User talk:LordNed

BFRES-Extractor Tool

Hi LordNed, welcome to the wiki. I couldn't help but notice your tool for dealing with BFRES files, very nice to see the research being applied! Having read your Readme on GitHub, I had a few comments. Do you think the name 'sub file' is misleading on this wiki? This is a throwback to the BRRES format on the Wii (which had contiguous sub files), and our documentation of that. Topologically, it is an archive. No data overlaps between two FMDLs or an FSHP and an FVTX say, so each bit of data belongs to exactly one sub file. As with BRRES on the Wii, you can't simply extract these anyway as the string table offsets would be wrong. For BRRES, we chose not to preserve the string table offsets, so that the files could be extracted. This meant each sub file had it's own string table when extracted. I think a similar scheme could be used here; when you extract the data you regroup it into a contiguous file, with the understanding that a BFRES creator would rearange the data again. It's helpful for understanding, but splitting the BFRES up may not be the best plan anyway. Perhaps a tool to convert a BFRES to other formats and back again makes more sense; the BFRES is designed to be an end use format, not an editing and viewing format. Good luck with the program!

Chadderz (talk) 08:01, 20 January 2015 (UTC)