Electronic Arts LIB Game Archive
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* [https://moddingwiki.shikadi.net/wiki/LIB_Format_(Electronic_Arts) LIB Format (Electronic Arts) at ModdingWiki] | * [https://moddingwiki.shikadi.net/wiki/LIB_Format_(Electronic_Arts) LIB Format (Electronic Arts) at ModdingWiki] | ||
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[[Category:Game data files]] | [[Category:Game data files]] | ||
Latest revision as of 00:48, 27 October 2025
Electronic Arts LIB Game Archive is an archiving format used in some video games, add-ons and toolings released by Electronic Arts during the 1990s.
Contents |
[edit] Identification
Archives begin with the ASCII string EALIB (hexadecimal 45 41 4c 49 42).
[edit] Format details
Byte order is little-endian. The count of file records in the archive follows the EALIB signature as a 2-byte integer. This count does not include the unnamed final record. Each record has a fixed length of 18 bytes.
[edit] File record
| Offset | Size | Description | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 13 bytes | File name (up to 8+3 characters, plus dot), null-terminated and padded | ||||||||||
| 13 | 1 byte | Compression method
| ||||||||||
| 14 | 4 bytes | Absolute offset of the file data inside the archive |
Records appear sorted by their offset fields in ascending order, so the size allocated to extract any file can be calculated from two consecutive records. A special record with an empty file name follows the last valid file. The offset field in this record should be the whole size of the archive.
When the compression method is 1 or 4, the uncompressed size immediately precedes the compressed stream as a 4-byte integer.
[edit] Software
- https://aluigi.altervista.org/bms/ealib.bms - Script for QuickBMS that extracts and decompresses, when possible, files from an EALIB archive
- https://www.watto.org/extract - Watto's Game Extractor supports EALIB archives (although extraction might be buggy)
[edit] Sample files
- DiscMaster search by format
- DiscMaster search by header - Previous search misses a few seemingly valid archives
- dexvert samples — archive/electronicArtsLibGameArchive
