Endianness
Most Dragon Nest files are Little Endian. Situations where this is not the case are noted.
Integral Types
Integral types are noted as [u]int[bits], where u indicates unsigned and [bits] indicates the width, in bits.
For example, a 4 byte signed integer would be written as int32 and an unsigned 1 byte integer would be written as uint8.
Arrays
Arrays of other types are indicated by appending [] to the type, optionally enclosing a count. For arrays that are simply empty padding, the type is omitted and implied to be an unnamed 1 byte wide type.
For instance, an array of 12 uint64 would be written uint64[12] and a 256 byte padding would be written [256].
Strings
The Strings used in DragonNest are all encoded using UTF-8. Strings are either fixed buffer null terminated or length prefixed null terminated. Null Terminated String is abbreviated NTSTR for convienence.
Fixed Buffer Null Terminated Strings (FBSTR)
FBSTRs are allocated a fixed size n and may take up from 0 to n bytes. The end of the string is marked by the NUL byte 0x00, or by the end of the buffer.
FBSTRs are notated using the array syntax with FBSTR, so a FBSTR with size 128 would be written FBSTR[128], and an array of 12 size 128 FBSTRs would be written FBSTR[128][12].
To read a FBSTR, allocate n bytes (or n + 1 for languages that require the NUL byte) and read in n bytes from the file. For languages that are not null-termination based, truncate the string at the first NUL byte. For languages that are, nothing else need be done, unless there is a need to compact the buffer.
Length Prefixed Null Terminated Strings (LPSTR)
LPSTRs have a uint32 length field len prefixed to the string itself. The length includes the NUL byte at the end, so the actual string length is len - 1.
LPSTRs are notated simply by LPSTR, with no array syntax (since the length is variable).
To read a LPSTR, read in a uint32 as len and allocate a buffer that is len bytes. Read in len bytes from file. For languages that are not null-termination based, truncate the last byte from the string. For languages that are, nothing else need be done.
Structures
Structures will be defined explicitly in each format and referred to using the listed tag.