TOEE DAT TOOL

2006 by Michael Agetian Kamensky, Circle of Eight

ToEE DAT Tool is a small program that can be used to create and extract database
(.dat) files for the Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE).
The DAT Tool uses an interface to games original input/output library, TIO.DLL,
in order to perform .dat file operations, and will not function without it.
Prerequisites to get the ToEE DAT Tool to work.
1. Create a new folder which will be used for the DAT Tool. That directory must

contain all the files youd like to pack into a dat file, as well as youll copy
your dat files to extract there. Copy the ToEE DAT Tool into that folder.
NOTE: I wouldnt recommend you to use the ToEE folder to create/extract .dat
files, since you risk corrupting your game installation.
2. Copy the files tio.dll and zlib-1.2.1.dll from your ToEE game folder into the
DAT Tool folder. If you dont do this the DAT Tool will cease to function.
3. The DAT Tool is ready to work.
In order to create a .DAT file:
1. First of all you must understand that all the files that you want to be

compressed into a .dat file must be copied into your DAT Tool folder, into their
appropriate subfolders. For example, if youd like to compress the ToEE
module files into toee.dat, youll have to copy your module files into the DAT
Tool folder as follows (dattool being the DAT Tool folder itself):
dattool
\------------art
\-----------maps
\-----------mes
.........
(and so on)
2. DAT Tool uses the so-called file list file (also known as response file) in order

to specify which files to include in a DAT file. A file list file is a text file that
contains the complete list of files to store in a DAT file. Dont worry, you dont
need to specify every single file out there, you can use wildcards like *.* to
specify all files in a subfolder. For an example above, we can create a file list
file called (for example) toee-module.txt and write the following stuff inside:
art\*.*
maps\*.*
mes\*.*

(and so on, until you have included all the subfolders you need to store)
NOTE: just writing *.* in a file list file will make the DAT Tool also include
the files from the DAT Tool folder itself, like dattool.exe, tio.dll, and others. To
avoid this you need to list individual subfolders, like in the example above.
3. Launch the DAT Tool now, make sure that the Compress files into a DAT file
option is checked, then specify the target DAT file name (no subfolders here,
just the name) like mydata.dat, for instance. In file list file name, type the
name of the file list file youd like to use, in our case toee-module.txt. For
compression level, specify a number from 0 to 9 (0 = no compression, 1 =
worst compression, 9 = best compression).
4. Hit Execute to compress the files into a .DAT file. Note that it may take a
while to finish, so dont worry the program wont hang (hopefully ), it simply
works kind of slowly, without any visible output on the screen for now.
Unfortunately, screen output is impossible since we are hooking into a custom
dynamic link library (tio).
In order to extract files from a .DAT file:
1. Copy the .DAT file you wish to extract files from into the DAT Tool folder.
2. Start the DAT Tool, choose the Extract files from a DAT file option.
3. In DAT file to extract, type just the name of the DAT file to extract (no

folders and relative paths allowed!), e.g. toee4.dat

4. Hit Execute to extract files from the specified .DAT file. Note that it may
take a while to finish, so dont worry the program wont hang (hopefully ), it
simply works kind of slowly, without any visible output on the screen for now.
Unfortunately, screen output is impossible since we are hooking into a custom
dynamic link library (tio).
Enjoy!
Feel free to ask questions about this tool on the Co8 boards (http://www.co8.org)