Modding Discussion Asset unpacker for early beta versions?

Are there any copies of the old asset unpackers floating around? I'm looking for SBBF03 and SBBF02 versions, somewhere around the Enraged Koala era -- or in a worst case scenario, any documentation of the binary file format. (I *knew* I should have preferred the DRM-free version from day one. I was foolish enough to switch to the Steam version as a matter of preference when the Experimentals started coming out -- something I will never repeat again with any other game.)

There are a large number of old .modpak files floating around out there that would be brilliant to update to a new version, but are depressingly locked in files that the new asset_unpacker.exe is not compatible with. (Thank goodness most mod authors are kind enough to release their mods in a non-binary folder instead.) While obviously the majority of these could not be publicly released without author approval, most authors would probably cheerfully accept an update if someone had literally done all the update work for them. ;-) Even if they wouldn't accept a public release, or are out of contact, I'd love to play with some of these old mods for nostalgia and private use.

The old .modpak containers are relatively simple, but they seem to have a binary tree which fragments files. Any binary file which is small enough to fit within a segment is easy enough to extract manually with nothing more than a hex editor (for instance, a small PNG file is as easy as finding the "‰PNG" header and the "IEND" footer plus the trailing four bytes), and plain text files are simple to stitch together... but any binary file larger than a single segment ranges from difficult to impossible to extract manually, because the fragment positions are not human predictable.

 

Thanks for the head's up! Yep, I have both the Steam version and the Humble version as part of the original Silver backer tier.

I didn't want this to be a debate on DRM since this discussion has been done to death in this day and age, but CF locks Workshop mods to a valid Steam account with Starbound in its library. In any case, it's usually easier to say "DRM-free" than to have to reveal the multitude of independent retailers where it may have come from. ;-)

[edit]Looks as though the oldest those go back is December 2016, which is definitely using the new SBAsset6 format. Darn.

[edit2]Hmm... I've got a Linux build from as far back as April 2015, with *nix executables that will work on the SBBF03 format! This probably would insult Pingus everywhere, but I wonder if there's a Unix emulator for Windows. =P [edit3] Ehh, I'll probably just use that partition I set aside ages ago to install Ubuntu or something. Still seems like less work than manually deciphering the file format. =) [edit4] Aaand I should have just waited for the download to finish, 'cause it's got the Windows binaries too. Hah!

Thanks again, mate. This is a veritable cornucopia of all of the Beta content that got the axe in the 1.0 release, too. (Oh various Gods, the nostalgia.)

[edit5]To avoid bumping the thread, and to ninja this word in, it is indeed Chucklefish "locking" mods: preventing external Steam Workshop access (via, e.g., Steam Downloader) is a choice on the publisher's part as a de-facto form of DRM (though I'm both shocked and pleased that Steam/CF offers so many artifacts of older versions). This is an argument of adhesion, in any case. Despite a statement saying I was not intending to argue about DRM, let alone with someone in a position of authority, the person in a position of authority is arguing it. *shrug* True freedom is a developer not imposing *any* arbitrary digital restrictions on their content, as the majority is already provided for by the rule of law. It is pleasing that there is no additional layer of DRM on the executable itself in CF products, to be sure, but gating access to the third party content for the product is definitely a form of DRM. Attempting to shift the blame onto the mod authors for releasing their products within an official source that just so happens to be a gated community is a bit disingenuous when it's the publisher who made it into a gated community. ;-)