#129431 - kiwi.ds - Tue May 22, 2007 8:11 pm
I 've made up a spec of the Nitro Composer file format (*.sdat)
Acknowledgement has to be made to loveemu, Crystal, Nintendon and DJ Bouche's works (see the link below for more details).
Hope this will help us to explore the file into a greater depth.
http://kiwi.ds.googlepages.com/sdat.html
#129449 - Dood77 - Tue May 22, 2007 10:30 pm
I'm never really been up-to-par on the whole ROM hacking thing... but when an NDS ROM is just a single file, a .nds, how is there other files within it? (I know that its certainly possible, I'm just wondering how it works exaclty) How would this file be extracted? AND how is it known that its got a .sdat extension? Was this extension just assigned at the discovery of these files, or does this come from knowledge of the official dev kits?
_________________
If I use a term wrong or something then feel free to correct, I?m not much of a programmer.
Original DS Phat obtained on day of release + flashme v7
Supercard: miniSD, Kingston 1GB, Kingston 2GB
Ralink chipset PCI NIC
#129452 - chuckstudios - Tue May 22, 2007 11:05 pm
| Dood77 wrote: |
| I'm never really been up-to-par on the whole ROM hacking thing... but when an NDS ROM is just a single file, a .nds, how is there other files within it? (I know that its certainly possible, I'm just wondering how it works exaclty) How would this file be extracted? AND how is it known that its got a .sdat extension? Was this extension just assigned at the discovery of these files, or does this come from knowledge of the official dev kits? |
These files are contained within the filesystem of the game itself. The files have a .sdat extension because the file table says they do ;)
#129479 - tepples - Wed May 23, 2007 5:12 am
| Dood77 wrote: |
| I'm never really been up-to-par on the whole ROM hacking thing... but when an NDS ROM is just a single file, a .nds, how is there other files within it? |
How are there multiple files within a self-extracting PKZIP file?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#129484 - Dood77 - Wed May 23, 2007 6:05 am
To answer, tepples, I quote myself:
| Dood77 wrote: |
| (I know that its certainly possible, I'm just wondering how it works exaclty) |
When I reread my questions after submitting, I realized I made it sound doubtful...
So are you saying its exactly or very similar to the PKZIP format?
_________________
If I use a term wrong or something then feel free to correct, I?m not much of a programmer.
Original DS Phat obtained on day of release + flashme v7
Supercard: miniSD, Kingston 1GB, Kingston 2GB
Ralink chipset PCI NIC
#129485 - tepples - Wed May 23, 2007 6:11 am
I'm saying that the combination of .nds with a file system is very similar in principle to the combination of a self-extractor with a PKZIP or tar archive, or the combination of a GBA program with a GBFS archive, even though it isn't mapped into the GBA ROM space the way GBFS traditionally is.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#129493 - kiwi.ds - Wed May 23, 2007 7:59 am
To answer your query, a nds file usually contains the following things:
1. header
2. arm9 binary code
3. arm9 overlay files
4. arm7 binary code
5. arm7 overlay files
4. banner (the icon and the title of the game as u see in the starting menu)
5. file name table
6. file allocation table
7. files used by the game
5+6+7 together form the so-called Nitro File System.