After Elbereth's Main Driver [drv_default] v2.0.5 Beta 4 was released I started to clean the mess the source code has become in this plugin. It is now done and I have further improved The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay .XTC files support.
Therefore you can download v2.0.5 Beta 5 from Programs > Dragon UnPACKer > Download Plugins.
In other news, I worked on a new DUPP format (the packages used by Duppi to auto-install plugins). I am very pleased with the result. I tested it quite well and both Duppi & Dragon D5P Maker seems pretty solid. There is a lot of new options in that format (not visible to the end user):
- Block structure, can be expanded later if needed without breaking the structure.
- LZMA and/or Zlib compression (Dragon D5P Maker v3.0.0 will use the best compression which most of the time is LZMA)
- Solid compression (when many files are included in the DUPPv4/D5P file this can lead to MUCH better compression ratios (actually 40% for the whole Dragon UnPACKer files)
- Secure hash thanks to DCPCrypt of blocks (SHA-256) to avoid installing broken files.
- Secure hash of files (SHA-512 by default but selectable between MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512 and RIPEMD160) to be sure the files are not broken.
- Custom Banner compression
The CVS version of Duppi supports this new file format but I still want to enhance it to be less dependent on Dragon UnPACKer version so that it can be updated separately. The auto-update feature is working with DUPPv4/D5P files thanks to a very small DuppiInstall tool I coded (can also be found on CVS).
The Dragon D5P Maker v3.0.0 program can be downloaded from Development > Dragon UnPACKer > Development Download.
Comments: http://forum.elberethzone.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=380
I just noticed that the Dragon Update Server (the one Duppi uses to check if updates are available for Dragon UnPACKer) was broken.
I guess it is because of SourceForge (where the Dragon Update Server is hosted) migration to MySQL 5.0. Well it is fixed now (v3.1.5).
First of all, I am currently busy with my servers. This is not Dragon UnPACKer so you can skip to next paragraph. 
In the server in France, I changed the 3x500GB RAID-1 & RAID-5 running Gentoo to a 3x1TB RAID-1 & RAID-5 running Debian Lenny. I prefer Debian, portage and compiling stuff is just too long. 
I am now trying to configure my homemade NAS from a 250GB + 1TB disk to a 3x500GB in RAID + 1TB. The problem is one of the 500GB failed while syncing the RAID-5 array... I had to set up a PXE server on my Windows desktop machine to be able to run that ESTOOL of Samsung to Diagnose & then erase the disk (this usually fixes all problems on a Samsung disk... It is the fourth time I do it). Well, I also installed the Homebrew Channel on the Wii and tried ScummVM with Sam & Max on it, it is really cool to play with the Wiimote to this kind of games. Until I finish with all this server stuff I fear I won't be working on Dragon UnPACKer.
Since the last news, I wasn't totally inactive anyway, I added partial (no filenames) support of F-22 Air Dominance Fighter/Total Air Wars & Super EF2000 .DAT files. Some files are compressed/encrypted, I haven't had time to add support for this (I got C++ source code that decompress it by Benjamin Haisch, I have to translate it to Delphi).
I also fixed many bugs, added sanity checks and added support for DXT5 textures for .XTC files of Riddick.
All this can be found in Elbereth's Main Driver [drv_default] v2.0.5 Beta 4.
The funny thing, is that I could not find my CD of Riddick in France, it was in my Belgium appartment, I found it when I came back... 
The new driver version can be downloaded from Programs > Dragon UnPACKer > Download Plugins.
Comments: http://forum.elberethzone.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=376
I finally took time to release Elbereth's Main Driver [drv_default] v2.0.4 as standalone update. This is the version distributed with Dragon UnPACKer v5.3.3 Beta with AGON .SFL support.
The good news is the release of the v2.0.5 Beta 1 of the driver with the support for Enclave and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay .XTC and .XWC files support.
I could only test with the démo of Riddick because my CD is in France... I will retrieve it in 2 weeks and I will check if it works.
The XTC support for Riddick is far from perfect (a lot of entries are not recognized and will not extract as readable textures), but XWC should work fine for both titles.
Both versions can be downloaded from Programs > Dragon UnPACKer > Download Plugins.
Comments: http://forum.elberethzone.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=375
I finally took the time to have a deeper look at the .XTC and .XWC files of Enclave game. The file format is not that difficult for XWC files (support is already coded in forthcoming release of Elbereth's Main Driver [drv_default] v2.0.5) but for XTC files it took me a little longer to figure it out.
The textures are stored (as far as I saw) as DXT1 compressed with custom header (not the DDS one) with a pointer to each Mipmap (each one having a custom header). I was able to manually display one texture by changing the header to a DDS [DXT1]. I still don't know if there are other formats possible (DXT3? Uncompressed?) because there is still many fields for which I don't know their purpose, I will see when I get back from work. 
Next step is to find my CD of Chronicles of Riddick to check if the support for XWC and XTC of Enclave also work for that game.
Comments: http://forum.elberethzone.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=374