
Well it seems that this little program has a bug or too. In the open dialog it won't show .cwd files, only .exe files even though the filter says both .cwd and .exe files. Anyone have any idea if I'm doing something wrong?

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 2 2009, 1:05 am by Lord_Jeremy.

yeah, that's normal. the .EXEs with this chip symbol are made of a .pat file, the real secwad, and some third file, which are extracted first. It's a strange system, yes...

this thing is buggy as hell. to open .cwd files, paste their filename into the open dialog, or start typing it, it should autocomplete.
I also believe it always crashes, when you convert .CWDs, but fortunately after it has successfully made an MPQ.
For me, it also tries to insall Microsoft Platform SDK when I run it for some reason... I have to cancel the setup, then the tool starts....

it would be really nice if someone would make an actually usable tool

Excellent, I'll try that out later tonight. Thanks!

To extract stuff from cwd's, I remember renaming their file extension to a .exe file, I think. It gave an error but it worked as far as I can remember.

There was no CWAD2EXE actually. There were EXE2CWAD and EXE2MPQ that could convert self-executing CWAD files into the 2 archive formats. In order to open CWADs, you need the good old StarDraft:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=9ebe258cab53ba99b94117dade8fc295e04e75f6e8ebb871

Mind you, it may not work unless you're running BW v1.08, since that's the patch that it was optimised for, but it just might do what you want.

Hokay, dunno really why, but I digged into it a bit, and made a tiny app that extracts CWADs from a SECWAD. It shouldn't have problems running on Vista, but I haven't really tested it anywhere except my own machine. It's a bit slow, because it makes a blind search for the archive, but it does the necessary thing. If you feel like it, ShadowFlare, you could use your format data to make a more speedy version (or give some hints to me, if you wish).

http://www.filefactory.com/file/ag5b537/n/CwadEx_zip

Hope this helps.

A while ago I actually made a C/C++ library for reading files from cwad archives. It may or may not have supported reading cwad archives directly from exe files. I'm sure I still have the source code around here somewhere.

Update:

Yes, it does have support for finding the cwad in an exe and reading the files from it. It also has a function that gives the location of the cwad archive. I think I'll package up the source code and put it on my site sometime in the near future. Usage is similar to the reading functions from my mpq library.

Also, I seem to have uploaded a dll version of it a while ago: http://sfsrealm.hopto.org/download/CwadLib.zip The date is older than the date on the source code, but that is probably irrelevant to its core function. I may have later made some modifications related to a cwad loader MPQDraft plugin I experimented with at some point.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 8 2009, 9:20 am by ShadowFlare.

I added a cwad to mpq converter to WinMPQ. To perform the conversion, just open the .cwd or .exe file and WinMPQ will detect the format and ask for a file name for the new mpq archive. I may have only tested it with plain cwad files and StarDraft exe's; it may be untested with StarGraft exe's.

By the way, I found that the version of the cwad library I have up on my site isn't the latest I had made and has bugs related to listing files (which were fixed in the latest version I have). I'll update the file on my site with the latest version sometime soon.

To get the new WinMPQ version, just head over to my site at http://sfsrealm.hopto.org/

Update:

OK, just confirmed the cwad library doesn't work with StarGraft exe's. I'll look into this.

Update2:

I've found that the format for the StarGraft exe's is fairly simple. I could easily update the cwad library to support it.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 21 2009, 8:44 pm by ShadowFlare.

I've finished updating the cwad library to support the StarGraft exe's. If you downloaded WinMPQ before this post, re-download WinMPQ to get the updated file.

I also updated the cwad library download with the latest version that I compiled today.

Sweet, thanks and gj!

Wow, ShadowFlare, you're pretty awesome...

omg. awesome.
Shadowflare, marry me!

Works great on several test exes! Now if we could only have a tool to extract .pat files from these old .exes! Ya, the exes generate their own .pat whenever you try run them in XP, but those .pats seem to be incomplete?

Also now that I may have SFlare's attention, did you happen to catch my pm in regards to the Playlist Plugin v1.12 error?

I don't think the files the StarGraft exes extract are incomplete. At least on the version I tried out, the files it extracted came out the same as what was stored in the exe. I suppose I could still add something for extracting them anyway, though. I was originally considering making WinMPQ add them to the converted mpq as well.