Archive Formats on the Xbox: Why and How with BLiNX 2

[@tomysshadow]

Luigi Auriemma (the creator of QuickBMS, a utility often used for unpacking such formats) wrote a paper called "Overview of game file formats and archives" that goes deep into this topic as well. Something that is alluded to when mentioning the headers but wasn't fully explained is sectors - a CD is divided into sectors, 2048 bytes large each, and these are basically the smallest unit you can work with on the CD. So you can't read less than 2048 bytes at a time, and if data is split between multiple sectors, you have to read both sectors. Therefore it is wise on a CD to align data on the nearest 2048 bytes, i.e. sacrifice a tiny amount of space to add some padding so that files will fit cleanly into the sectors instead of being split down the middle of them. Hence why it may be desirable to control the offset where it begins :)

[@CodeNotMagic]

Oh, I almost mentioned Auriemma's work here! Earlier ideas for this video were more narrative and chronological, and would've included their IPK script for another Artoon title being used as the basis for a BLiNX 2 script many years ago. That was what I used for my original Blinx jacket mod way back then. I definitely ought to give that paper a read, too, so thanks for mentioning it (and likewise for the quick explanation of sectors that I didn't manage to fit in anywhere).

[@em00k]

Packing everything into binary blobs was happening way before the CDROM era. The further back you go with machines with slow media and smaller memory footprints, you will find it everywhere. On machines with only 64KB of addressable RAM this was even more crucial, you could have a block of data in an extended ram bank, page that in unpack the data to addressable RAM. It still happens today :)

[@TheSeriousDog]

Nice video, loved the visuals helping to undestand the concepts you explained.

[@xRobert1016x]

This is a really well done video on something interesting but pretty obscure, good work

[@Anife69]

WAIT 32 SUBS ??????????????? your vid was amazing bro !!! I really like this ambient music in bg

[@memoryhunter2084]

Great vid! What were the music used?

[@LowellLoveMusic]

This is awesome! ❤

[@JigaTech]

good video 👍

[@whtiequillBj]

I remember archive formats. But not from xbox. I remember it from games like Armor Command from Ripcord games.

[@skatcat743]

Top tier!

[@AerianTelevision]

Meteos planet parameters, funnily enough when you try to mod the game, are stored in .mtp files.