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Game Data Formats

Daniel Nylander edited this page Aug 26, 2026 · 4 revisions

Game-data formats

Firestaff identifies original media by verified content rather than by a particular folder or filename. It reads archive members directly from the player-supplied container into bounded process memory; it does not extract or persist game data to a Firestaff-owned directory. This page is the wiki summary; the complete, maintained record catalogue is the game-data format reference.

Format status

  • Read — Firestaff can inspect and validate the format.
  • Runtime-bound — verified media is used by a live game path.
  • Opaque — the format is retained or preflighted without publication into live game state.
  • Closed — the route deliberately refuses to guess, convert or write data.

Read support alone does not imply a complete game route.

Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back

Platform/media Verified format boundary
PC 3.4 GRAPHICS.DAT IMG3 records: packed 4-bit pixels, high nibble first, with row padding; DUNGEON.DAT provides the dungeon and linked thing records.
Amiga IMG1 nibble-RLE graphics. CSB also uses platform program assets such as TITL.DAT, APPB.FTL, KAOS.FTL and BJELoad_R.
Atari ST DMCSB1 catalogue with 563 Atari-LZW records decoded as big-endian IMG1. CSB uses ANIMATE.SCR, ANIMATE.DAT, ANIMATE.FTL, FTLCODE and CHAOS.FTL. The retail Save Disk is a 720 KiB MSA/FAT12 blank formatted medium; an empty root means no save, not missing game data.
FM Towns 0x8001-wrapped IMG2 graphics, not PC IMG3. CSB's F31 chain includes RUN386.EXE, SWITCHTW.EXP, CHTWE.EXP or CHTWJ.EXP, and the Utility executables.

CSB has no original DOS/PC 3.4 release. Its Amiga route is the default original-media path; Atari ST and FM Towns have separate verified media boundaries.

CSB campaign/bootstrap media such as MINI.DAT, MINIF.DAT and MINIG.DAT is never treated as a generic user-save target. Atari and Amiga user slots are CSBGAME*.DAT with native .BAK recovery. FM Towns F31 saves use a C5 header, checksummed blocks, portraits and a dungeon tail. The current external EN/JP save files are rejected before runtime admission because their valid headers and parts contradict the two-map Prison tail's saved map index; they remain preservation evidence while source-faithful F0433 writing stays closed. Legacy CSBWin csbgame*.dat files are fully authenticated into private candidates, but their dungeon state is not yet atomically published into a live session.

CSB for X68000 is intentionally unsupported. Any local HDM is preservation reference only and must not select a data, startup or game-view route; see preservation status.

Dungeon Master II

GRAPHICS.DAT is a typed GDAT record graph, not a flat sprite sheet. DUNGEON.DAT uses the G1 record layout, including per-database extensions. DM2 sound entries are a two-byte header followed by unsigned 8-bit mono PCM at 6000 Hz. FM Towns media uses its DATA/ tree; Amiga media includes CD.DAT and SK00.MOD through SK09.MOD. SKSAVE is a platform-specific save boundary.

DM Nexus

Nexus disc data is read from original CUE/BIN media. LEV*.DGN uses the DMDF level structures, *.MNS provides static map data, and MENU.BPK plus FACE.BIN use PRS3-compressed resources. Face palettes are BGR555. The SAL map prefix remains opaque until its full layout is verified.

Theron's Quest

Theron's Quest reads raw MODE1/2352 Track 02 sectors: each 2,352-byte sector has a 2,048-byte user-data region beginning at offset 0x10. Track 19 and the gzip-wrapped SRM save boundary have separate readers. Firestaff's own FSTQPTY1 state is not presented as an original save format.

Use Game data for setup and scanning, then follow the per-game technical pages for implementation detail:

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