Data Paths Reference#
What are all these crazy folders? Fear not, young adventurer. This handy guide will help you navigate these bold new (or, old I guess?) waters.
/ - This is the root of all game data. Often times, any DLL's, applications, config files, and anything else that doesn't have a home in folders goes here. This is where most of the actual engine itself is, while the folders are generally reserved for game content.
/bink - Any movie files (typically stored in .bik format) will be placed here.
/maps - This is where the vast majority of game content itself is stored. Blam Cache Files, or .map files contain all game sounds, textures, models, scripts, and well, everything else that involves game content. More information on what goes into these folders can be found by looking at the various tag classes that the engine supports (or, currently, will support)
/maps/fonts - This is where any font packages will be stored. Currently, there is font_package_dbg.bin, but this is actually just a renamed .TTF file of fixedsys. This will not always be the case and will later move to a proper font package, along with a utility to package font into font packages.
/maps/images - Any map image files, stored in .blf format, will be stored here.
/maps/info - Any map information files, stored in .mapinfo format, will be placed here. Blam Map Information files contain things such as the display name of a level, the path to the appropriate .map file, the Map ID, and other key details.
/mods - This data will be the home to any mods downloaded through Foundation Mod Manager. FMM is a tool originally created for use with ElDewrito. The Blamite edition of FMM works in a similar means, but is hand-coded from the ground up by our own team.
/dev_data - Any extracted or unpackaged data can be placed here for testing. Currently, this only holds scripts. However, we plan to support loading of tags and other level data from this location as well, in order to allow easy debugging and testing without having to continuously re-pack a .map file.
/screenshots - Any screenshots taken ingame will be stored here. Unlike most other paths, this will be user configurable and will likely default to a different location in the future, such as %USERPROFILE%\Pictures\Screenshots\blamite
Currently unused paths#
Halo: Online#
/locales - This is a directory exclusive to Halo: Online. It stores various languages in .pak format.
/soundbackends - This is a directory exclusive to Halo: Online. It stores various DLL's related to sound and audio.
/tpi - This is a directory exclusive to Halo: Online. It stores various setup files for software required to run Halo: Online.
/maps - Map data is stored much differently in Halo: Online than in other iterations of blam. Most data is located within audio.dat, tags.dat, resources.dat, string_ids.dat, textures.dat, and video.dat
Xbox 360 Halo Titles#
/waves - This is a directory exclusive to Xbox 360 Halo titles. Found in Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Reach, and Halo 4, this stores things related (presumably) to audio.
/sounds - This is a directory exclusive to Halo 4. It contains two .pck files containing various sound data.
Halo 2 for Windows Vista#
/eula - This is a directory found in Halo 2 for Windows Vista. It stores the EULA in various languages, in HTML format.
/privacy - This is a directory found in Halo 2 for Windows Vista. It stores the Privacy Policy in various languages, in HTML format.
/icons - This is a directory found in Halo 2 for Windows Vista. It stores filetype icons for .map and .savegame.
/movie - This is a directory found in Halo 2 for Windows Vista. This is before the bink folder existed. It stored all the movie/video files in .wmv format.
Halo PC (Halo: Combat Evolved)#
/WATSON - This is a directory found in Halo PC. It stores a series of folders each containing the file dwintl.dll. Each of these subfolders represent a different language, with the folder 1033 containing the English version. This DLL is involved in error reporting features. Also in the root of this folder is an application called dw15.exe.
/SHADERS - This is a directory found in Halo PC. It stores two .bin files titled fx.bin and vsh.bin. They are involved in the rendering of shaders. (shocking, I know)
/CONTENT - This is a directory found in Halo PC. It stores a number of .PNG files in a subfolder called GALLERY, as well as a variety of .ksml files.
/CONTROLS - This is a directory found in Halo PC. It contains .DLL and .INI files relating to Keystone, which is a "UI and content tool for games". No information could be found relating to this online.
Halo Custom Edition#
/blitzkrieg - This is a directory found in Halo Custom Edition. It stores the 3DS MAX 5 plugin (.dle) used to export models and geometry for Halo.
/data - This is a directory found in Halo Custom Edition. It stores textures and other data from most of the game levels. (this may actually be me doing things and forgetting, so don't quote me on this xd)
/directx - This is a directory found in Halo Custom Edition. It stores a single file: DSETUP.DLL. It is described as the "Direct driver preloader" in the DLL's version manifest.
/HEK_Tutorial - This is a directory found in Halo Custom Edition. It stores the HTML formatted help guides for the Halo Editing Kit. This guide was significantly overhauled and reworked into the groundwork for the Blamite HEK help guides, found at the HEK_Tutorial repository.
/redist - This is a directory found in Halo Custom Edition. It stores any redistributables needed to run the game. Halo Custom Edition includes the DirectX 9.0 Web Setup, Installer for the Windows Installer (..?) (x2 as one is for Windows 95/ME, the other for NT4 and 2000), the MSXML 4.0 SP2 Parser and SDK setup, and the Win32 Cabinet Self-Extractor
/setup - This is a directory found in Halo Custom Edition. It stores favicons for Bungie, GameSpy, and Halo.
/tags - This is a directory found in Halo Custom Edition. It stores all tag data from the game.
Halo 5: Guardians#
Halo 5 makes a large amount of adjustments to Halo's engine, including the way content is organized.
/__cms__ - This directory contains two folders, rtx and managed, which then break off into levels and variants. levels contains ui and multi. Each of these folders contains a folder for each multiplayer and UI level respectively, and within each of those folders is a .mapinfo file. The variants folder contains another levels folder, which also contains a multi and ui folder. Within these folders are folders for any map with built-in variants, and inside those folders are the built-in map variants stored in .mvar format. Confused? Understandable. To help visualize it, Halo 5 Forge has a single map variant for the tutorial, located in: /__cms__/rtx/variants/levels/multi/fo01_terrain_alpine/forge_tutorial.mvar.
/AppxMetadata - This directory can be seen in most Windows Store apps. It contains a single file: CodeIntegrity.cat, which is a Security Catalog.
/bink - The same function as the other iterations of the Blam engine, the only difference is that instead of .bik, or Bink 1 format, it uses .bk2, or Bink 2 format.
/datamine - This directory contains a single folder: CellEventsSchema. Inside that folder are two directories: Cpp and CustomBond. Within these are a number of .BOND files, which appear to contain C++ code. Many of these files refer to other .BOND files, including OsirisIncludes.bond, and also to the namespace Microsoft.Halo.Telemetry.
/deploy - This directory contains most of the same kind of tag data as is seen in the previous iterations of the engine. Unlike previous games, however, this data is stored in .module files. While the file format is noticeably different, they serve the same basic function as .map files.
/maps - This directory only contains a single folder: fonts. Inside this folder are much of the same standard fonts found in the game.
/sound - This directory contains a folder for the specific platform. Within that folder is a subfolder for various languages. In each of those folders is a multitude of .pck files, all containing game sound. This appears to be a continuation of the sound system found in Halo 4.
/uwp - This directory is another standard Windows Store directory. It stores various images and icons for the splash screen and app icon.