: This is probably the most asked question ever, but what's stopping us from
: just creating shapes and sound files from scratch? I know Anvil doesn't do
: it, but is there something else stopping such an Application from creating
: empty files?
The issue isn't literally making duplicates of the Shapes and Sounds files, but distributing them with original Marathon content still in them; and further, Bungie long ago claimed copyright on the *headers* of the file formats - that is, the little bit of data which makes it a Marathon/AlephOne Shapes or Sounds file to begin with, regardless of the content - and even generating a new empty Shapes or Sounds file from scratch and filling it with original content would require generating a copy of that header data in order for the resulting file to be a Shapes or Sounds file at all.