Freelancer BINI Tools

Introduction

The Freelancer BINI tools are for unpacking and packing the Freelancer BINI files so that you may freely modify the game.

These tools work reliably with all of the BINI files that come with Freelancer. Each release is tested against every Freelancer BINI file to be sure that there is no data loss or damage during conversion. The text version of the BINI files are also 100% as expressive as the original BINI files, with a one-to-one mapping between any possible BINI file and its text version. These are the only known tools capable of going back and forth between the binary and text versions.

These tools also come with extra options for analyzing BINI files and debugging potential problems.

Note: do not mix the use of these tools with any other BINI tools when dealing with text. The text version of these BINI files is a special format that other tools are not designed to handle. This is what allows these tools to properly handle all possible BINI files. If you need to read the text versions with other tools, use the -w switch on the unbini tool (more info below).

For example, don't unpack a BINI file with another program and then attempt to repack them with these tools. You will have problems.

Documentation

The binitools documentation is available in the following formats:

Download

These tools are available as free software under the GNU GPL. All files are available here as well as below.

1.0.2 Release (5-30-07)

This release adds a -w switch to the unbini tool. The output when using this switch is compatible with other BINI tools that need to look at text versions of these files. However, when using the -w switch, the bini tool will not be able to read the file. This release also contains a few bug fixes.

Old Releases

1.0.1 Release (5-19-07)

Release 1.0.1 is mostly changes to the code base and the build system (the GNU build system). The only change for users is the addition of stdin and stdout options to both tools. See README for details.

1.0 Release (5-15-07)

This is the 1.0 release of the BINI tools:

Git Repository

You can also download the latest bleeding edge version of the tools right from the Git repository with this command: 

git clone http://git.nullprogram.com/binitools.git

Or you can just download the latest snapshot: http://git.nullprogram.com/binitools.git

Once you have the sources from the repository, you can set up the build environment with autoreconf (with the -i install flag): 

autoreconf -i

The file HACKING describes what tools you will need to build the sources. To build the sources on Windows, you will need Cygwin.

Usage

These are the bini compressor options: 

Usage: bini [options] FILES

Options:

        -o file      Set output file
        -s           Summarize file details
        -t           Print string table
        -n           Do not output a file
        -v           Verbose mode
        -c           Concatenate input files
        -q           Don't print message at startup
        -h           Print this usage text

These are the unbini uncompressor options: 

Usage: unbini [options] FILES

Options:

        -o file      Set output file
        -t           Print string table
        -s           Summarize file details
        -n           Do not output a file
        -v           Verbose mode
        -w           Standard INI output (no string quotes)
        -c           Concatenate input files (requires -o option)
        -q           Don't print message at startup
        -h           Print this usage text

Motivation

There are three reasons that these tools were written:

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