Mah Jongg -V-G-A- tile set
This article describes the tile set graphics formats associated with Mah Jongg VGA (stylized as Mah Jongg -V-G-A-, and sometimes abbreviated MJVGA), a Mahjong solitaire game by Ron Balewski. (Note that there are several different accepted spellings of Mahjong.)
A tile set may consist of a single .TIS file (supported by v2.1+), or it may be broken down into many (usually 44) V*.TIL files and one PAL.CFG file.
Early versions of the game use extension .ICN for the TIL files. It is the same format.
TIS format is also supported by the game Mah Jongg for Windows (sometimes abbreviated MJ/Windows or MJWIN), by the same author.
Compare to Mah Jongg (Nels Anderson) tile set.
Identification
TIL files seem to always start with the same 6 bytes: a6 05 2b 00 3b 00. They are exactly 1448 bytes in size.
A TIS file consists of a 96-byte header, followed by a sequence of 44 embedded TIL files, followed by a variable-sized palette. So, bytes a6 05 2b 00 3b 00 appears at offset 96. Given the structure of the palette, the total file size should be from 63920 to 63968 bytes.
Software
Utilities often included with the software:
- The Draftsman, a tile set editor
- VIEWSET.EXE, a pattern set viewer
- UNPAKTIL.COM/PAKTIL.COM, utilities to convert from TIS to TIL and vice versa
Official software:
