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File formats

ninjatobob edited this page Sep 14, 2025 · 1 revision

File formats

Wave files (.RAW/.RFR/.RGE/.RBP/.RSS and decoded .KC)

11025 Hz 8 bit mono PCM.

French (.RFR) and German (.RGE) audio files are included in the European release of Fatal Racing alongside English audio (.RAW). The South American Fatal Racing release contains Brazilian Portuguese (.RBP) and South American Spanish (.RSS) audio files.

KC likely stands for Kevin Crossley, the game's track designer.

MIDI files (.HMP)

Human Machine Interfaces MIDI files. Fatal Racing/Whiplash uses the January 31st 1995 revision of the .HMP format (HMIMIDIP013195 header).

Whiptools can convert the more common original .HMP format (HMIMIDIP header) to the revised format. See this page for detailed specifications of these formats.

sample-files/DEFAULT.HMP is an example of the original format. More .HMP files in both formats are available here.

Bitmap files (.BM, .DRH)

Raw bitmaps. Each byte represents a pixel and specifies the position in the palette to be used (0-255).

  • Full screen graphics (e.g. WINNER.BM): 640 x 400 pixels
  • Car textures (XAUTO.BM for normal, YAUTO.BM for advanced etc.): 64 x 3456 pixels (54 squares of 64 x 64)
  • Track textures (TRACK1.DRH etc.): 64 pixels wide, varying heights
  • GENTEX.DRH contains the start lights, fire, smoke and FATALITY sprites.

Palette files (.PAL)

RGB triplets using 6 bits per channel (each byte has a maximum value of 63) as described here.

All palette files supplied with the game have 256 colours (768 bytes) and may have some colours unused. However, the game can accept smaller palettes.

FRONTEND.PAL is used for the background graphics and the cars on the menu screen. media/Whiplash XP.png uses 87 colours added to FRONTEND.PAL at position 25.

Track files (.TRK)

Plaintext files containing length, geometry, signs, stunts, textures and race information.

Track file resources:

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