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Alice Media Binder

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RadiantDerg edited this page Feb 18, 2022 · 19 revisions

Extension: .AMB

Binders are usually a hard-coded file archive, meaning the game will ONLY reference the file data inside of these binders by their pre-defined IDs¹ (The ID itself is the order in which the said file appears).

This means that while you can freely edit whatever file they contain, the order of those files or the formats themselves must NOT be changed as this will confuse the game and cause it to crash or hang.

  • For example: You cannot replace a .ZNO(Model) file with a .ZNM(Model animation) file, OR a .ZNO(Original model format) file with an .LNO(Different model format) file.

Binders also support zlib compression. Only certain games feature these and as such, they are the only games that will support them. Once decompressed the AMB can be read normally.. however, while compressed the subheader, index, and data portions of the binder are replaced with a new value specifying the original file size in bytes, followed by the compressed data.

There are also several bytes within the binder that tend to go unused by the actual game. These bytes are actually meant for an internal tool Dimps used to describe the binder files and their contents. The tool would spit out a header file containing all the necessary information, which would then be compiled into the final game's code.

Console versions are big-endian. PC and mobile are little-endian.

¹ - The exception to this is binders that have NOT been defined by the internal tool. They cannot reference the contents directly, so the game will instead rely on the Name Table to find what it's looking for.


General structure of Alice Media Binders:

Section Description
Header Info about the AMB itself, unanimous among almost all versions of the file, with the exception of Windows Phone AMBs.
Sub Header Contains address pointers to the following sections inside the AMB.
File Index A complete list of the files contained within the AMB. Each file has its own sequence of bytes detailing information about the file.
File Data A large chunk of bytes simply filled with every file's data. Sometimes there's padding.
Name Table File names. (Ignored by AMBs that have had their contents hard-coded. Hard-coded binders can omit this table completely for simple masking.)

Templates to quickly view this data in 010 Editor can be found here

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