File formats

Every extension in a vanilla build-25034 install, with counts from a survey across all 19 .vl2 archives.

Counts

Plus generated files not shipped: .dso (compiled script) and .ml (per-mission lightmaps).

The ones you will author or edit

.cs — TorqueScript source

Plain text. Compiled to .cs.dso on first load; the compiled form is preferred afterwards [binary]. See TorqueScript.

.dso — compiled script

The bytecode form. Generated by the engine, or in bulk by compile(fileName) / the -prepbuild launch mode [script].

Stale .dso files shadowing edited .cs files is the single most common modding problem. Sierra’s own launchers delete them all before every run [script]. See Packaging.

For the format itself — header, string/float tables, and the full opcode set — see TorqueScript — V12 Compiler. For reading a .dso back to .cs, including a byte-level worked example and a client-side decompiler tool, see TorqueScript — V12 Decompiler.

.gui — GUI definition

TorqueScript, executed like any script. A nested chain of new statements. Written by the in-game GUI editor, which stamps //--- OBJECT WRITE BEGIN --- at the top. See GUI system.

.mis — mission

TorqueScript, executed by loadMissionStage2. One nested new SimGroup(MissionGroup) declaration plus a block of metadata comments that the engine parses as data — // MissionTypes = , // DisplayName = , and the quote and string blocks. See Missions.

.vl2 — archive

A standard PKZIP archive with a renamed extension. Magic bytes at offset 0 are 50 4B 03 04 [binary]. “VL2” is Dynamix branding for “Volume v2”.

Any zip tool reads and writes them. Paths inside use forward slashes and are relative to the mod directory. See Packaging.

The 19 archives in base/:

audio.vl2        base.vl2          badlands.vl2      Classic_maps_v1.vl2
desert.vl2       ice.vl2           interiors.vl2     lava.vl2
lush.vl2         missions.vl2      scripts.vl2       shapes.vl2
skins.vl2        textures.vl2      voice.vl2
TR2final093-extras.vl2   TR2final105-client.vl2   TR2final105-server.vl2
zz_Classic_client_v1.vl2

The zz_ prefix on the last is a load-order trick — see Mod paths and overrides.

Art formats

.dts — Dynamix Three Space shape

The model format: geometry, materials, nodes (mount points), detail levels, and optionally embedded sequences. Period tooling was a 3ds Max exporter. Modern viewers exist; authoring is difficult.

Most mods reuse shipped shapes. shapeFile = "weapon_disc.dts" on your own datablock costs nothing and works everywhere.

.dsq — Dynamix Sequence

Animation data, kept separate from the shape so one skeleton can share many animations. Bound to a shape by a TSShapeConstructor datablock:

sequence0 = "light_male_root.dsq root";

See Armors.

.dif — Dynamix Interior Format

Building interiors — the constructed geometry inside bases. Placed by InteriorInstance objects in a .mis. The engine can view one directly:

Tribes2.exe MyBuilding.dif

which sets $LaunchMode = "InteriorView" [script].

.ter — terrain

The heightfield, referenced by TerrainBlock.terrainFile in a .mis. Authored in the in-game terrain editor.

.dml — DyMaterial List

A list of textures forming a material set, used by terrain and by animated surfaces.

.ifl — Image List

A frame sequence for animated textures — a text file listing image names and durations.

.png / .jpg / .bmp / .bm8

Ordinary images, except .bm8 — an 8-bit paletted Tribes 2 format used to supply a low-memory texture set for period hardware. There are 2477 of them, roughly paralleling the .png set. Replacing a texture usually means replacing both.

.gft — GUI font

Bitmap font format. console_start.cs references fonts by name (fontType = "Univers Condensed"), which resolve to .gft files.

Data formats

.nav — navigation graph

The AI’s map of where it can go. Generated, not authored:

Tribes2.exe -navBuild <MissionName> <MissionType>

A map without one has no bot support — buildMissionList tests for the file’s existence [script]. See AI and bots.

.spn — spawn graph

The spawn graph for spawn spheres, generated by:

Tribes2.exe -spnBuild <MissionName> <MissionType>

Placing spawn spheres in the editor is not sufficient — the graph is a separate build step, and a map without one has spheres that silently do nothing [bones]. See 15 · Lighting, navigation & spawn data.

.ml — lightmap

Per-mission precomputed lighting, written as lighting/<mission>_<crc>.ml [binary]. The CRC is the mission file’s — which is why editing a .mis invalidates cached lighting. Regenerate with:

Tribes2.exe -light <MissionName>

.hfl — help file

Markup documents for the mission editor’s in-game help, using <font:> and <a:> tags. Eight ship in scripts.vl2’s help/ directory. Same markup family as GuiMLTextCtrl — see GUI system.

.ifr — Immersion Force-feedback Resource

Force-feedback effect data for Immersion TouchSense hardware, referenced by EffectProfile.effectname. Eight ship in base.vl2’s effects/. You do not need to author these — an AudioProfile with no effect field works fine. See Audio.

.jrn — journal

Recorded input event streams from -jsave, replayable with -jload / -jplay. See Debugging.

Where each type lives

The category directory is part of the lookup path — a datablock saying shapeFile = "foo.dts" resolves to <modpath>/shapes/foo.dts:

See Mod paths and overrides.

Under the community patches

Every vanilla format above is still read. Two additions and one deprecation.

.sdft — the replacement font format

The QoL patch ships six fonts in t2csri.vl2/fonts/ in Torque’s modern .sdft format, replacing the vanilla .gft bitmap fonts:

Sui Generis.sdft
Univers.sdft
Univers Bold.sdft
Univers Condensed.sdft
Univers Condensed Bold.sdft
Univers italic.sdft

Every vanilla font name is rerouted to them through $Font::Substitute [patch-script], so .gft files remain on disk and are simply no longer reached for those names.

You do not author these. If you ship a .gui, it asks for a font by name and gets whatever the substitution table maps it to. See GUI system.

RC2a keeps the vanilla .gft fonts.

.rb — Ruby, RC2a only

t2csri/crypto.rb and t2csri/certstore.rb are Ruby 1.9 source, read by rubyExec() and evaluated in the embedded interpreter [patch-script]. Both are GPL-3-or-later. Removed entirely in the QoL rewrite.

Not a game format — the engine never sees them; a TorqueScript FileObject reads them as text and hands the contents to rubyEval.

.ifr — inert on the QoL patch

Immersion force-feedback resources still ship in base.vl2’s effects/ and EffectProfile datablocks still reference them, but TribesNEXT’s IFC22.dll stubs the Immersion exports [binary], so nothing plays. RC2a keeps the vendor DLL, so they still work there.

.vl2 — unchanged

Both patch archives are ordinary PKZIP. The QoL archive mixes methods — Deflate for .cs, Stored for .cs.dso and fonts [binary] — confirming that compression choice is free. Vanilla archives are all Stored.

.ini — the support pack’s config

Not an engine format. The community support pack writes prefs/autoload.ini (load order and per-script enable/disable, ; for comments) and prefs/autoload.log [support-script]. Both are plain text parsed by TorqueScript with FileObject, not by the engine.

The pack’s // #directive = value script headers are the same idea — metadata carried in comments the compiler ignores, parsed by script. Vanilla uses the technique for // MissionTypes = and // DisplayName = [script]; see The autoload system.

Related

• Packaging — building .vl2 and handling .dso
• Install anatomy — where the archives sit
• Missions — .mis and its companions
• 07 · Community Patches — the patch archives