So the folks over at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki posted on the /r/javahelp subreddit asking if anyone knew how to get into the data for the Elder Scrolls Travels: Stormhold Nokia phone game. I told them I'd take a crack at it. This is purely for Archival Purposes!

[https://archive.org/details/the-elder-scrolls-travels.-7z](url)

So to get started we sourced the .jar files from archive.org.

[https://github.com/dionthorn/ReverseEngineerTesting/tree/main/originalDump](url)

Here are .txt of the dumping of the .class files using Procyon v0.5.36 java decompiler. You'll notice right away that the decompile give us a lot of code blocks like this:

```java
void c() {      
    final int size = this.t.size();
    final short n = (short)(this.o << 8); 
    for (int i = 0; i < size; ++i) {          
        final short[] array = this.t.elementAt(i);
        d d;
        if (this.o == 37 && i == size - 1) {
            d = d.a(this.e, this, 41);
        } else {
            d = d.a(this.e, this, -1);
        }
        this.a(d, array);
        d.d();
    } 
System.gc();
}   
```

Yikes right? So my solution was to rename all the class names from indistinct a, b, c etc to ProgOne, ProgTwo, etc. This way I could easily follow what was going on in the code.

So I finally found what I thought was the likely candidate for pulling info from the .cus files

[https://github.com/dionthorn/ReverseEngineerTesting/blob/main/src/ProgSeven.java](url)

ProgSeven had a String object that gave me a hint:

```java
if (n > 255) { throw new Exception("Too many colors in image " + s); }
```

So I was pretty certain this was doing something with images. So I wrote up a custom Extractor to try and get at the data using ProgSeven as the middle man.

[https://github.com/dionthorn/ReverseEngineerTesting/blob/main/src/TESTEXTRACT.java](url)

```java
public static int SCREEN_WIDTH = 480;
public static int SCREEN_HEIGHT = 480;

public static void main(String[] args) {
    
    BufferedImage testImage = null;
    ProgSeven test = null;
    try {
        test = ProgSeven.getProgSevenFromString("/wardenmid.cus");
        // System.out.println(test.getIntA() + " " + test.getIntB());
        testImage = new BufferedImage(SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);

    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    if(test != null && testImage != null) {
        for(int x=0; x<test.intA; x++) {
            for(int y=0; y<test.intB; y++) {
                testImage.setRGB(x, y, _getPixel(test.shortArray[x + y * test.intC], 4444));
            }
        }
    }
```

So I setup a basic BufferedImage and used ProgSeven.getProgSevenFromString to point to a .cus file.

```java
testImage.setRGB(x, y, _getPixel(test.shortArray[x + y * test.intC], 4444));
```

This portion is a carbon copy of the nokia DirectGraphics method for drawing which was the trick to get the sprites to draw correctly with color. Previous attempts only got data from the blue channel. But so far we just have a buffered image we should probably render it to make sure everything is working so we setup a bit of AWT/Swing:

```java
JFrame jFrame = new JFrame("TESTEXTRACT");
jFrame.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(SCREEN_WIDTH,SCREEN_HEIGHT));
jFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
jFrame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());

BufferedImage finalTestImage = testImage;
JPanel pane = new JPanel() {
    @Override
    protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
        super.paintComponent(g);
        g.setColor(Color.black);
        g.fillRect(0, 0, SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT);
        g.drawImage(finalTestImage, SCREEN_WIDTH/3, SCREEN_HEIGHT/3, null);
    }
};
pane.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT));
jFrame.add(pane);
jFrame.pack();
jFrame.setVisible(true);
```

So we setup a JFrame and override the paintComponent of a JPanel so that we can draw the buffered image to screen. Here is the _getPixel method that was the trick to unmasking the pixel data

```java
private static int _getPixel(short pixel, int format) {
    return ((pixel & 0xf000) << 16) |
            ((pixel & 0xf00) << 12) |
            ((pixel & 0xf0) << 8) |
            ((pixel & 0xf) << 4);
}
```

This masking operation gives us glorious full color for the short[] we pull from the .cus file. Lastly here is the DirectGraphics.drawPixel() source code which I found to aid in extraction

```java
public static void drawPixels(BufferedImage testImage, short[] pixels, boolean transparency, int offset, int scanlength, int x, int y, int width, int height, int manipulation, int format) { 
    //System.err.println("com.nokia.mid.ui._DirectGraphics.drawPixels() not implemented.");
 
    System.out.println(width + " " + height);
    testImage = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);

    //P(x1, y1) = pixels[offset + (x1 - x) + (y1 - y) * scanlength], 
    //for each P(x1, y1), where (x <= x1 < x + width) and (y <= y1 < y + //height). 

    for (int ix = 0; ix < width; ++ix) {
        for (int iy = 0; iy < height; ++iy) {
            testImage.setRGB(ix, iy, _getPixel(pixels[offset + ix + iy * scanlength], format)); 
        } 
    } 
}
```

I didn't use this drawPixels method directly I took the .setRGB call and loop out and used that, but it does explain the math of how it's choosing which pixel in the short via the x,y and scan length variables.

So if you wanted you could go to the archive.org link, open up the .jar and take out the .cus files, from my github you only need the TESTEXTRACT.java file and the ProgSeven.java file to extract the .cus data and draw onto the window. You'll have to manually provide the String inside TESTEXTRACT.java found here:

```java
test = ProgSeven.getProgSevenFromString("/wardenmid.cus");
```

That's all for this project folks thanks for checking it out!

So the folks over at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki posted on the /r/javahelp subreddit asking if anyone knew how to get into the data for the Elder Scrolls Travels: Stormhold Nokia phone game. I told them I'd take a crack at it. This is purely for Archival Purposes!

[https://archive.org/details/the-elder-scrolls-travels.-7z](url)

So to get started we sourced the .jar files from archive.org.

[https://github.com/dionthorn/ReverseEngineerTesting/tree/main/originalDump](url)

Here are .

dion thorn

Fun Reverse Engineering an Old Java Game For Archival Purposes!

A bit about me 🤔

What I do for fun

Tech I like...

Saying hello! 👋

dion thorn

Fun Reverse Engineering an Old Java Game For Archival Purposes!

A bit about me 🤔

What I do for fun

Tech I like...

Saying hello! 👋