SARC File Format #
.sarc files are similar to the ARC format with a slightly different structure.
File Format #
SARC Header #
| Offset | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0x00 | 0x04 | Magic Bytes “SARC” |
| 0x04 | 0x02 | Header Length |
| 0x06 | 0x02 | Byte-order marker (0xFEFF = big, 0xFFFE = little) |
| 0x08 | 0x04 | File Length |
| 0x0C | 0x04 | Data Offset (absolute) |
| 0x10 | 0x04 | Unknown (always 0x00000100) |
SFAT Header #
| Offset | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0x00 | 0x04 | Magic bytes “SFAT” |
| 0x04 | 0x02 | Header Length |
| 0x06 | 0x02 | Node Count |
| 0x08 | 0x04 | Filename Hash Multiplier (usually 0x65) |
SFAT Node #
| Offset | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0x00 | 0x04 | Name Hash |
| 0x04 | 0x04 | SFNT Filename Offset (relative to SFNT data section) |
| 0x08 | 0x04 | File Data Start (relative to SARC data start) |
| 0x0C | 0x04 | File Data End (relative to SARC data end) |
Node hashing function #
The node hash is calculated via:
Python:
def calc_hash(name, hash_multiplier):
result = 0
for c in name:
result = ord(c) + (result * hash_multiplier)
# ensure the result is a 32-bit value
result &= 0xFFFFFFFF
return result
C:
uint32_t calc_hash(char *name, int hash_multiplier) {
uint32_t result = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < strlen(name); i++) {
result = name[i] + (result * hash_multiplier)
}
return result;
}
SFNT Header #
| Offset | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0x00 | 0x04 | Magic bytes “SFNT” |
| 0x04 | 0x02 | Header Length |
| 0x06 | 0x02 | Unknown (padding?) |
SFNT Data #
SFNT data immediately follows the SFNT header and consists of NULL-terminated ASCII strings.
File Data #
File data begins after SFNT with 0x100 (256) byte alignment with all subsequent files aligned to 0x80 bytes.
File Sort Order #
Files are sorted by their hash in the SFAT table, games require this sorting as they use a binary search algorithm 🔗 1.
Tools #
🔗 2 - SARC Extractor/Creator with TAR-like command line flags. Can decompress a .zlib SARC file (4-byte size header + ZLIB data).