EFTXplorer | EFT Converter & Viewer

[annabellica]

Hey everyone.
Considering this is a tool, not a mod, I believe this is the right place to introduce this.

We've worked on a tool which can analyze, modify & decompress *.EFT textures back into a readable and editable format.
While this brings a lot of new modding possibilities (considering there was no method to decompress *.EFT files the past 15 years) I have to admit: With great power comes great responsibility.
This tool is an important milestone for the EM4 community, however (and I cannot stress this enough) the respectful handling of assets should always be a priority.

What can EFTX do?
EFTXplorer (EFTX) can read & convert an Emergency EFT texture without using the original TGA texture.
This allows you to reprocess "lost" textures or just convert textures whose source is unknown.

How does EFTX work?
EFTX is a "wrapper" for our LibEFT library. It reads the EFT, analyzes it and converts it via CPU into a readable format.
Feel free to read details on our GitHub page!

Download EFTX
GitHub EFTXplorer Releases - GitHub Direct link to latest release

Can you be of help?
Feel free to post bugs, suggestions, bug fixes or similar on GitHub under "Issues"!

Update 1.3:

Fixes:

1. Exporting to TARGA (*.tga) now exports to the correct 24-bit format.
   All other export options will export 32-bit RGBA.

New features:

1. You can now drag and drop an .EFT file to import it
2. Large Preview option.
3. Double-clicking .EFT files and opening them with EFTX as a standard option will open them in a large Preview window.

Adjustments:

1. EFTX now has an icon.

[Handsup!]

lovely

[Grim_Wizard]

I am highly impressed. This is something that has been missing for such a long time, and as someone who primarily deals with making maps from scratch would have saved so much time over the years. 

[annabellica]

2 hours ago, Grim_Wizard said:

I am highly impressed. This is something that has been missing for such a long time, and as someone who primarily deals with making maps from scratch would have saved so much time over the years. 

Much appreciated!
Yeah, wish I would've joined the community earlier. It took us about 5 days to crack the format - unbelievable it took 15 years in general.

[Grim_Wizard]

2 hours ago, annabellica said:

Much appreciated!
Yeah, wish I would've joined the community earlier. It took us about 5 days to crack the format - unbelievable it took 15 years in general.

There was always a lack of scripters in the community, fewer still people who could compile projects outside of the confines of the game itself. The only one I can remember is the EM4 script generator. Also the EFT format has remained uncracked for 16 years, as it was used in Emergency 3, if you had waited a month and 5 days it would have been 17  

[annabellica]

1 hour ago, Grim_Wizard said:

There was always a lack of scripters in the community, fewer still people who could compile projects outside of the confines of the game itself. The only one I can remember is the EM4 script generator. Also the EFT format has remained uncracked for 16 years, as it was used in Emergency 3, if you had waited a month and 5 days it would have been 17  

It would have probably remained uncracked for another (almost) 17 years if I wouldn't have taken an interest in it, it seems

[C.F.D]

A very welcoming asset to the community, thank you for this. Can you help clarify what this can be done for those who are new to the community, what exactly sort of .EFT texture/template can you open with this tool ? Are we talking about base game map textures, etc ? 

 

Now see if you can reverse-engineer the editor and introduce more tools, haha.

[Grim_Wizard]

59 minutes ago, C.F.D said:

A very welcoming asset to the community, thank you for this. Can you help clarify what this can be done for those who are new to the community, what exactly sort of .EFT texture/template can you open with this tool ? Are we talking about base game map textures, etc ? 

 

Now see if you can reverse-engineer the editor and introduce more tools, haha.

I played around with it, you can extract a targa out of the EFT file more or less. Mixed results with EM3. But EM4 maps seem to work okay. 

[annabellica]

1 hour ago, Grim_Wizard said:

I played around with it, you can extract a targa out of the EFT file more or less. Mixed results with EM3. But EM4 maps seem to work okay. 

EM3 as well as EM4 maps work completely fine. Not sure what you mean with mixed results 

[Grim_Wizard]

11 hours ago, annabellica said:

EM3 as well as EM4 maps work completely fine. Not sure what you mean with mixed results 

Disregard, I was testing on EM3 files I pulled off of an old external HDD that were almost completely corrupted, causing the program to hang. Tested it out on a fresh install and everything was good. 

[annabellica]

3 hours ago, Grim_Wizard said:

Disregard, I was testing on EM3 files I pulled off of an old external HDD that were almost completely corrupted, causing the program to hang. Tested it out on a fresh install and everything was good. 

I was honestly worried there was a bug I didn’t catch

[Chris07]

I would be very interested in knowing how you figured out/reverse engineered the eft format.

[annabellica]

On 12/17/2021 at 2:14 AM, C.F.D said:

A very welcoming asset to the community, thank you for this. Can you help clarify what this can be done for those who are new to the community, what exactly sort of .EFT texture/template can you open with this tool ? Are we talking about base game map textures, etc ? 

 

Now see if you can reverse-engineer the editor and introduce more tools, haha.

We have a complete "Context" section on our GitHub page

Quote

Games like the Emergency Series are using a proprietary texture compression format called "Emergency Format Texture" or ".EFT" for important / critical in-game textures. The games (and their editor modes) can convert Targa Image files (.TGA) to .EFT format, however they cannot (or simply don't have an option to) convert these .EFT textures back to a readable format. The biggest headache here was that you couldn't examine or alter textures unless you had access to the original .TGA file.

---

4 hours ago, Chris07 said:

I would be very interested in knowing how you figured out/reverse engineered the eft format.

Magic 

[Grim_Wizard]

I was also interested if your program would decompile EFTs from the 20xx series, however it looks like it causes an overflow when trying to parse the EFTs of 20xx. I am aware of some ways to circumvent a lot of the protection from mods that 20xx had, and NewFoundKing and myself were able to able to insert and load models about 8-10 years ago, but it was very difficult, convoluted, and required a copy of the game's engine. 

 

8 hours ago, annabellica said:

 

Magic 

 

Chris07 and myself both have a vested/piqued interest in the implications of your project and what it could mean for the future of Emergency 4 and its modability. Would you be interested in talking about it over discord?

[annabellica]

54 minutes ago, Grim_Wizard said:

I was also interested if your program would decompile EFTs from the 20xx series, however it looks like it causes an overflow when trying to parse the EFTs of 20xx. I am aware of some ways to circumvent a lot of the protection from mods that 20xx had, and NewFoundKing and myself were able to able to insert and load models about 8-10 years ago, but it was very difficult, convoluted, and required a copy of the game's engine. 

 

 

Chris07 and myself both have a vested/piqued interest in the implications of your project and what it could mean for the future of Emergency 4 and its modability. Would you be interested in talking about it over discord?

Sure, my discord is linked on my profile here

[Grim_Wizard]

49 minutes ago, annabellica said:

Sure, my discord is linked on my profile here

I believe it sent, I had to reverse look up your user and tag from a bot. If you don't see it it's Panzerschlag #8425 

 

[Xplorer4x4]

I'm intrigued as well!