YAZ0 (File Format)

Yaz0 is a run length encoding (RLE compression) method. In Mario Kart Wii most of the SZS files are Yaz0 compressed U8 files.

Header

The header of a Yaz0 file is always 16 bytes long. All numeric values stored as big endian values.

Offset	Type	Description
0x00	char[4]	always "Yaz0"
0x04	u32	size of the umompressed data
0x08	char[16]	always zero (padding)

GNU C example

typedef struct yaz0_header_t
{
    char	magic[4];		// always "Yaz0"
    be32_t	uncompressed_size;	// total size of uncompressed data
    char	padding[8];		// always 0?
}
__attribute__ ((packed)) yaz0_header_t;