BREFF and BREFT appears always as pair and always in a subdirectory of ./effect/. BREFF contains the control information and BREFT the graphic and texture data. A track can have up to 8 different effects, adding more will cause the game to crash.

File Format

File Header

The file begins with the header of 0x10 bytes. The structure is the same as for BRRES files:

Offset	Size	Type	Description
0x00	0x04	String	File identifier: String "REFF" for BREFF or "REFT" for BREFT in ASCII.
0x04	0x02	UInt16	Byte order mark (BOM): The value is always 0xFEFF. If value 0xFFFE is read, then the false endian is used. Mario Kart Wii uses nearly always big endian (bytes 0xFE,0xFF).
0x06	0x02	UInt16	Version number of file format. Value 9 for all files in MKW.
0x08	0x04	UInt32	Length of the file in bytes.
0x0C	0x02	UInt16	Offset to root section relative to start (usually 0x10).
0x0E	0x02	UInt16	Number of sections. 1 for all files in MKW.
0x10	End of file header

Section Header

All Mario Kart Wii files have only one section. Therefore it is nor clear how multiple sections are combined.

Offset	Size	Type	Description
0x00	0x04	String	File identifier: String REFF for BREFF or REFT for BREFT in ASCII.
0x04	0x04	UInt32	Length of section in bytes. The magic and this value are not included.
0x08	0x04	UInt32	O = Offset of subfile list header. The offset is relative to this value.
0x0C	0x04	UInt32	Unknown. Value 0 for all files in MKW.
0x10	0x04	UInt32	Unknown. Value 0 for all files in MKW.
0x14	0x02	UInt16	L = Length of name including the terminating NULL byte.
0x16	0x02	UInt16	Unknown. Value 0 for all files in MKW.
0x18	L	String	ASCII name of object, terminated with a NULL byte.
0x18 + L	O - L - 0x10	Byte[]	Padding, mostly NULL bytes.
0x08 + O	End of section header

Subfile List

Offset	Size	Type	Description
0x00	0x04	UInt32	Size of subfile list and all subfile items.
0x04	0x02	UInt16	Number of subfiles (= number of subfile headers).
0x06	0x02	UInt16	Unknown.
0x08	Start of first subfile item

Subfile Item

The list of subfile items begins direct behind the subfile list (see above). The length of a record depends on the name length and is not aligned. If accessing one of the numeric values (namelength, offset or size), it is important to read and write byte by byte, because some CPUs do not support accessing UInt16/UInt32 values on not aligned addresses.

Offset	Size	Type	Description
0x00	0x02	UInt16	L = Length of name including the terminating NULL byte.
0x02	L	String	ASCII name of object, terminated with a NULL byte.
0x02 + L	0x04	UInt32	Offset of data, relative to the beginning of the subfile list.
0x06 + L	0x04	UInt32	Size of data in bytes. Add 0x20 for BREFT files.
0x0A + L	Start of next subfile item or END OF LIST (not aligned)

Content

The Subfile Item List points to the specific data for BREFF or BREFT. Continue reading BREFF (File Format) or BREFT (File Format).

Example Listings

The first example listing shows the content of the steam object of Toad's Factory:

* Files of BREFF:rk_steam.breff

 idx     offset/hex  size/hex size/dec magic vers file or directory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  0:       0..     10      10       16  REFF   -  header.bin
  1:      10..     34      24       36  REFF   -  root.bin
  2:      34..     ac      78      120  ...x   -  file-list.bin
  3:       0<       -       0>       -  -      -  files/
  4:      ac..    3ec     340      832  ....   -  files/rk_steam
  5:     3ec..    784     398      920  ....   -  files/rk_steamBAK
  6:     784..    ac4     340      832  ....   -  files/rk_steam0
  7:     ac4..    e64     3a0      928  ....   -  files/rk_steam_Copy_1
  8:     e64..   11a4     340      832  ....   -  files/rk_steam0_Copy

* Files of BREFT:rk_steam.breft

 idx     offset/hex  size/hex size/dec magic vers file or directory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  0:       0..     10      10       16  REFT   -  header.bin
  1:      10..     60      50       80  REFT   -  root.bin
  2:      60..     a0      40       64  ...@   -  file-list.bin
  3:       0<       -       0>       -  -      -  files/
  4:      a0..    8c0     820     2080  ....   -  files/rk_smoke2
  5:     8c0..   10e0     820     2080  ....   -  files/rk_steam

The second example listing shows the content of the flame pole object of different Bowser Castle tracks:

* Files of BREFF:rk_flamePole.breff

 idx     offset/hex  size/hex size/dec magic vers file or directory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  0:       0..     10      10       16  REFF   -  header.bin
  1:      10..     38      28       40  REFF   -  root.bin
  2:      38..     dc      a4      164  ....   -  file-list.bin
  3:       0<       -       0>       -  -      -  files/
  4:      dc..    920     844     2116  ....   -  files/rk_flamePole
  5:     920..   1058     738     1848  ....   -  files/rk_flamePole0
  6:    1058..   16b8     660     1632  ....   -  files/rk_flamePoleS
  7:    16b8..   1d20     668     1640  ....   -  files/rk_flamePoleFoot
  8:    1d20..   223c     51c     1308  ....   -  files/rk_flamePoleFoot0
  9:    223c..   2758     51c     1308  ....   -  files/rk_flamePoleFootS

* Files of BREFT:rk_flamePole.breft

 idx     offset/hex  size/hex size/dec magic vers file or directory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  0:       0..     10      10       16  REFT   -  header.bin
  1:      10..     60      50       80  REFT   -  root.bin
  2:      60..     a0      40       64  ...@   -  file-list.bin
  3:       0<       -       0>       -  -      -  files/
  4:      a0..   10c0    1020     4128  ....   -  files/yoganTest
  5:    10c0..   30e0    2020     8224  ....   -  files/yogan4

BREFF and BREFT (File Format)

Contents