Binary Encoding

Quick Infos

Type: Encoding
Class Name: zFILE
Used By: zCFileBIN, zCFont, zCTexture, zFILE_VDFS

Most asset files and other encodings are based flat binary files. As their name indicates, files encoded using flat binary just contain raw bytes. Their structure is fully defined by the asset format using the encoding.

Binary files and other encodings based on them are little-endian.

Representation

Wherever binary data needs to be represented in a structured form, C-style structs are used. In this documentation, they are intended to be read without any sort of padding (see below). All primitive datatypes and how they should be read are documented in the Datatype Reference.

Example Binary Data

struct Example {
    ushort checksum;
    byte type;
};

static_assert(sizeof(Example) == 3, "A ushort is 2 bytes plus a byte is 3 bytes");

Often, binary structures contain arrays of dynamic size. In order to allow for more fluent definitions, the C-style array declaration syntax is used. The variable containing the dynamic size of the array is put in a comment within the brackets.

Example Binary Data Containing Arrays

struct Example {
    uint staticArray[10]; //< A set of 10 consecutive uints

    ushort dynamicLength;
    byte dynamicArray[/* dynamicLength */]; //< A set of `dynamicLength` consecutive bytes
};