Free Hero Mesh class resource file

A Free Hero Mesh puzzle set consists of four files; this article is about the .xclass file, which contains pictures and sounds.

This file is a Hamster archive which contains lumps with extension .IMG and .DEP and .MUL and .WAV.

The .IMG lumps are pictures, using a specialized compression format. Each such lump can store multiple versions of the picture at different sizes (which must be square, but otherwise can be arbitrary), and use a fixed palette of 255 colours plus transparency.

The .DEP lumps reference .IMG lumps and produce a picture made by modifying and/or combining the pictures in the .IMG lumps.

The .MUL</tt> lumps also reference .IMG</tt> lumps, but produce multiple pictures from them. It defines one list of bases and three lists of filter chains, and each combination of one from each list produces a picture; for example, if there are ten bases, ten first filter chains, four second filter chains, and three third filter chains, then it will produce 1200 pictures in total.

The .WAV</tt> lumps are WAVE audio files.

The PICEDIT.CFG</tt> lump contains configuration data for the picture editor. It can safely be deleted (the picture editor will still work even if this is deleted).