B0 M 7M2XS, ;@0MM 20 MWXrX '03 .XM M 2M7 M X@ :,. MM M MM .. M2 M ;a WM ,. MMBMX M ,22iM. M MX MM ar 2, Xa. SM aa;7M 8W@ MMr Mi ,0a M7XS a iZXiM ;Z 0 r @W; M M M 7iW@ M W M7M 8 S X7M M Ba M. 2i70 M 0 i M .M W M2.. ir @ M,M M MZX M M i Zr:2 Z M M 7Z 0M M ;S 7B 2 M MMr0 M ra M; M MMZWM aXM MaSZMMX SXZMMM,MM MM MM 8M XBM0M, Wa2S0MM MX ;SMMMM.MX MM ----;X-----B--------S----..:i-i;--.------------0---------------ii--------------------,---r0---- EVE: The Second Genesis .STUFF Archive File Format Hacked Researched by Dark Rain / Black Heaven (Legend_of_BlackHeaven@hotmail.com) v0.0.1 ====== I couldn't resist poking around a bit when I learnt Eve used a virtual file system. I just HAD to know the name of the files in the .stuff archives to mod them to my liking. Well one thing lead to another and I debunked the whole format instead of only the file names. The file listing ================ Stuff files start with a long representing the number of files in the archive. It's followed by that number of the following structure : Variable Name Size ============================ fileSize Longword pathLength Longword filePath Longword Explanation of the structure ============================ "fileSize" - The size of the file in byte. "pathLength" - The size of the file path string. "filePath" - The path of the file in CPP virtual file system. Notice that there's no direct pointer to where the file is in the archive, so you have to derive it. The address of the file is the sum of the file size of all the previous entry added to the file offset after all these structures. Interesting Notes ================== As you can see, the archives aren't compressed at all so a lot of space is lost. For exemple, reuis.stuff 17mb->6mb, res.stuff 69mb->27mb, resCelestialTexture.stuff 109mb->36mb. It might not have been so significant if the .blue files and .dds textures didn't seem to compress so well. There's many possible reasons as to why CCP decided not to compress them. Reading data from it would've been slower for one and recompacting the archive would take yet more time. How does recompacting affect us, players, you ask? Well guess what takes so much time every new damn patch? Yup, it's tearing down all the old .stuff files and recreating them to add one or two asset - fun. Greetings ========= · Saruman & Bobban / DFR Engineering. · The old EVA crew and NS Hard Rock Saves!