File List
To possibly help new modders, I will write a list here of all the files that are unpacked, and what each of them do, or what they are for. While I tested most of these, I don’t know what every single file does, and some of them appear to be not used at all.
Keep in mind that the YGO_2020.toc file is one of the most important files, in that if you add any new images to the game (like for characters or animations) you must add the file name and directory into the toc as well so it can be repacked into your files. If you are editing existing files (such as the dueldata, card names, etc) you don’t need to edit the toc, you only need to edit when you add an actual new file to the game, not editing existing ones already there. You also don’t need to add to the toc when adding things in one of the zib folders.
Folders-
2020.full.illust_a.jpg.zib_
This file has 1012 card artwork images in it, these are the ones that are censored outside of Japan (or playing in other languages besides English). If you replace any of these images in the larger folder, you will also need to replace the one here too so your changes stick.
2020.full.illust_j.jpg.zib-
This is a big one, as it holds all 10,165 images for all the card artworks (including the ones listed above in the other folder). You can change any of these to whatever art you want, but as I said above, just make note of which ones are also in the smaller folder and replace the ones there too if needed. As above, the number of the image corresponds to the card ID number, which you can find in a list on another page on this github. When changing any art, try to make the new images the same size as the old one (304×304) and same file extension (jpeg in this case). The game might autocrop larger images but most likely won’t read any other extension of the images other than what it was initially.
arenas-
These are simple enough, 1920×1080 jpeg images of each dueling field in the game. Unlike the first game that had backgrounds in 3d phyre files, these are just simple images and easily edited so you can make whatever background you want for a custom style feel for your own game. The folders here for ‘blimp’ and ‘vrains’ are different effects for the duel field of that name. For instance, changing the ‘blimp’ image in the regular arenas folder wouldn’t change anything in game that you can see, because inside the blimp folder, there’s an overlay of the duel field which covers that blimp image, so you’d also either need to replace the one in the folder or remove the image in the blimp folder and make it an empty image with nothing in it. The folders also have a simple notepad with coordinates in it for the placement of objects, and it’s possible to edit these to remove the extra pieces of the map (like the floating Vrains objects), and it might be possible to add new ones for custom effects on custom fields.
bin-
There’s a lot of files here, in general the lettered files are the same thing, just different languages (E- English, F-French, G-German, I-Italian, J- Japanese, R and R patch- Russian, and S- Spanish). I will use the E files as an example when I talk about them, but the actual files are identical in each, just with different languages. Note that if you edit these for modding purposes, if you release the mod with only a certain language edited, people that play your mod in other languages won’t be able to see or use the stuff like characters you edited, so you would have to copy your edited file and rename it with the corresponding letters for each language, just try not to do that with stuff like card names or descriptions, as it will turn all of them into the language you selected.
files-
CARD_Desc_E.bin- This has the description of every card in the game. There currently is not a tool to edit these easily, but it is possible to edit them in hex, but you will need to edit another file as well if you make name longer than it was before, and should always add the new name to the end of the file rather than inserting bytes into things, as doing that will mess up every single card in the game listed under the one you edited.
card_extra.bin- I’m not sure what this does, but there seems to be around 11069 bytes here with most things being listed as 01 with occasional 00 in there as well. Maybe this is a general list of cards that in a database, with 01 being in the game and 00 not available, but again not sure as I never edited this file.
CARD_Genre.bin- Another file I haven’t touched, this might be something to do with searching cards in the trunk.
CARD_Indx_E.bin- This is an important file if you are editing card names or descriptions. This file is basically just a list of offsets that points to both the card name bins and card description bins. Marked by 4 bytes each, it shows the offset pointer to the start of the card name in the card_name.bin, the offset pointer to the start of the card description in the CARD_Desc.bins, the offset point to the end of the card name, and the offset pointer to the end of the card description. If you are editing the card names or descriptions to be longer names than they were before, you can add the new text to the bottom of the file, find the offset pointers in this file, and repoint them to the new name so it can read the new text at the bottom of the file.
CARD_IntID.bin- This is a list of all the card ID’s in the game by number and with the ID numbers missing from cards that are not in the game. I tried editing this once, along with other files, to add a new card to the game, but it didn’t work.
CARD_Kana1_E.bin- Also 2 and 3, not sure what these files do exactly.
CARD_Link.bin- This is a list of all cards and ID numbers of cards that are ‘linked’ to other cards when searching related cards in the trunk. An example is a monster like Sangan that searches monsters with under 1500 attack, the monsters that fit that requirement would be listed by ID under him in this file so the game knows to show them as related in the trunk.
CARD_Name_E.bin- These are the card names of every card in the game. For changing names in hex, see the other files listed here like CARD_Desc.bin and CARD_Indx)
CARD_Named.bin- I forgot what this file does honestly.
CARD_PackID.bin- This file is strange in that it appears to be card ID by sets they came out in real life (such as the last card in the list having the SD37-JPP01 listed for it, and also being the ID of it in the structure deck the card came out in Japan), but the game doesn’t appear to use these ID’s or numbers for anything in game.
CARD_Pass.bin- Another strange file that doesn’t appear to be used in game, but this is a list of password codes (the numbers listed at the bottom of a card in real life) and starts with 89631139, the number for Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
CARD_Prop.bin- This is the file that stores all the attributes for cards in the game such as Attack, Defense, Type, Type of card, etc. It’s possible to edit these using an editor linked on another page.
CARD_Same.bin- Not sure what this file is, I want to say it’s for cards that have the effect of being treated as another name while on the field such as some of the Harpie Lady cards, but not sure.
CARD_Sort_E.bin- 1 and 2 might be something for how cards sort in the trunk.
DLG_Indx_E.bin- This is a list of pointers to the next file listed.
DLG_Text_E.bin- These are different messages that appear during duels and on menus and such, with the pointers to each being in the above Indx file.
limit#.bin and pd_limits.bin- This is the banlist the game uses. The older banlists appear to be ignored entirely since you can’t actually select banlists while in game, but if you want to edit the banlist for your own game, changing just the pd_limits.bin should be enough. If it doesn’t show up in game after editing, then also change the lasted dated one in the list, which would be the 201901jp.bin.
tagdata.bin and taginfo_E.bin- These seem to be just different search tags for the trunk.
WORD_Indx_E.bin- Just like other files listed above, these are pointers to the next file.
WORD_Text_E.bin- This has a list of types of monsters, including stuff for names of actual types of monsters such as Dragon and Fairy, but also different types of cards such as pendulum and Xyz. It should be possible to customize these if you want, so those names appear differently in game, so you could in theory design a new set of a type of card and replace an existing one.
busts.zib-
These are the images that can appear in both the deck recipe menu when assigning an avatar to a deck and also on the challenge select screen. Note these are NOT what appear during a duel, that image is in another folder that I will list. As I said earlier, if you add new ones here, you do not need to edit the toc file, it will repack new images here automatically.
card- These are the card sleeves the game uses. When I customized my own sleeves, I always just changed both of them, but I think the game reads the smaller image during duels, and the bigger one when opening packs in the shop.
decks.zib- A collection of all the decks in the game, marked by the ID it has that you can find in the deck list in the main folder.
duel- There’s a lot of images here, so will say quickly what each one does.
effect folder-
blu_light and blu_light_g just different effect images.
chain- appears when creating a chain of cards in duels.
dice- image of rolling a dice during a duel.
duel_clock- This is used only during multiplayer for turn limits I think.
duel_ouija- These are the Destiny Board images but sadly don’t appear at all in game.
fusion_mark_tmp- appears during fusion summons
handshake- I think this appears during handshake cards like Yu-Jo Friendship
lens, light and ms530snd- various in duel effects
mahojin, mark_link, mark_special_summon, mark_xyz, synchro 1/2 and tuner- appears during different special summons.
PT34,PT88_R_a, rai_BL, thred and sen_07- probably effects used somewhere but not sure where
spel_mark01- These are some different symbols that appear on cards such as when a monster has an equip card on it, it will show the equip symbol on them.
frame folder- These are straightforward enough, the frame of each type of card in the game. Each set of cards uses the same frame, such as normal monsters using the card_normal frame, effect monsters using the card_kouka frame and so on.
hud-pd folder- The only image here is the color of the Life Point bar. You can find the actual bar in the pdui folder.
tutorial folder- This just has a bunch of files with the text for each of the game’s tutorials.
Other images-
I won’t list all of these, but some different icons, cursors and other things that appear during duels. And some other images such as the coin toss icon, the phase bar images, and the ND_thinking image that appears during your turns and also appears when the game is asking the AI if it wants to use a card (yes it asks them all the time just like it does to you when you have that setting on lol)
font and fontbin folders- These are the various fonts the game uses. Unfortunately, the fonts appear to be stored in only images instead of actual font files like the first game, so changing fonts is a lot harder than it was in the first game, but still possible.
GeneratedSoundBanks- These of course are the sound effects and music in the game. You will need a program such as Wwise to edit music with the .wem extension, and another program to unpack the bnk file that holds all the sound effects. Interestingly, there’s several music tracks that are not used in the game, as well as some references to low LP music from previous games, which this game does not use.
main folder-
The howto folders are what appears in the ‘How to play’ section of the menu.
The ui folder has some things that you can edit such as ‘publisher’ being the starting splash screen.
Inside the loading folder is also the background and other images for the loading screen between duels.
arenadata_E.bin- A list of Arena names, you can find a list of them on another page on this gitub guide. They left out some ID’s that existed in the first game but are just entirely left out in this game such as-
09- Madolche Chateau
0A- Sargasso
0B- DD Battlefield
0C- Savage Colloseum
Most of these following files have editors, but these are the files that store the data for each and the ones you will be editing when using those tools.
chardata_E.bin- This is the file that holds all the character data for each character.
deckdata_E.bin- Same thing as characters, just for decks and contains a list of decks in the game.
dueldata_E.bin- Same as above, just the list of duels in game.
packdefdata_E.bin- Again, same as above, has the data and names for card packs.
scriptdata_E.bin- The data and text for all story scenes.
skudata_E.bin- Not sure what this is, but something for starting the game.
movies- These of course are all the movie animations that play when a monster is summoned. You can add more here, just make sure to add the file name to the toc and you can use Rad Video Tools to convert your animation to the .bik format the game uses.
packs- These are the images that appear that show when you unlock the packs in the reward screen, NOT the actual pack image itself that shows on the shop screen.
packs.zib- These are all the packs in the game. Using a tool found elsewhere on the github, you can edit these and create new card packs, however I don’t think you can edit, change or add new battlepacks.
pdeffects- There’s a lot of images in here so I won’t explain all of them, but most of these are different effects that appear during duels such as when a card is set, destroyed, summoned, etc. The attackarrow image is what appears when your monsters attack.
pdui folder- This is one of the most important folders, so will break down most of it.
campaign_dialog folder- has the panels and character that appears during story scenes.
controller folder- Not sure why there is a fucking rat image in here, it was also in the first game.
dialog_bg folder- These are the backgrounds that play during story scenes. If you create new ones, make sure to write the name of the image correctly in the story editor.
dialog_chars folder- This is the images of every character in the game and how they appear on various screens. It’s also possible to add new or different expressions for characters and assign them to the duel select screen elsewhere (all have the Neutral expression by default, but you can change that to any other expression in the dfymoo file)
dialog_props folder- Same thing as the bg folder, just these are some different items that may appear during story scenes. If you add new ones, make sure to set them up properly in the story editor.
duel folder- some different images that appear during duels
duel_result, janken, rewards and shared folders- These appear in various places both before, during and after duels.
Other files-
In general the .dfymoo are connected to the files they are named after, and show the image x and y coordinates of each part of the image it is pointing to, so if you edit these or add more things to it, gotta make sure your coordinates are still correct.
chars- has every character in the game there, these images appear during duels and also on the challenge select screen. If you add more into the image, make sure to write them in correctly in the dfymoo file. It is also in that dfymoo that you can change a character expression on the duel select screen from Neutral to another expression of your choice.
doshared- The boxes the avatars are in, the background of the pause menu, and some various menu related images.
ds_btn_active, inactive and yellow- These are menu buttons of course. The Yellow ones were dlc markers in the first game but are not used at all in Link Evolution. Also note that the dfymoo has them listed in frames for a slight animation effect that plays on the menu bars. If you want to customize these buttons, you can just edit the dfymoo file’s coordinates to point to the same bar, or you could possibly create custom animations for the menu buttons by creating each frame in order.
field, hud, janken and match result images are various things that appear in duels and before/after, such as the hud having the name bars of each character, the actual frame of the LP bar and so on, can check the names in the corresponding dfymoo.
noise images- These are the backgrounds of different images that show on the various screens such as the main menu, card shop, duel select, etc. I think the game just uses the small files, but you can edit both and use the upper left corner for the image itself that you want, and remove the animated effects that play so they don’t get in the way of your custom image. You can probably also create custom animated versions by editing these, but I’m not artistic enough to do so myself lol.
packwrappers- These are the actual wrapper images when you buy cards in the shop. If you create a new pack, you would have to add your image to this file and the pack dfymoo as well.
Series logo appears on the series select screen and also the pack selection screen.
The Steam icons has a ton of little icons in it that you could customize if needed
title_logo is the logo that appears on startup.
strings- These files have a bunch of text in them, from stuff like what appears on the duel bonus screen after duels and so on.
title- This folder has all the monsters and backgrounds that appear on the main start screen. While you can customize these, I’m not sure if you can add more yet.