DAT (Final Fantasy XI)
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Quick look of a few files as an example shows there is some common structure. DAT might simple be some type of container file for general data.
Folder structures are... ROM#/FOLDER#/FILE#.DAT Example. ROM/0/0.DAT
There is a lot of different files here. The way the game loads and references other files to load is not understood yet (by me, at least).
Many may not even have a magic number to ID the format. The game probably assumes the file it is trying to load is the correct type so it doesn't need to validate.
| NPC List type | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Size | Content | Description | ||||||||||||
| 28 Bytes | Name | NPC Name | ||||||||||||
| 4 Bytes | ID | |||||||||||||
Example: ROOT:/ROM/27/13.DAT
FTABLE.DAT and VTABLE.DAT appear to be important in how the game loads data. Such as loading a specific number file and then uses these, it'll calculate what the file ROM/FOLDER/FILE it is. Or so I've read. Still can't wrap my head around how it works, even while looking at the source of some other programs. The way I last viewed it was this look up is like... Game requests file 500, so it looks up with these tables to find the physical file for
file 500... or something like that.
Formats
- Dialog table
- NPC List
- Zone data with textures (encrypted)