Privateer File Formats

TRE File

The Privateer TRE format contains an eight byte header, the first four bytes contains the number of files in the .TRE file and the second four bytes contains a pointer to where the data begins (the size of the header). After the header come the file entries. The first field in each file entry is one byte long, the meaning of it is currently unknown, possibly a .tre or file version indicator. Following the first byte are 65 bytes making up the filename as the game reads it. Privateer's internal file structure demands that every file name starts with ..\.. next are 4 bytes marking the offset where the file occurs, and four bytes indicating the size of the file.

Speech Files

Speech in Privateer is broken into two sections, there are the radio communications handled ingame, and there are the Cutscene/Campaign/Base speech files.

Inflight Speech

Inflight speech is stored in SPEECH.PAK in the root of the PRIV.TRE file. It can be read by opening it as RAW unsigned 8 bit mono PCM audio at 11025hz in Audacity. The Privateer Speech Pack Floppy Disk version is 6130358 bytes (5.9MB) in size, whereas the Privateer CD version is 15322837 bytes (15MB).

Base/Campaign Speech

Speech which occurs on bases and in the cutscenes and campaign sections of the game are stored as two files. Each section of spoken audio is stored as an LZW compressed VOC file with an extension of .VPK, along with a text file with extension .PFC The PFC file contains variable names which map to the pilot and star system names in the game. The files are stored in PRIV.TRE under DATA/CONV. They can be extracted using treman, but the VPK files require an lzw decompressor to decode.

Music

The Music is stored in DATA/SOUND

Graphics

The graphics files are stored in DATA/APPEARNC as .IFF files they can be viewed with WCNAV.

Cutscenes

The Cutscene Files are stored in DATA/MIDGAMES with the audio files for the intro movie stored in DATA/SPEECH/MID01/ as uncompressed VOC.