A modern, OpenIV-inspired, read-only asset explorer for Black & White 2 *.stuff archives.
BW2 Stuff Explorer is being built as a comfortable front end for understanding the game's packed assets: browse the archive, inspect known formats, follow evidence-backed relationships and export files without modifying the original STUFF archive.
Version 0.7 extends the structured inspection system to the retail creature formats CSK, CHA and CCS and adds creature-aware DDS relationships.
- Browse
Everything.stuffin an Explorer-style folder tree with navigation, search, sorting and grouping. - Export individual files, selections, folders or the complete archive with progress, cancellation and atomic writes.
- Classify all 13 format families found in the verified retail archive.
- Inspect factual DDS, BWM, TGA, BMP and BW2
.555metadata from earlier releases. - Inspect bounded CSK model/material data, ordered morphs and the five stored CSK sections through format-specific Details and Contents views.
- Inspect CHA full-detail Radeon hair/fur data, conservative reduced-detail Hybrid material data, morph/morality variants and compact ribbon summaries.
- Inspect CCS positions, body-part assignments, unit normals, connectivity counts and per-body-part bounds while leaving unresolved arrays explicitly unresolved.
- Follow creature-scoped texture-family relationships from CSK/CHA materials to real DDS family members without treating logical family strings as ordinary archive paths.
- Follow reverse DDS references back to BWM, CSK and CHA sources while preserving direct, family, missing and ambiguous evidence separately.
- Keep dense creature tables readable with compact default columns and optional additional details.
- Keep unsupported or unresolved data neutral instead of guessing.
- Keep the source archive strictly read-only.
The verified retail corpus contains 3,928 archive entries. The strict 0.7 regression covers 822 BWM entries, 10 CSK files, eight CHA files, nine CCS files, 106 TGA files, 19 BMP files and nine .555 files. The relationship gate validates 3,553 relationship rows, including 156 creature-family groups and one direct creature cubemap.
All 13 known Everything.stuff extensions are recognized and receive friendly classifications. Specialized structural inspection is currently deeper for the formats listed below.
| Format | Current 0.7 support |
|---|---|
| DDS | Header details, compression/mips, alpha capability and supported payload alpha analysis, BWM and creature relationship targets |
| BWM | v5/v6 metadata, static/skinned detection, complete material contents and direct image references |
| TGA | Dimensions, encoding/RLE, origin, pixel layout and TGA 2.0 storage details |
| BMP | DIB header, dimensions, row order, bit depth, compression and pixel offset |
.555 |
Verified 256 x 256 X1R5G5B5 sky-texture layout and raw header facts |
| CSK | Creature model/material summaries, ordered morphs, stored section structure and creature-family image references |
| CHA | Full-detail Radeon hair/fur summaries, conservative Hybrid material summaries, variants, structure and creature-family image references |
| CCS | Supporting geometry summaries, body-part assignments, connectivity counts and per-body-part bounds |
| BIK, CAM, EXC, ABN, DAN | Friendly classification with neutral fallback inspection; deeper providers are planned on the path to 1.0 |
Image and 3D preview are intentionally not part of 0.7. The next priority is to finish evidence-based providers for the remaining STUFF formats before the archive-wide usability and completion pass.
Download the latest Windows package from the GitHub Releases page.
Requirements:
- Windows 10 or Windows 11
- x64 .NET 8 Desktop Runtime
Extract the complete ZIP and start BW2StuffExplorer.exe. Keep the included .dll, .deps.json and .runtimeconfig.json files beside the executable.
The public Windows build is currently unsigned, so Microsoft Defender SmartScreen may identify it as an unknown publisher. Release SHA-256 hashes are published with each release for verification.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+O |
Open a STUFF archive |
Ctrl+F |
Focus the search field |
Ctrl+E |
Export selected file(s) |
Enter |
Open Properties for the focused file |
F5 |
Refresh the current view |
Esc |
Clear search or cancel an active export |
Requirements: Visual Studio 2022 or the .NET 8 SDK with the Windows Desktop workload.
dotnet build .\BW2StuffExplorer.sln -c Release
dotnet run --project .\tests\StuffCore.SelfTest\StuffCore.SelfTest.csproj -c ReleaseAn optional strict regression can be run against a user-owned retail archive:
dotnet run --project .\tests\StuffCore.SelfTest\StuffCore.SelfTest.csproj -c Release -- ".\Black & White 2\Data\Everything.stuff"StuffCore- archive parsing, validation, extraction, asset classification, bounded format readers, metadata providers and relationship analysis.StuffExplorer- WPF desktop interface.StuffCore.SelfTest- dependency-free synthetic tests plus the optional retail-corpus regression.
Research documentation separates confirmed binary facts, corpus-supported interpretations and open questions. Historical reports are retained where useful, with newer findings clearly marked when they supersede earlier terminology.
BW2 Stuff Explorer does not include original game assets and does not modify the source archive. Current releases are intentionally read-only. Future write/import functionality, if implemented, will remain a separate later milestone with explicit validation and safe-output rules.
BW2 Stuff Explorer is released under the MIT License.