WarCraft Files (w3m, w3x, mpq..)

[Ralle]

Introduction
MPQ (MoPaQ) files are like zip-files. They are used for many of the popular Blizzard Games (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft). They contain many models, icons and stuff for the games and I would like to tell you how to open these files and extract stuff from them.
There exist many programs to extract files from them but I want to show you my favorite:
Warcraft III Image Extractor
it can not even can access mpq files but also w3m files and w3x files which are the extensions of Warcraft maps, this allows you to extract your minimap image and various images.
You will find the programs in the download database.

Listfiles
A MPQ-file has a listfile to show all the contents of the MPQ-file. Here is the list of files inside the different Warcraft MPQ-Files:

http://hiveworkshop.com/gfx/posts/war3.txt - war3.mpq - Standard Warcraft 3 (RoC)
http://hiveworkshop.com/gfx/posts/war3patch.txt - war3patch.mpq - Patches
http://hiveworkshop.com/gfx/posts/war3xlocal.txt - war3xlocal.mpq - Frozen Throne Local Files
http://hiveworkshop.com/gfx/posts/war3x.txt - war3x.mpq - Frozen Throne Files

I haven't written that much about MPQ's but here's a few nice articles about the subject.
http://www.blizzpub.net/forums/thread.php?tid=134 - BlizzPubs Article
http://www.campaigncreations.org/starcraft/inside_mopaq/ - Inside MoPaQ
http://mr-nutz.no-ip.org/bioinfo/Valentin/content/projects/W3ZME/w3m-specs.html - W3M and W3X Files Format
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/content/w3m-specs.html - A mirror of the above image

 

[Wolverabid]

Information Transfered

The information included in this document has been added to the World Editor FAQ - Work in Progress tutorial.

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