Robot Animation

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Revision as of 20:07, 1 June 2016 by Multimedia Mike (talk | contribs) (versions and games)
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Robot files are animation files used in various Sierra computer games. It is a container format that encapsulates video and possibly audio.

Container Format

All multi-byte numbers are little-endian.

A Robot file begins with the following variable-length header.

bytes 0-5    signature and probably a version (16 00 53 4f 4c 00; bytes 2-4 are 'SOL')
bytes 6-7    version
bytes 8-9    audio chunk size
bytes 10-11  silence chunk size
bytes 12-13  unknown
bytes 14-15  frame count
bytes 16-17  palette data size
bytes 18-19  unknown chunk data size
bytes 20-24  unknown
byte 25      has sound
bytes 26-59  unknown
bytes 60..   unknown data chunk, size defined by bytes 18-19

After the header is a palette chunk. The size of the palette chunk is defined it bytes 16-17 of the header. The first 37 or 38 bytes have the following format:

bytes 0-24   unknown
byte 25      first palette index to replace
bytes 29-30  palette count
byte 32      palette format (0 = variable, 1 = constant)
bytes 33-[36,37]  unknown
byte [37,38]..  palette components

Video Format

Audio Format

Versions and Games

These are the known Robot format versions known to be associated with particular games and SCI engine revisions: