
ELBzip - ELB file packer/unpacker for Jane's WWII Fighters
==========================================================

All in-game sounds in WWII Fighters are stored in two data files:
sim.elb contains in-game sound effects such as engine, machine-gun
and metal stress effects; voice.elb contains voice effects such as
wingman and tower radio call fragments.  These effects are stored 
in standard WAV file format and the WAV files are in turn packed into
ELB archive files.  

Since the sound effects are simple WAV files, it is possible to 
modify them, thereby changing or customizing the in-game sound effects. 
First though the WAV files must be extracted (or unpacked) from the 
ELB archive.  Once unpacked, the WAV files can be edited or modified as 
the user sees fit, and then repacked back into the ELB archive for use 
in the game.  The only restrictions to modifying the WAV files are that 
no single WAV file can be larger than 320KB in size and that no WAV 
files can be added or removed.  If you attempt to repack an ELB archive 
which has missing files, ELBzip will generate an error message and 
abort.  New files not contained in the original archive will be ignored.        
 

Installation
------------
Unzip the ELBzip.exe executable to the WWII Fighters/Data directory
containing the sim.elb and voice.elb data files.  If you used the
WWII Fighters default installation, this will be:
C:\Program Files\Jane's Combat Simulations\WWII Fighters\Data


Usage
-----
----------------------------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT: By default, the sim.elb and voice.elb data files that come
with the game are read-only.  Although this doesn't affect unpacking them, 
you won't be able to repack them (ELBzip will generate a warning message 
saying that it cannot open the file) while they're read-only.  To remove
the read-only attribute from the file, right mouse-click on it, select
Properties and then uncheck the read-only box in the General tab.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The ELBzip program is invoked from a DOS command prompt as follows:

	ELBzip [-u | -p] <filename> <directory>  

The -u flag indicates that the program is to unpack the ELB file
contents to the specified directory.

The -p flag indicates that the program is to pack the contents
of the specified directory into the specified ELB file.

<filename> is the path to the ELB file you want to pack/unpack.
It can be either a relative or an absolute path.

<directory> is the path to the directory where the WAV files are
to be unpacked to or packed from.  It can be either a relative or
an absolute path.

For example, if you want to unpack sim.elb into a directory called
sim_output, you would invoke ELBzip as follows:
	
	ELBzip -u sim.elb sim_output

Similarly, if you wanted to repack the contents of the sim_output
directory into a file called sim2.elb, you would type:

	ELBzip -p sim2.elb sim_output

Note: WWII Fighters requires the ELB files to be named sim.elb and
voice.elb.  If you do repack the WAV files into a file with a 
different name (so as not to overwrite the original ELB files, for
instance), you will need to rename it appropriately before using it 
in the game.

The program will overwrite the specified file if it already exists.
It will also create the specified directory if it does not exist.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING: do _NOT_ delete the catalog.dat, header1.dat or header2.dat
files from the output directory.   These are generated by ELBzip when
unpacking the ELB archive and are used to during repacking.
---------------------------------------------------------------------


If you have any questions or comments, please leave a note on the 
message board at WWII Fighters Online (http://members.xoom.com/ww2f)
and we'll try to answer it as soon as possible.

Enjoy!


