Glossary

This is a list of some terms used in this repo and wiki.

Contents:

Terms

• Asset
• Archive
• Hash
• MSMR, MM, RCRA and others

Synonyms

• Magic
• Tag
• Section
• Span

Terms

Asset

A piece of data stored in game's archives. It's similar to a usual file, with a small distinction: there could be multiple variants of the same asset. All variants share the same name, and can only be distinguished by span they're stored in.

Different variants could represent localized assets (voices or subtitles for different languages) or just store complementary data (SD and HD versions of the same texture).

Archive

Game's file that contains assets stacked together. Could be compressed using DSAR format.

Game uses toc file to find out which archives to read, and determine which parts of such archives correspond to a specific asset.

Directories and names

In SO, archives are in the assets_archive directory.
In MSMR and MM, they are in asset_archive.
Since RCRA, directory is called just d.

Before RCRA, archives were named like g00s000 and a00s000.us (for archives with localized assets), and contained pretty much everything.
Since RCRA, archives are named like actor, model or model_enemy, and contain assets of said type.

Hash

Implementation of hash function, or the value it returns.

Typically used are custom CRC64 and CRC32. Former is mostly used as asset id (by hashing asset's filename), and latter is usually met as sections tags and other smaller ids.

One of the most important applications of the term for mod makers is to speak of 'hashes.txt' or the like. Such file contains hashes the game uses and assets' filenames that were found matching those values. It helps find the assets by keywords instead of going through thousands of similarly-named hex numbered assets with no understanding what they could be for.

MSMR, MM, RCRA and others

For the sake of brevity, most games and some other names are abbreviated when referenced. Additionally, IG's internal codenames are used sometimes.

MSMR = Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered;
MM = Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales;
RCRA = Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart;
SO = Sunset Overdrive;
i30 = Marvel's Spider-Man 2;
i33 = Marvel's Wolverine.

See also: Games

Synonyms

In other works, the same entities could be named differently. This section is to help you understand what's equivalent to what.

Due to 2023 Insomniac leak, it could be possible to find the "official" names, used in their own code. But, because of historical reasons and simply of habit, some could find the old terms preferrable.

(Asset's) Magic

ALERT	rivet	Ripped Apart	ig-tools	ID-Daemon's
magic	schema/type_id	type_hash	type_hash	type

Asset's first 4 bytes. Typically those also repeat at position 40, after DAT1 magic.

(Section's) Tag

ALERT	rivet	Ripped Apart	InsomniacArchive	ig-tools
tag	id/type_id	type_crc	id	type_hash

4 bytes that identify section type, used in assets' headers. They are CRC32 of section name.

Section

ALERT	rivet	Ripped Apart	InsomniacArchive	ig-tools	ID-Daemon's
section	section	lump	section	section	segment

Part of the asset, specified in the header by tag, offset from the beginning and size. Sections that use the same tag in different assets share the same structure and are type-specific (model sections only present in .model, etc).

Span

ALERT	rivet	Ripped Apart	InsomniacArchive	ig-tools
span	group	group	group/span	span

Number that is associated with every asset. Each asset can be present in multiple spans. There are 256 spans, where every 8 spans form a locale.