A mapfile is a generic format able to describe a binary resource. Known and unknown items (parts of the original resource) are identified by their positions and types. Such description can be used to understand the way DM is coded and by external tools to extract/import/export/edit/etc. these items directly in/from the resources. Tools can use a hard-coded description but modifications are not easy and knowledge sharing will be difficult (do you know C/C++/Java/VB/etc. ?) if not impossible (if no source available). With a mapfile, different tools with different goals can use the same up-to-date resource description to work. Updating a resource description based on new discovered items is very easy and there is no need to compile again all the tools. Moreover, anybody can write a mapfile for his favourite game(s) without doing some coding! Currently, all the known mapfiles are devoted to the game Dungeon Master and its sequels, except a sample new mapfile to show extraction on a console game: R-Type III for the GBA. The first mapfile was produced by Christophe Fontanel in February 2003 for his own extractor. His work have been extended to support more DM resources/items on more architectures: it is a collaborative work between him and me. This specification describes the updated format to support the new items: these improvements are based on practical works and reflect resources architectures as simple and useful as possible for us. Any comments are welcome. Any modification (enhancements/fix/...) or request can be send here to help maintaining only one common specification for mapfiles. It will help keeping the work easier for tools and the DM knowledge shared by everyone.

Mapfiles are heavily used by sck to help describing DM files. It is the only way to be abble to extract items from them. So, a big part of the value of the sck is the internal mapfiles repository. All of these mapfiles can be viewed and modified in the sck.jar archive.

• Mapfile specification 2.5 from 28 Octobre 2008 (original 2.0 release: 01 December 2005)
• Mapfile specification 1.0 from 16 February 2003