Chunked Binary Encoding

Quick Infos

Type: Encoding
Class Name: zCFileBIN
Used By: zCModelAni

Many asset files are encoded in binary, splitting the data up into sections called chunks. Each chunk consists of a type identifier, its size and the actual data wrapped inside it. Files using the chunked binary encoding do not contain data outside of chunks.

File Structure

struct zCFileBIN {
    zCFileBIN_Chunk chunks[];
}

struct zCFileBIN_Chunk {
    ushort type;
    uint size;
    byte data[/* size */];
};

It should be noted that, apart from the data being grouped into chunks, files encoded in chunked binary behave the same as flat binary files.

Representation

Wherever the chunked binary format is used in asset format references, the chunks are represented in a tabbed list. To keep it concise, the names of the tabs contain the chunk type and their content contains a C-style struct defining the data stored within.

0x10000x1010

Section 0x1000

struct MyClass_Section1 {
    uint myValue1;

    // ...
};

This tab describes the section with type 0x1000. As declared in the struct above, it only contains a 32-bit unsigned integer. The definition of all datatypes can be found in the Datatype Reference.

Section 0x1010

struct MyClass_Section2 {
    string myValue2;

    // ...
};

This tab describes the section with type 0x1010. As you can see, it works the same as the first tab.

You may have noticed, that the chunk's size is not mentioned anywhere in these tabs. While it should be taken as the actual size of the chunk, this reference aims to be as complete as possible, so the size of the struct provided for each section should be the same as the chunk size. If it is not, there is an error in this documentation.