EV Nova encodes all of its sprites in the RLË format. Specifically split between rlë8 and rlëD in the Nova engine. The 8 and D correspond to the colour/bit depth of the sprite images. For modern computers we’re only ever going to be concerned about rlëD.

RLË as it turns out is very similar, but not as complex, as the PICT​ format. It uses a series of opcodes to instruct the decoder on how to product an image. Luckily, it turns out I made a crude prototype of one quite a while ago. All I had to do was update the code and it worked.

Well as it turns out, we’re now loading in all graphical assets except for the CICN and PPAT assets. Everything is just game data.