Deark and QuickBasic

I had an old QuickBasic game with .VGA files in it. What are .VGA files? Some sort of image format. Eventually I was able to determine that these were BSAVE files, but how to move them to something current?

Enter Deark (free and open source), a command-line utility that can decode files in one format and convert them into another.

I dropped deark.exe into the same folder as my QuickBasic game (and that of the relevant .VGA files) and entered the following command:

deark name_of_file.vga -opt bsave:fmt=wh16

The above command instructs deark to attempt to decode name_of_file.vga. But Deark can’t decode it without a little more help, which is why we have to define an option (-opt).

The bsave option tells Deark that this is definitely a BSAVE file and then specifies the type of BSAVE file it is (fmt=wh16). Deark provides a handy list of file formats and the relevant options.

I’d also recommend at least perusing readme.txt before using Deark.

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