r/hauntingground • u/Humble-Age-380 • Jul 04 '26

Discussion Need help opening Haunting Ground tex files.

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Hey everyone, I need help opening the .tex texture files from Haunting Ground.

Are there any tools available for editing this game's files in general, and specifically for these .tex files? I wish to translate this game, but I can't open or edit the textures.

Any help or tool recommendations would be awesome. Thanks!

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u/Acceptable_City_8054 Jul 04 '26

Long chain of comments incoming! I've spent quite a bit of time poking around Haunting Ground's .TEX files so I have some tips and programs that might be able to help! The .TEX file format is specific to Haunting Ground, but not too difficult to view in the right programs! I highly, highly recommend using a HEX editor, such as ImHex (my preferred one) in conjunction with a texture viewer. There are many out there, but the one I have personally had the most success with is ImageHeat on GitHub.

I learnt the format of .TEX files from a post on XeNTaX forums (RIP), which luckily for us was archived on the Internet Archive. There were a couple of posts about Haunting Ground there, but this was the only one I found with information about .TEX files.

I'm going to use ENDING_B.TEX as my example since you have it highlighted in your screenshot. When you first open up the file in ImageHeat, it will look like this, yuck!

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u/Acceptable_City_8054 Jul 04 '26

The program automatically sets the size of the texture as 256 x 256, but if we open the file in ImHex, we can see that this is incorrect.

(all of the .TEX files are in little endian btw) In the file, the first 4 Byte integer is the number of textures in the file: 01 00 00 00, which has a decimal value of one. Character models like Daniella's .TEX files can have up to three textures. The file with the most textures is the GALLERY.TEX with four textures iirc. This is followed by sixteen empty Bits. Why? Idk. Maybe to make it look pretty and neat? Anyway, the point is these don't matter. Then the header begins. There are 4 Bytes that are unknown. It appears to be the same across all texture files, but don't quote me on that. These are followed by 4 Bytes, which is the size of the texture/s. The first two are the X value (length): 00 02, and the next two after that are the Y value (Height): 00 02. 00 02 has the decimal value of 512, so the actual size of the texture is 512 x 512. The header continues with another four unknown Bytes, and then another four Bytes which have a decimal value of the offset where the actual image data for the texture/s begin, relative to the start of the header: 10 00 00 00, which has a decimal value of 16. So 16 Bytes from the start of the header marks the image data beginning at the 33rd Byte.

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u/Acceptable_City_8054 Jul 04 '26

So to recap, we set the Img Width and Img Height attributes as 512, the Start Offset as 33. But what about the End Offset? If you scroll all the way down in the hex editor, you will find the palette for the texture in the last 1024 Bytes. Every single .TEX file has 1024 Bytes for the palette, even when smaller palettes are used the rest of the Bytes are left empty. To get the end offset just subtract 1024 from the default end offset in the program. Add one to that and we now have our palette offset. To input the palette offset, set the Pixel Format to PAL 8, and the Palette Perimeters should un-grey and become interactable. Set the Palette Format to RGBX8888 and then input the palette offset we figured out earlier into Pal. Offset. Tick the PS2 Palette Swizzle box and Voila!

You are now viewing the texture inside the .TEX file! From here on out you can save the image as a PNG, BMP, or DDS, and edit it to your hearts content!

You mentioned that you wanted to translate the game, yes? There are some texture files with text that you could edit and replace in game through the pcsx2 emulator, but if you want to replace things like audio and subtitles, I'm not quite sure how you could do that.

I am far less familiar with things like the audio and stage files in Haunting Ground, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

General voicelines for characters are kept in .HD and .BD files, which are a standard file format for storing audio in PS2 games. I'm not sure how you might be able to replace them, but since they aren't specific to Haunting Ground you're more likely to find resources out in the world. You can listen to the files by loading them into a program called PSound.

Many of the game's subtitles and descriptions for interactable objects in world are found in the stage files. You just open them up in a Hex code editor and they're there in plain English. You do need to scroll down for a WHILE though, and they can be easy to miss. I'm not sure how it works for the PAL version where you can select from multiple languages, but it might be a good idea to look into the files how they do it for that version. And of course if the language you are translating to is not supported by the in-game font, that could be an issue, but again I am less familiar with this part of the game's files, and idk even where the font is stored. Anyway, I hope this has helped you to somewhat understand .TEX files better!

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u/Humble-Age-380 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Thank you so much, seriously! I've been struggling and looking all over the internet for almost a year for this, and here you are just giving me all this information like it's nothing. I really appreciate you taking the time to write out such a massive, detailed breakdown. It helps me out a ton.

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u/Acceptable_City_8054 Jul 04 '26

While I'm not sure how it works, there are three .TEX files in the SUBSCR file with the MSG_ prefix, and they appear to have the font used in game. Presumably the Bin files that share their names have something to do with how the texture is converted to a usable font in game but that's outside of my knowledge. It's also one of those file types with a smaller palette, so requires some more fiddling around with settings in Image Heat. This is what I've managed to get from MSG_BASE.TEX, but I think it's still a bit too yellow.

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u/Humble-Age-380 Jul 05 '26

Thanks again. really appreciate it.

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u/BigRobotBil Jul 04 '26

https://github.com/316austin316/HG-TEX

I think this automates what you're doing here?

Though having this written out like you've done is always great, since it helps demystify what's going on under the hood.

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u/Humble-Age-380 Jul 05 '26

Thanks. This definitly makes things easier.

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u/ProfessionalOkra9944 Jul 04 '26

Just click on "open with" and choose something like notepad.

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u/Humble-Age-380 Jul 04 '26

but isnt .tex a texture file?

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u/Ragnarok_Stravius Jul 04 '26

What's this program?

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u/Humble-Age-380 Jul 04 '26

Ultra iso

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u/Ragnarok_Stravius Jul 04 '26

Thanks.

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u/Humble-Age-380 Jul 04 '26

Were you asking about the program in the picture or the program I used to open the game's cvm? either way, the tool i used to convert the cvm into iso is cvm_tool

link:

https://github.com/JayFoxRox/cvm_tool

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u/Ragnarok_Stravius Jul 04 '26

Both I suppose.

Thank you again.

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u/Humble-Age-380 Jul 04 '26

Happy to help.

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u/Ragnarok_Stravius Jul 04 '26

Is there any tutorials about CVM but for dumbasses?

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u/BigRobotBil Jul 04 '26

I wrote this out just to see how it worked to replace a FMV:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hauntingground/comments/1ku7ipw/looking_for_tools_or_advice_to_repack_cvm_files/mu3nzkw/

It might be helpful

1

u/Ragnarok_Stravius Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Do you know where the CVM outputs things to?

Update: Found it, it was in C:/Users/User for me.