Disc images and the disc filesystem¶

The game ships on two CDs. This project reads disc images directly: sltool cd parses the sector framing and the ISO 9660 filesystem itself, so extraction needs no mounting, no conversion to .iso, and no third-party tool.

Image layout¶

Redump-style images store complete 2352-byte sectors (MODE1/2352 in the accompanying cue sheet), not the 2048-byte user data that an .iso holds. A Mode 1 sector is:

Offset	Size	Field
0	12	Sync pattern: `00 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 00`
12	3	Address, as minutes / seconds / frames in BCD
15	1	Mode
16	2048	User data: one logical block
2064	288	EDC and ECC

Addresses count 75 frames to the second and start after a two-second pregap, so logical block 0 is at 00:02:00 and the ISO 9660 primary volume descriptor, at block 16, is at 00:02:16.

sltool detects the layout from the first twelve bytes: an image that starts with the sync pattern is raw, anything else is treated as 2048-byte logical blocks. Mode 2 Form 1 sectors are also understood, with their user data at offset 24; Mode 2 Form 2 and Mode 0 sectors carry no logical block and are rejected. EDC and ECC are not checked.

Filesystem¶

Both discs carry a plain ISO 9660 filesystem with no Joliet supplementary descriptor, so all names are 8.3 and upper case, with the ;1 version suffix that sltool strips. sltool reads Joliet names where a disc has them.

Disc	Label	Blocks	Size
1	`SL_CD1`	331,659	648 MiB
2	`SL_CD2`	279,922	547 MiB

Disc 1¶

Path	Size	Contents
`LANCER.CAB`	226,746,308	Installer cabinet: the game as installed.
`GAME/CD1.HOG`	406,051,549	Asset archive.
`GAME/CAB/LANCER.EXE`	249,119	SafeDisc loader.
`GAME/CAB/LANCER.ICD`	1,151,021	The game, encrypted.
`GAME/CAB/LANGUAGE.DLL`, `ITACLANG.DLL`		Language resources.
`SETUP.EXE`, `SETUPENU.DLL`, `SETUPAPI.DLL`		Installer.
`DPLAYERX.DLL`, `CLCD16.DLL`, `CLCD32.DLL`, `CLOKSPL.EXE`, `DRVMGT.DLL`, `SECDRV.SYS`		SafeDisc support files.
`DIRECTX/`, `GOODIES/`		DirectX 7 redistributable, MSN Gaming Zone client, diagnostics.

Disc 2¶

Path	Size	Contents
`GAME/CD2.HOG`	535,385,670	Asset archive: later missions and video.
`DOCS/MAUNAL.PDF`, `DOCS/QRC.PDF`		Manual and reference card. The manual's filename is misspelled on the disc.
`GOODIES/`		Acrobat Reader, MSN Gaming Zone client.

GAME/CD1.BIN and GAME/CD2.BIN are zero-length disc-identification markers.

Using it¶

sltool cd info <image>            # layout, block count, volume label
sltool cd ls <image>              # every file, with size and timestamp
sltool cd extract <image> <dir>   # copy everything off

make game runs the extraction for both discs, then installs game/install/ from them with openreliant install, which unpacks disc 1's LANCER.CAB, an LZX-compressed Microsoft cabinet, and copies both discs' archives (Platform).