RAS Master 1.2

RAS Master is a useful tool that can be used for packing and unpacking RAS files (the packaging system used in some games like Max Payne 2). I released this a while ago and it was used for mod developers when Max Panye 2 was big. Its here for archival purposes mostly.

RAS Master was written in Visual Basic, as such youll need the VB Runtime files (if youve used your computer in the last decade you probably have them). I wrote it in WinXP, but it should be compatible with all Windows OS versions (assuming you meet the first requirement).

Since RAS Master isnt a program per se, but an interface for RASMaker2, you need to ensure that the included RASMaker2.exe and rl.dll are with RASMaster.exe.

RAS Master works by reading and writing to batch and text files. Ive written it to keep itself clean; it should delete all the new batch/text files it creates.

RAS Master should be pretty intuitive. You have three primary functions within the program; View, Unpack, and Create.

View:
Without extracting any data, this will read the files and size of files within a given .ras file.

Unpack:
This extracts the files within the ras file to a given directory. Although its possible to just extract the data to the folder you have the .ras file in, I dont recommend it. It ends up creating a bunch of files and if you dont know what youre extracting to, it will be tough to repack it later.

Create:
Use this to repack or create .ras files. This would probably be used in conjunction with the Unpack, so the file structure should remain the same. You may notice that I dont include the creation flags that RASMaker2 has. I was having some difficulty getting them to work properly (even from the command-line), so Im using the flags necessary to create the .ras file and thats it. I may update future versions to include those flags.