Home For Developers The Generic File Format (GFF): Introduction

The Generic File Format (GFF): Introduction

Intended Audience:
By Sydney Tang

The Generic File Format (GFF) is an all-purpose generic format used to store data in BioWare games. It is designed to make it easy to add or remove fields and data structures while still maintaining backward and forward compatibility in reading old or new versions of a file format.

The backward and forward compatibility of GFF was important to the development of BioWare's games because file formats changed rapidly. For example, if a designer needed creatures in the game to have a new property to store their Last Name, it was easy to add that field to the creature file format. New versions of the game and tools would write out the new field, and old versions would just ignore it.

In Neverwinter Nights, a BioWare game, most of the non-plain-text data contained in a module is in GFF, although the compiled scripts are a notable exception.

The following file types within a module are all in GFF:

• Module info file (ifo)
• Area-related files: area file (are), game object instances and dynamic area properties (git), game instance comments (gic)
• Object Blueprints: creature (utc), door (utd), encounter (ute), item (uti), placeable (utp), sound (uts), store (utm), trigger (utt), waypoint (utw)
• Conversation files (dlg)
• Journal file (jrl)
• Faction file (fac)
• Palette file (itp)
• Plot Wizard files: plot instance/plot manager file (ptm), plot wizard blueprint (ptt)

The following files created by the game are also GFF:

• Character/Creature File (bic)

Contents:

• 2. File Format Conceptual Overview
• 3. File Format Physical Layout
• 4. Complex Field Data: Descriptions and Physical Format

You can also download this document in Adobe Acrobat PDF Format.

To see a tutorial on using the GFF Documentation to create a program, check out Don Moar's tutorial: A GFF to TXT File Conversion Program. For an example of an internal tool which accesses GFF files, check out BioWare's GFF Editor (Windows Only).

NOTICE: This documentation provides information about specific file formats used with the BioWare Aurora Engine. It is intended for the use of software developers to create third-party software to work with the BioWare Aurora Engine and the BioWare Aurora Toolset. While this documentation is provided as a service, we may or may not provide updates, fixes and additions to the information provided herein. We reserve the right to change file formats without updating the documentation. Please refer to the For Developers FAQ and the NWN End User License Agreement (EULA) for more information.

Go to Page (Index, 2, 3, 4 - Next Page)