Make maps, mods, units and tools for Total Annihilation

The file format referenceevery format the two games ship, from archives to unit scriptsThe whole catalogue ›

Each page pairs a format's on-disk layout with the kbot command that shows it in your own install: what the file is, its header and payload byte by byte, the order to read it in, a real Cavedog file taken apart, and the gotchas.

Container & wrapper formats

HPI / UFO / CCX / GP3

Encrypted, compressed archive — the wrapper for everything else

.hpi .ufo .ccx .gp3

Graphics & media

GAF

Indexed-colour sprite animations (cursors, explosions, unit gadgets, features)

.gaf .taf

TAF / TSF

TA: Kingdoms truecolor (16-bit ARGB) animations — spell effects, explosions, menu backgrounds — plus their editable text form

.taf .tsf

PCX

ZSoft Paintbrush bitmap — unit portraits, GUI panels, and TA:K palette carriers

.pcx

PAL / ALP / LHT / SHD

256-entry colour palette (1,024 bytes) and colour lookup tables: .alp 256×256 (65,536 bytes), .shd / .lht 32×256 (8,192 bytes)

.pal .alp .lht .shd

FNT

1-bit-per-pixel variable-width bitmap font

.fnt

Smacker / ZRB

Cutscene video (RAD Game Tools Smacker, renamed .zrb)

.smk .zrb

Bink

TA: Kingdoms cutscene video (RAD Bink 1) — Smacker's successor

.bik

WAV / Sound

Plain WAV plus the three-layer sound-bank wiring

.wav

Maps & terrain

SCT

Reusable map sections stitched together to build .tnt maps

.sct

TNT

A complete playable map (tile grid + heightmap + minimap + feature list)

.tnt

TA:K maps

TA: Kingdoms map pipeline — texture-mapped terrain + minimap render, and the .crt scenario sidecar (placed units, rules, triggers)

.tnt .ota .crt .kmp

Units, scripts, configs

3DO

Hierarchical 3D unit/feature mesh with palette-indexed faces

.3do

COB / BOS

Stack-based animation/scripting bytecode that drives every unit

.cob .bos

TDF / FBI / OTA

INI-style configuration trees — unit stats, weapons, map metadata. Includes full FBI field dictionary.

.tdf .fbi .ota

Gamedata TDFs

Movement classes, side data, sound bindings, weapon reference

gamedata/*.tdf

AI profiles

Plain-text per-difficulty AI weights and unit limits (TAK profiles are plan-less; see TAK note)

ai/*.txt

TA: Kingdoms GUI

TA:K GUI

Whitespace-delimited widget tree for TA: Kingdoms menus

.gui

Tutorials & reference

Quickstart

Five commands to try first.

Modding a unit

End-to-end tutorial: extract → edit → repack → test (TA).

Pitfalls

Single-page cheat-sheet of every gotcha across the format docs.

TA vs TA:K formats

Single-page matrix of what's shared, similar, or game-exclusive.

Glossary

Common terms (piece, axis, sealevel, signal mask, …).

The kbot toolkitone command line for every formatkbot on GitHub ›

kbot opens HPI, UFO, CCX and GP3 archives, renders maps, sections, sprites, palettes and fonts, decompiles and lints COB scripts, parses TDF and FBI files, and mounts a whole install as one folder you can browse. Every command in the format reference runs as written once a context is set.

Install it with Go, then register your game folder:

go install github.com/coreprime/kbot/cmd/kbot@latest
kbot ctx add ~/games/totala --alias ta --game totala

Modding Open Annihilationthe packaging guide on mods.coreprime.netThe packaging guide ›

Open Annihilation plays the maps and mods you make. A map pack is one .oamap file, a mod one .oamod, a mutator one .oamut and a computer player one .oabrain: a zip with a manifest at the top, checked and installed by the game. The packaging guide covers each, chapter by chapter.