Development:The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past/Metadata

This is a sub-page of Development:The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

File Types

• CGX files are tileset files that contain the basic graphical building blocks of areas, or they can contain the building blocks of sprite graphics. Some were used for mock up or drawing purposes occasionally as well.
• COL files are palette files and it's necessary to find the correct or a near-correct COL file for a CGX to have its intended or near-intended colors. With sprite CGX files, this can be more difficult to find as opposed to environment CGX files.
• SCR files are screen files that show environments of the game world or, in other cases, mock ups with existing tiles. Because they do not store graphics themselves but the position of where tile data from a CGX should go, they require a CGX and a COL file to be viewable. The correct or near-correct CGX and COL must be used however, or else the SCR will contain errored graphics. There are many cases where in the data it appears the exact correct CGX or COL is no longer present and so a less than ideal substitute can be used to at least give some idea of what the area looked like.
• PNL files or "Panel" files take an intended CGX and COL and make a wide array of formations from them. Not all of these display entirely correctly with even the internal tool SCAD. More research into the format's structure is needed.
• MAP files are a less prevalent format used for a similar purpose as SCR files (to display an environment), but use a CGX, a COL and a PNL file to display. Because they depend on three other files, they are typically harder to get working than SCR files, which only depend on a CGX and a COL file. Like PNL files, many MAP files do not display entirely correctly with even SCAD. For some, reconstruction of the PNL file using interpretation of how it should be organized can make MAP files display in a way that looks correct. More research into the format's structure is needed.

Tools

• S-CG-CAD is presumably, given the stamps found in plain text within most assets, a piece of software used by the developers to create the graphics assets for SNES games of the era of A Link to the Past. It is likely the program (or has relation to the program) that was found in the srd folder in the NEWS_11 workstation.

• SCAD is a similar software to S-CG-CAD, perhaps even a branch, that is able to run on Windows. It has legacy support for the graphical file formats found in the developer workspace data (for example CGX, COL, SCR, PNL, MAP) and can convert them to its own formats (SCH, SCL, SSC, SPL, SMP respectively). It can also edit them once they are in its own formats. It is the main tool that can for the most part correctly read tile and palette data from the files in the developer workspaces. It can even tell what palettes that tiles within CGX file should use, although the right CGX and COL files must still be loaded for it to be able to display this. There are a few rare edge cases where it will look incorrect even with seemingly the correct CGX and COL files loaded.

• CGXViewer is software made specifically for efficiently looking through files with file types associated with the development data of A Link to the Past and other games of the era. It is useful for looking for files compatible with each other because it can load many files and switch between them quickly. It has some instances where it may misinterpret SCR data or output a result that appears to be incorrect compared to the SCAD output of the same files, so caution is advised. It is still a very valuable tool because it is more efficient at browsing large amounts of data than SCAD, but discoveries should then be verified in SCAD for veracity. One of its biggest drawbacks compared to SCAD is its inability to apply the correct palette to the correct graphical asset in the CGX files being viewed. It lists all colors within the palette, but it is up to the viewer to select which lines they want to use and can lead to inaccurate impression of graphical assets.

Structure

To make it easier for individuals to browse the content in the development data, here is a guide to how it is structured and generally what each area contains:

\NEWS\テープリストア\NEWS_04\.\home\arimoto\ [Main workspace directory of Arimoto]

- \Delda\ [A portmanteau of "Deleted Zelda", mostly old revisions of graphics assets and abandoned concepts]

- \imamura\ [A small cache of graphics related to one of the other designers, containing prototype Trinexx, title screen and other miscellaneous graphics]

- \osr-st\ [Environment (SCR) files only; earliest 1990 overworld]

- \osr-tst\ [Environment (SCR) files only; early Hyrule Castle, sewers and some dungeon-like environments]

- \osr-ts2\ [Environment (SCR) files only; some modifications and evolutions on osr-tst environments]

- \tanabe\ [Assets related to one of the designers; many of the closer-to-final overworld screens are found here, as well as some light and Dark World graphics]

- \tomita\ [Miscellaneous graphics related to one of the other designers, some of them being items, HUD, spells, player graphics and enemy graphics]

- \yamada\ [Assets related to one of the designers; mostly SCR, MAP, PNL files with a couple of graphics files]

- \zelda\ [Large cache of various prototype assets, some closer to final]

\NEWS\テープリストア\NEWS_05\.\home\watanabe\ [Main workspace directory of Watanabe]

- \WATANABE\ [A few graphics, SCR and obj files, only some related to A Link to the Past]

- \zelda\ [A moderate cache of prototype assets, some are graphical files related to enemies, spells, ending graphics, and some Dark World graphics files]

\SFC\ソースデータ\ゼルダの伝説神々のトライフォース\ [Directory with various versions of the source from different regions; some uncompressed graphics within]

- \日本_Ver3\ [Japanese SFC version 3 source, quite a lot of dummied out content, most potential for early development discoveries]

- \NES_Ver2\ [US SNES version 2 source, some dummied out text discovered]

- \フランス_NES\ [Most likely French Canadian source (French possibly included for Quebec given the NES rather than PAL folder name)]

- \ドイツ_PAL\ [German PAL version source]

- \フランス_PAL\ [French PAL version source]

- \英語_PAL\ [English PAL version source]

Terms Found in the Development Data and Their Meaning

Many words used in the filenames in development data are basic Japanese, some are English, some are unknown, while others are a kind of shorthand. Sometimes a letter or two is removed from the typical way the word would be spelled.

Term	Meaning
Dan	Short for "dungeon", sometimes lengthened to "danjon".
Osiro/oshiro/shiro	Castle, usually referring to Hyrule Castle.
Chika/tika	Underground/sewer. Often refers to areas below Hyrule Castle and areas encountered during the escape from the castle in the sewers.
Hokora	Shrine, often associated with Great Swamp assets.
To/tou	Tower.
Sabaku	Desert.
Sinden/shinden	Temple, usually in reference to the Eastern Palace, but occasionally other areas.
Dokutu/dokutsu	Cave.
Mizu	Water.
Mori	Forest.
Machi	Town.
Kyokai	Church, usually in reference to the Sanctuary.
Sisai/shisai	Priest, usually Agahnim-related tiles; Agahnim is known as a priest in the Japanese script.
Numa	Short for numachi; swamp.
Kame	Turtle, usually in reference to Turtle Rock. Kame-iwa files are almost always related to Turtle Rock.
Koori/kori	Ice, many times in reference to the Ice Palace or enemies within.
Yama	Mountain, usually related to Light World Death Mountain, also known as Mount Hebra in the Japanese version.
Omote	"Front facing", shorthand in source for Light World dungeons, i.e. omote shinden, omote sabaku, omote yama tower.
U- (prefix)	Short for "ura", or "another", this usually refers to Dark World assets. The term "ura" in the source is synonymous with the Dark World to the point where it prefixes Dark World dungeons frequently, such as "ura shinden danjon" for the Palace of Darkness and "ura koori danjon" for the Ice Palace.
Village	Associated with the Village of Outcasts / Thieves' Town in the Dark World.
Ma	魔 can be short for mahou, magic, as well as other nefarious terms like demon/devil/harmful/evil/etc., associated with Dark World assets.
Kajiya	Blacksmith.
Minka	Residence/house.
Ya	Shop.
Moji	Text, letters.
Mon	Gate.
Taiboku	Large tree, in reference to the huge tree from the 1990-era material.
Hone	Bone, in reference to the giant creature skull from the 1990-era material.
Isigumi (ishigumi)	Stonework.
Soto	Outside, typically overworld graphics/tiles.
Yuka	Floor.
Kabe	Wall.
Toge	Thorn.
NES	NA version.
Nippon	JP version.
Osr	Its exact meaning is unclear, but in general it usually appears on earlier assets. It may be short for oshiro because the castle was the major focus of many early assets but -- make no mistake -- many files with the name osr in them have little or nothing to do with the castle, or have other places' graphics like Eastern Palace or the Sanctuary featuring prominently. It could also specifically have been a developer indicator of assets created in early times and thus for the "original scenario" (OSr) of the game, but this is only a hypothesis and far from certain.

Last Modified Dates

Regarding a phenomenon observed in the file last modified dates in Arimoto's A Link to the Past data: while many assets have unique last modified dates associated with them, some seem to have a specific file date that may have been appended through the use of a backup tool or other software at a later date. Such files have been observed to have modified dates around [05/22/1991] and [05/23/1991] with timestamps that can vary within 24 hours most likely relative to the time zone of the computer reading it. No assets in Arimoto's workspace have modified dates earlier than these, likely indicating an import of data from another workstation or backup. This makes the file dates on those files relatively poor for getting a perspective on a development timeline of assets.

However, in the metadata of various files, one can find an S-CG-CAD version signature "metastamp" that could provide a sense of the timeline in a different manner. That metastamp can be found by opening the file in a text editor like Notepad++. An example of the format it appears in is 'NAK1989 S-CG-CADVer1.21 900611'. It is either indicative of the version of S-CG-CAD the file was created with or, more likely based on the observation of iterative files, the version of S-CG-CAD the file was last modified by. When the last modified dates are [05/22/1991] or [05/23/1991], it will be used to provide a rough ball-park figure that is closer to accurate regarding when the file was last being worked on than those specific inaccurate last modified dates which only seem to indicate the file was not modified after that date.

Watanabe's workspace data was on a different workstation and is unaffected by this phenomenon, so his workspace's last modified dates appear accurate.

The last modified dates of data within the source directory are all set to a date in May of the year 2016 and likely reflect the date that the source data was imported from a backup.

Source File Dates

Most files in the source directories within \SFC\ソースデータ\ゼルダの伝説神々のトライフォース\ will have unhelpful last modified dates from 2016 -- which is presumably when this data was recovered.

However, within the files themselves there are still methods of dating events related to specific parts of said files. Multiple dating systems are used in the source files to date when lines of code were commented out, when files were started, and potentially for other purposes.

In some cases these dates may be hard to decipher at first glance to westerners; however, as not all follow traditional western dating methods. When seeing a date like this for example: 03.06.18, one is seeing the Heisei Japanese imperial calendar. For A Link to the Past, one only needs to deal with three values in the first position: 01 = 1989, 02 = 1990, 03 = 1991. This should make the date format eminently clearer. The following numbers after the year are months and days, making YY.MM.DD the format used.

(Source: GlitterBerri (Information about Heisei calendar use in the source files))