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reverse-engineering a file format

Name: Anonymous 2007-02-05 15:05

I don't know if this belongs in /prog/... since I intend to write a viewer for the (unnamed game's) environments, though, I suppose it does.

When reverse-engineering a file format in a certain game that holds the world data, what sort of things should I take into account considering it's a game that runs on PS2 architecture?

As the game would be slow loading its areas if it did a bunch of field-size conversions during load-time, the DVD would likely store its data as the PS2 hardware would most readily see it... for lack of a better way to put it.  This is what I have to determine first before I even consider figuring out the file structures through trial and error.... For example, would vertices (x,y,z,etc) values more likely to be stored as 32-bit floats or 64-bit floats, going by the PS2's FPU specifications?  And what about endianness?  Does the PS2's math registers store numbers in big-endian or little-endian?  And, *if* different from the endianness on my own computer, then how come ASCII text strings in binary files don't look all switched-around?

Name: Anonymous 2011-03-22 23:27

almost all modern file formats designed for large files are compressed
it's almost always faster to load the compressed file and uncompress it than to load the raw file from slow media

the real way to do reverse engineer the file format, if you must, is to run an emulator and see what happens when the files are loaded and how the loaded data is used

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