First I'll say why. I've wanted to give Nexus - The Jupiter Incident a try for a while. I would have tried it months ago when i bought it, however the slowdown in the video playback was so jarring when it drops from 30+fps to about 10fps for no discernible reason. I suspect it's a simple buffer problem while it's decrypting but I can't do anything about that (plus Bink and Smacker were both built to be lightning fast for video playback).

However i also remember having some issues with Divinity Dragon Commander, and having direct access to the video files, i simply turned around and re-encoded them at half their resolution (i don't run most of my games over 720p anyways); This resolved any and all speed issues related to playback.

So, the problem: The Nexus video files are encrypted. It's not a very strong encryption (obviously an xor with a reoccurring pattern), but I'm having trouble finishing off the last few touches so i can access and re-encode them to something more manageable that won't give me those horrible stutters during cutscenes.

Bink tools say the file isn't a Bink file; This means even though I've made strides in decrypting the videos, i can't move on without either more information from someone skilled in dealing with Bink files to tell me what values really should be, or figuring out what's left in the pattern that i messed up.

I can try contacting the devs, but i really don't expect a reply.

Wasn't NEXUS made for XP and DX9? Could you run it in compatability mode and see improvement?

You probably wouldn't get in trouble, but you must know that decrypting the game files is an actual crime [url= not merely a tort. Thanks, politicians who don't understand technology! ][/url] in the good old land of freedom, right?

I've tried multiple compatibility modes and the DX9 version as well. I contacted GoG about this, and was offered a refund which i ended up not taking because i really wanted the game and to play it.

As for decrypting game files, actually there's a public available tool called DaTool which to my knowledge has full blessing and permission from the devs; However that only goes for the game files (files within the nexus_00.dat archive) and not the video files (all other dat files).

Well I'm always happy to be wrong about this sort of thing XD Nice to see that they're letting you play around with the files on your own computer.

Sorry. Looked on the googles for some ideas but it sounds like you're more aware of this than I am. I got nuffin'

I've already got 90% of the decryption solved, but it's still that 10% i have issues with. Quite curiously i never would have started had i not pulled up an unrelated Bink file and glanced at the header information and noticed a large portion of unused bytes, letting me map out the patterns and decipher enough to make the decrypted...

That is assuming i have it done right.

Although i've posted the images in another thread, i'll link some of the basics of what i've been doing in the short little preview image that shows off what i'm working at.

Man, that reminds me of hundreds of hours watching the hex scroll by in Aeropeek/Wireshark until I really got what Cypher was saying in The matrix...you stop seeing the code entirely ;) But, yeah, that's a handy little empty set to get the pattern from. Wish I were more use here.

/salutes Gunga Din

Fun...

Anyways, i got those codes i circled corrected but then the header 4 bytes is wrong, manually fix that and Bink still doesn't recognize it, meaning my approach is still flawed. But i have nothing else i can really refer to for a solution at this point (although i guess i could target another file and resume my work..)

I'm hoping someone will have some interesting ideas for maybe who would like to take a crack at it and look at my notes.

Hmmmm....

What part of this screen has the wrong coding for the Bink file format??

Seriously, i'm not sure if i can make it a puzzle since i don't know the answer. If i knew the few more hints on the details of spots i couldn't clearly figure out to this point, then it would greatly simplify things since i could deduce things from there. Right now i'm almost at the point of brute forcing it; I also don't want to try to scour the executable to find the encryption algorithm to reverse engineer it. Right now i'm pretty much at a very very simple 1-2 steps from completing it, assuming i can figure out what they are.

can't offer any technical advise, but have some google results that may help:

from here: Modding tools overview

Hmmm i tried searching for the decrypter but couldn't find it, seems you did. However if the game doesn't work unless it's encrypted, then i still need to finish my project (to re-encrypt afterwards); However with a properly decrypted file i can see exactly what i'm doing wrong with the pattern and resolve it.

I'll try decrypting the videos and just trying to see if it will play as is, or unencrypted dat files.

edit: Decrypting the videos and just having them still named the dat files seems to work. that means i can abandon my project and just keep ahold of these files; probably write a script for decrypting and resizing the files as appropriate.

edit2: Alas it seems that decrypted versions don't help, also lowering the resolution may not do much since the videos appear to be at 720x398 or some odd number thereof. At this point i suspect there's something in DirectX that's not working right, perhaps the gamma correction which goes to software mode or something. Still, with decoded files i can at least watch them outside of the game; Although that really takes you out of it.