Category:FastFiles: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:30, 12 June 2026

FastFiles are the CoD engine's way of storing Zone files. FastFiles (FFs) almost always have some sort of RSA2048 signature, a zlib compression along the way, and then on later CoDs some encryption. The Zones are a library of assets. Every FF in every CoD game starts the same way...

Name	Offset	Type	Description
Magic	0x0	char[8]	"IWffu100" for unsigned fastfiles, "IWff0100" for signed fastfiles, "TAff0100" for treyarch's Black Ops 2 fastfile, and "S1ff0100" for Sledgehammer Advanced Warfare fastfiles.
Version	0x8	int	See below.

So by reading the version of the input FF, you can tell what system and game the FF is from. Note that pre-alpha versions of Call of Duty 4 are missing the version integer, and must be handled specially. Also keep in mind that the Quantum of Solace FFs are missing the magic in the struct above.

XFILE_VERSION	007:QoS	CoD4	WaW	MW2	BO1	MW3	BO2	Ghosts	CoD: Online	Advanced Warfare	BO3 Beta	BO3
Xbox 360	0x1D6	0x1	0x183	0x10D	0x1D9	0x70	0x92	0x22E	n/a	0x72E	n/a	0x253
Playstation 3	0x1D6	0x1	0x183	0x10D	0x1D9	0x70	0x92	0x22E	n/a	0x72E	n/a	0x25E
Wii/Wii-U	0x1D2	0x1A2	0x19B	n/a	0x1DD	0x6B	0x94	0x22E	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
PC	0x1D6	0x5	0x183	0x114	0x1D9	0x1	0x93	0x135	0x13C	0x72E	0x1FB	n/a

Stream Blocks

After the Zone (XFile) is extracted from the fastfile, you read the block sizes of each g_streamBlock allocation. This determines how much memory to allocate to each stream to read data into. Each block stream has a specific role in the data that is read and it goes as follows:

Purpose	Temp	Physical	Runtime	Virtual	Large	Callback	Vertex
Asset Pool Headers, Counts, Root Pointers	Sound Data	??	PC uses this for loading assets	Strings and Data Chunks (rawfiles)	Used in some loader methods	Material and Image data

One distinction is that PC uses virtual for a load of loading where PS3 mainly uses large.

Pointers in Zone Files

Infinity Ward implemented their own way of loading data that can already be found earlier in the zone file. What should be an address in memory is instead stored either as -1, -2, or as an offset. If the pointer is -1 or -2, than the data follows, typically in order. If the pointer is not -1 or -2, the first 4 bits (or 3 bits in BO2) are extracted and used as an index for the g_streamBlocks array. The other bits are the offset and is added to the data pointer in g_streamBlocks. The offset is only correct after the zone file has been loaded in memory. This is because some data is relocated (aligned) which changes the size of the zone. Some differences:

strings are aligned by 4 bytes
asset headers are stored in pools
sound, image, and shader programs are stored in pools
zone header is removed

Pages in category "FastFiles"

The following 5 pages are in this category, out of 5 total.

@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 |PC||0x1D6||0x5||0x183||0x114||0x1D9||0x1||0x93||0x135||0x13C||0x72E||0x1FB||n/a
 |}
+== Stream Blocks ==
+After the Zone (XFile) is extracted from the fastfile, you read the block sizes of each g_streamBlock allocation. This determines how much memory to allocate to each stream to read data into. Each block stream has a specific role in the data that is read and it goes as follows:
+{| class="wikitable"
+| Purpose ||'''Temp'''||'''Physical'''||'''Runtime'''||'''Virtual'''||'''Large'''||'''Callback'''||'''Vertex'''
+|-
+|Asset Pool Headers, Counts, Root Pointers||Sound Data||??||PC uses this for loading assets||Strings and Data Chunks (rawfiles)||Used in some loader methods||Material and Image data
+|}
+One distinction is that PC uses virtual for a load of loading where PS3 mainly uses large.
 == Pointers in Zone Files ==
 Infinity Ward implemented their own way of loading data that can already be found earlier in the zone file. What should be an address in memory is instead stored either as -1, -2, or as an offset. If the pointer is -1 or -2, than the data follows, typically in order. If the pointer is not -1 or -2, the first 4 bits (or 3 bits in BO2) are extracted and used as an index for the g_streamBlocks array. The other bits are the offset and is added to the data pointer in g_streamBlocks. The offset is only correct after the zone file has been loaded in memory. This is because some data is relocated (aligned) which changes the size of the zone. Some differences: