Van Helsing game research

This project was initiated for fun and learning. The main goal is to research the internals of the game The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. With some file formats researched, this work may become useful for other developers and end-users.

© Steffen André Langnes.

Coding environment

• Operating system: Windows 7 and later.
• IDE/Compiler: Visual Studio/C++ 2013 with update 4.

Building

Note: Although "cross-platform" code is favored, no extra effort is being made to compile and run the code on platforms other than Windows.

Preparation

• Point the environment variable BOOSTDIR to the directory of the Boost library. Make sure to build Boost as well.

• Open the Developer Command Prompt for VS2013 (make sure Git is available).

• Initialize the repository:

    git clone --recursive --branch=master <repository url>
    cd Van-Helsing-game-research
  

• Build dependencies:

    powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File Code\scripts\build\thirdparty.ps1
  

Build

• Update the version number if needed:

    powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File Code\scripts\UpdateVersion.ps1 <version>
  

• Build:

    msbuild Code\VanHelsingGameResearch.sln /t:Build /p:Configuration=Release
  

Packing for release

• Point the environment SIGNTOOL to the full path to the SignTool executable.

• Create package(s):

    Code\scripts\CreateReleasePackage.bat
  

Current programs

• Unpacker for N2PK packages (command line) (Files.N2PK). These files contain textures, models, etc.
• Storage viewer (command line) (storage.sav). Displays all of the items you have in your storage.
• Storage editor.

Game-save location (PC)

Documents\NeocoreGames\Van Helsing\SaveGame\<number>

Files in the game-save location

Name	Description
*.sav	Game-save/Character.
timestamp.hts
backup/*.sav	Backup of previous saves.
common/storage.sav	Shared storage/chest.
achievements.sav