Level5 Signatures

Filetype: N/A
File Extensions: N/A
Signature: ARC0
Platform(s): Nintendo 3DS, Android, NX, PSP, PSVita, Windows?, iOS/iPadOS
Endianness: Little-endian
Used in: Yo-kai Watch 1, Yo-kai Watch 2, Yo-kai Watch Blasters, Yo-kai Watch 3, Yo-kai Watch Busters 2
Alignment: 2 Byte Alignment
String Encoding: ASCII

In Level5 file formats, you will often - but not always - encounter signatures. Signatures (sometimes called magics) are sequences of bytes used to identify the type of the file - similar to what a file extension is intended to accomplish. They are typically located at a fixed position within the file - usually the beginning, though there are exceptions. Level5’s signatures can generally be split into two types:

Normal Signatures

• These are usually (but not always!) placed at the start of the file.
  • A common exception to this is the t2b format (often found with the file extension .cfg.bin)
    • t2b file signatures are not padded and are located 0x0F bytes from the end of the file as opposed to the beginning.
• They are sometimes padded to two bytes using null bytes (00).
• Normal signatures are typically composed of ASCII-encoded characters, e.g., RDBN.

Platform Signatures

Platform signatures follow the format:

XXX
Y
ZZ

Where:

• XXX is the main signature (e.g., IMG, ANM, CHR etc).
• Y is the platform code.
  • Note that W and N share the same platform code - perhaps due to both of them having similarly-powerful hardware.
• ZZ is the version number in hexadecimal (00, 01, etc).

Supported Platforms

The platforms are checked in the following order:

Char	Platform Code	Platform
A	4	Android
C	1	Citrus (3DS)
I	5	iOS/iPadOS? (not observed yet)
N	6	NX (Nintendo Switch)
P	2	PSP
V	3	PS Vita
W	6	Windows? (same as NX)

Any other character will yield the Platform Code 0xFFFFFFFF and is treated as Invalid.

Implementation

Platform signatures are read and validated using the following functions in LXP_CODE_BIN:

uint64_t __thiscall LXP_CODE_BIN::GetPlatform(LXP_CODE_BIN *this);
int __thiscall LXP_CODE_BIN::GetVersion(LXP_CODE_BIN *this);
bool LXP_CODE_BIN::CheckFormat(const char* param) const;