| BIG Documentation
Version 1.00.00
November 12, 2004

# BIG file attributes

Endian | Big
Data alignment | 4 byte
Maximum Size | 1 terabyte (40 bits) = 1099511627776 bytes

# Big File Header (VIV)

Every big file contains a 16 byte header which describes the entire file:

Field | Offset | Size | Description
type | 0 | 4 | 'BIG4' for 32 bit format (BIG2..BIG5). also 'BIGF'
len | 4 | 4 | length of file in bytes (chunk style header)
num | 8 | 4 | number of
files in big file
hlen | 12 | 4 | length of header including this header

Note:

len field will overflow on files larger than 4 GB

# Table of Contents

For each of the files contained in the big file, there exists a variable sized entry with 3 fields: offset, size and name.
The size of the offset and size fields are determined by the bigfile type. i.e., BIG3 has 3 byte entries. The size field is clamped to 4 bytes maximum.
The name is a null terminated ascii string, which may contain directory separators (forward slash is preferred)

Field | Offset | Size | Description
offset | +0 | n | offset to file relative to start of big file
size | + n | min(n,4) | size to file in bytes (not padded)
name | + n+min(n,4) | strlen(name+1) | name of file, including path.

# Debug Information

Following the table of contents are 2 optional debug fields

Field | Offset | Size | Description
version | 0 | 4 | ' L219' for Lumpy version 2.19
flags | 4 | 4 | flags used when bigfile was created: 1=pack,2=sort

# Big Types

There are several big 'type' for variable sized table of contents and legacy support.

Type
| Header size | Offset size | Filesize size | Maximum Bigfile size | Description
'BIG2' | 16 | 2 | 2 | 64 KB = 65536 bytes | 16 bit
'BIG3' | 16 | 3 | 3 | 16 MB = 16777216 bytes | 24 bit
'BIG4' | 16 | 4 | 4 | 4 GB = 4294967296 bytes | 32 bit. Note DVD is 4.7 GB
'BIG5' | 16 | 5 | 4 | 1 TB = 1099511627776 bytes | 40 bit. Note DVD9 is 9 GB
c0fb | 10 | 3 | 3 | 3 | legacy 24 bit format. 64K table of contents limit
'BIGF' | 16 | 4 | 4 | 4 | old 32 bit. Same as BIG4

Note: Greyed out types are supported but their use is discouraged.

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