Common Data Types (Burnout Paradise)

Some of the more commonly seen data types in Burnout Paradise.

= CgsSet/CgsArray = A, or  , and  , or  , is a contiguous series of elements of a specified data type, followed by the number of elements in use. If the elements are 64 bits long, the element count will usually (but not always) be succeeded by 4 bytes of padding; otherwise, it will have no padding.

Though technically separate,  and   have the same structure.

As an example, the below is the structure of.

= CgsBitArray/CgsFastBitArray = A, or  , and  , or  , is a contiguous array of bits. Unlike an, the element count is not part of the structure, making it hardcoded.

Note that a  is stored as a series of. This can be confusing if the data is in little endian byte order. Due to this, every  has a length which is a multiple of 8 bytes.

The below is the structure of. Notice how even though the bits only take up 0x19 bytes, 0x20 bytes are allocated.

= CgsID = A  is a typedef of   which is heavily used across the game. Its original intent appears to be as a new moniker for GtID, Criterion's in-house compressed string type, and it sees extensive use in this role. However, at times, it is also used to store the IDs colloquially referred to as GameDB IDs. Conversely, GameDB IDs are not always stored as a, commonly being a normal   or   instead.

= Vectors = Vectors in Burnout Paradise are structures made up of floats. They are primarily used for positional values but have been used in other cases, such as colors and gear ratios. Though a number of types besides floats are technically supported, they are seemingly never used.

The below structures represent the data held, but many vectors use the  type, causing them to be 0x10 long regardless of their structure.

Vector3Plus/Vector4
= Matrices = Matrices are structures made up of vectors. They see similar use to vectors but are three-dimensional rather than planar.

Matrix44AffinePacked
= Hashes = Burnout Paradise uses several different forms of hash. This section is meant to give a brief synopsis of them; their parent pages contain more information and context.

This list is incomplete and will be added to as time goes on.

CgsResourceID
A  is a 64-bit field storing a CRC32 hash of a given Bundle resource name. The 4 bytes preceding the hash are unused in Bundle 2 V2 and older, though later versions add fields which make extensive use of them.

HashInt
is a typedef of. It is used in AttribSysVault resources to refer to GameDB IDs which have been lookup8 encoded. This type has several aliases, including,  ,  ,  , and.

CgsSound::Playback::Name
This type is used in Registry resources and anything accessing streams through a Registry resource. It is a custom hash which was either developed in-house or at EA. Though it has its own type, it may be stored as a standard.

LanguageResourceHash
A, though not explicitly defined as a type, is a bit inverted CRC32 hash (i.e., CRC32 with an output XOR of 0 instead of 0xFFFFFFFF) of the name of an entry in a Language resource. This name can usually be determined via the game's executable.