[Tool] DAT Tool 1.0

TOEE DAT TOOL
© 2006 by Michael “Agetian” Kamensky, Circle of Eight

ToEE DAT Tool is a small program that can be used to create and extract database (.dat) files for the Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE).
The DAT Tool uses an interface to game’s original input/output library, TIO.DLL, in order to perform .dat file operations, and will not function without it.

Prerequisites to get the ToEE DAT Tool to work.

1. Create a new folder which will be used for the DAT Tool. That directory must contain all the files you’d like to pack into a dat file, as well as you’ll copy your dat files to extract there. Copy the ToEE DAT Tool into that folder. NOTE: I wouldn’t recommend you to use the ToEE folder to create/extract .dat files, since you risk corrupting your game installation.
2. Copy the files tio.dll and zlib-1.2.1.dll from your ToEE game folder into the DAT Tool folder. If you don’t do this the DAT Tool will cease to function.
3. The DAT Tool is ready to work.

In order to create a .DAT file:

1. First of all you must understand that all the files that you want to be compressed into a .dat file must be copied into your DAT Tool folder, into their appropriate subfolders. For example, if you’d like to compress the ToEE module files into toee.dat, you’ll have to copy your module files into the DAT Tool folder as follows (“dattool” being the DAT Tool folder itself):

dattool
\------------art
\-----------maps
\-----------mes
. . . . . . . . .
(and so on)

2. DAT Tool uses the so-called file list file (also known as response file) in order to specify which files to include in a DAT file. A file list file is a text file that contains the complete list of files to store in a DAT file. Don’t worry, you don’t need to specify every single file out there, you can use wildcards like “*.*” to specify all files in a subfolder. For an example above, we can create a file list file called (for example) toee-module.txt and write the following stuff inside:

art\*.*
maps\*.*
mes\*.*
(and so on, until you have included all the subfolders you need to store)
NOTE: just writing *.* in a file list file will make the DAT Tool also include the files from the DAT Tool folder itself, like dattool.exe, tio.dll, and others. To avoid this you need to list individual subfolders, like in the example above.
3. Launch the DAT Tool now, make sure that the Compress files into a DAT file option is checked, then specify the target DAT file name (no subfolders here, just the name) – like mydata.dat, for instance. In file list file name, type the name of the file list file you’d like to use, in our case toee-module.txt. For compression level, specify a number from 0 to 9 (0 = no compression, 1 = worst compression, 9 = best compression).
4. Hit “Execute” to compress the files into a .DAT file. Note that it may take a while to finish, so don’t worry – the program won’t hang (hopefully J), it simply works kind of slowly, without any visible output on the screen for now. Unfortunately, screen output is impossible since we are hooking into a custom dynamic link library (tio).

In order to extract files from a .DAT file:

1. Copy the .DAT file you wish to extract files from into the DAT Tool folder.
2. Start the DAT Tool, choose the “Extract files from a DAT file” option.
3. In “DAT file to extract”, type just the name of the DAT file to extract (no folders and relative paths allowed!), e.g. toee4.dat
4. Hit “Execute” to extract files from the specified .DAT file. Note that it may take a while to finish, so don’t worry – the program won’t hang (hopefully J), it simply works kind of slowly, without any visible output on the screen for now. Unfortunately, screen output is impossible since we are hooking into a custom dynamic link library (tio).

Enjoy!
Feel free to ask questions about this tool on the Co8 boards (http://www.co8.org)