I have just started to lok into game programming. Got a question. What tools do you need to open up a raw file that someone created so that you could check the files contents out? Which ones do you use?

Binary files for games are many times of a unique format and would require some sort of documentation to sort it out.

Once you know the format, you can write your own browser, although maybe there is a general browser somewhere that you can configure once you know the file's format - I don't know.

The only files I ever cracked open and worked with were the .wad files for DOOM 1 and 2, and I wrote my own browser for that.

If I want to check the actual binary contents of a file, I open it up in Microsoft Visual C++ as a binary file.


[edited by - Waverider on August 23, 2003 4:34:00 PM]

Hi Waverider :

Thanks for the information!

Raw files are the most basic of file formats, which is pretty good for beginners. RAW image files don''t contain any info about image width, height or bit depth, you just assume them. Just open it and load everything into an array, and off you go.