Telltale Archive Files

Understand the simple API for dealing with archive files in the Telltale Editor.

There are quite a few archive files used across all of the games. Here we go over the most used ones.

TTArchive

The Telltale Archive (.ttarch) is the first main bundle of game data file used. Found in the header here, it is quite a simple archive format which changes drastically between legacy games which use it. Its implementation is split into version numbers internally specified in each game snapshot. Almost the exact API is present for the updated version of these, TTArchive2.

If you want to look into the implementation of the reader and writer, see the serialise functions in the source file.

TTArchive2

This format is more sophisticated. It is a container wrapped archive format. Once unwrapped, its format is quite simple, pretty much synonymous with normal .ttarch files. Its wrapped in a container stream (see the data stream API), which pretty much means it can be compressed and encrypted, as you would expect). Its format never really changes although has 3 versions which are handled in the serialiser and also specified in the game snapshot. See its header here and source file here.

Pack2 TTArchive

This is a one off file included here just for compatibility. It is used in CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder's PS2 release. It is basically a ttarch, but for some whacky reason uses the Meta system and its a meta stream! The class is internally the archive class, but still weird. See its header file here and source file here.

ISO Standard (119) 9660

Although completely unrelated to Telltale, a simple implementation of the ISO file format is included as well. This is so that console games can be easily mounted into the resource system. These are just a file system put into one file. They internally include the ttarch archives for that game. They cannot be written, but can be read. For people wishing to modify the console game, at least for now it is quite out of the scope that Telltale Editor will deal with writing ISOs as they are typically massive files due to alignment and writing is very very specific to the console CD ROM as its a format designed for CDs to be read optimally in terms of their sectors. See its header here and source here.

Resource System Directories

All of these are supported as registry directories in the resource system. They can be mounted to it as file containers.