Hehe, obviously I did not give you the "precise" instructions yet. Sorry about that.
So, let's start.
1º (Merge the IC files)
The ROM files (that contain the resource DATA) are merged in THIS order: fpr-24424.ic9 fpr-24425.ic10 fpr-24426.ic11
fpr-24423.ic8 must be some swap/temp memory of sorts. So it should not belong to "resource DATA" IC's.
To merge files, we use any hex editor. HxD has a useful "concatenate" function in "file tools" menu, for example. If there is not, then one would just copy ALL the file bytes to a new file, one by one, and paste them in order to create a new (binary) file from all the parts. Save this newly created file. Let's call this new file just "ic.bin". (Or any extension, does not matter.)
2º (Creating the bms script)
Once we have the merged IC's (filename "ic"), we can proceed with the extraction. If you look at the first bytes of the file (the starting part of any binary file is generally called "header"), you'll see the string "SimpleFlashFS", which I used to name the script for.
We create a text file, and paste the script there. Copy the lines, from ## Starts at 0x1000 to next
(The characters "#" are used as "comments", i.e. text that does no get interpreted by the program/interpreter.)
After saving the text file, we'll need to change its file extension, from .txt to .bms. An easy way if you use hex editor, is just open this text file with it, then "save as", and give a new name, with the .bms extension. Let's call this script file "simpleflash.bms". Put this file in the same folder as the "ic.bin".
3º (Extracting the VFS)
Download quickbms, and extract its contents in the same folder as the "ic.bin" file. (We just need the "quickbms.exe" executable, the others are unnecessary.)
After this, open a command window. [shift]+(right mouse click) over any area in the current folder, then "open command window". A cmd window opens. Paste there this command line:
quickbms -K -D -Y "simpleflash.bms" "ic.bin"
and press Enter key. The resulting extraction should give a "rom" folder with *.bin and *.farc files, plus one .txt file.
Here's the link for the extracted files (the "VFS"). I hope it will be of good use to you.
I do not know about the "farc" format. Maybe "File ARChive" ? But looking at the bytes, there does not seem to be any compression (at least NOT for ALL the bytes ¿?). So, some bytes could represent RAW/RGB graphics data. Try some RAW graphics reader or similar programs.
by JacintaB19 at 10:27 AM EST on November 13, 2020
Are there any programs that can read, view and extract the RAW/RGB graphics data graphics in the "File ARChive" files?
You see, there are not (on my knowledge at least) software in which you put any file and then it tells you *magically* what format it is in. In almost all of cases, one have to examine the data in a hard way. For example, if there is "unknown format" audio, but you assume it's streamed, you would use Audacity (or some other raw sound player/editor/DSP/AWS) and mess with their RAW parameters (sample rate, bit precision, endianess, etc). This very same principle you would apply, again, to "unknown format" images/pictures/graphics, but you (would have to) assume it's RGB'ed (i.e color in 3-uples or 4-uples of bytes), in which case you would use (e.g.) Irfanview (or some other raw image viewer/editor/CAD/NLE editor), and (again) mess with their RAW parameters (bit depth, RGBA order, YUV-nonYUV, yada yada - Imanot expert in graphics I tell you). I get your feelings man! When examining unknown formats, you must have enough patience, like a researcher (if it goes to that). It's not really easy - otherwise, some other users more experienced than us would have provided you the answer you expected. And I did not even start with "compression" - because simply I'm not very knowledgeable at this. If you do not get any luck with the tips I gave you (basic stuff if you ask me), then surely the unknown format in the fARC files is really custom, and nothing more to do other than reverse-engineer this format.