RE.4
File formats & archives
Container formats, compression, asset packing, save files.
6 entries, newest change first
- QL-0020
Tekken 4’s sound system, from the hidden driver to the music tables
Tekken 4 (PS2) hides its sound driver inside the executable as a compressed, bit-inverted package; the project unpacks and repacks it, and the repacked driver runs identically. The banks, the sound-effect tables, the music track tables and the stage-to-music map are decoded, and music swaps, shortened tracks and replaced sound banks all work in PCSX2. Every result was read from memory: nothing has been checked by ear.
Rev. B - QL-0018
Tekken 4 ignores a wall whose faces wind against their normal
A custom wall in a Tekken 4 (PS2) stage only blocks fighters if each face’s corners wind so that (c1 − c0) × (c2 − c0) points the same way as the face’s stored normal. A correctly placed wall wound the other way loads, links into the collision grid, and is walked straight through. All 867 stock wall faces follow the rule.
Rev. B - QL-0016
Tekken 4’s stage format, and building a new stage from scratch
Each Tekken 4 (PS2) stage is four archive files, and the biggest is a 15-section container holding the geometry, textures, floor, walls, crowd and start positions. The geometry and wall formats rebuild the stock stages byte for byte, and a new stage 17, with its own geometry, textures, props and collision, loads and plays in PCSX2.
Rev. B - QL-0015
Tekken 4’s moveset files, decoded and edited in game
How Tekken 4 (PS2) stores each fighter’s moves: an LZSS-compressed “Character Data” file of twenty tables. The format is decoded well enough to rebuild all 22 stock movesets byte for byte, and edits made with it work in game: a move’s damage changed, a button rerouted, a brand-new move added, and one fighter’s whole moveset run on another’s body.
Rev. B - QL-0014
Tekken 4’s 2.57 GB archive keeps its index in the executable
Tekken 4 (PS2) stores almost everything in one 2.57 GB file, DATA.BIN, with no index inside it. The index is a 1,121-entry table in the game’s executable, and the archive’s only protection is a reversible flip of each file’s first 4 KB. Both are decoded, every checksum passes, and a modified disc that appends new files to the archive boots and plays.
Rev. B - QL-0019
Tekken 4’s character models, and editing them in place
Tekken 4 (PS2) fighters are CHRTK4 models: VIF packets of skinned vertices and textured strips that the PS2’s vector unit consumes directly. The format is decoded well enough to reshape a head, widen a body and build a 3D beard out of hidden hair meshes, all at the original size, and the results render in PCSX2. Adding new vertices or bones is still out of reach.
Rev. A