Alien Breed 256 Format
| Format type | Image |
|---|---|
| Hardware | VGA |
| Colour depth | 8-bit |
| Minimum size (pixels) | 320×200 |
| Maximum size (pixels) | 320×200 |
| Palette | Internal |
| Plane count | 1 |
| Transparent pixels? | No |
| Hitmap pixels? | No |
| Games |
All 18 files under LBMS/ are 64,768 bytes. They have no signature, dimensions, or IFF chunk headers. Their payload is a 320×200 indexed bitmap followed by a 256-color palette. These are graphics sheets; interpreting TAA.256 in this layout produced a recognizable tile gallery during visual inspection.
The LBMS directory name does not make these files standard .LBM/IFF images. A tile gallery is stored as a continuous image, rather than as sequential 256-byte tile records.
File format
| Offset | Length | Content |
|---|---|---|
| 0x0000 | 64,000 | One unsigned palette index per pixel, rows from top to bottom |
| 0xFA00 | 768 | 256 RGB triples, each component in the range 0–63 |
Pixel (x, y) is byte y * 320 + x. Palette entry i starts at 64000 + 3*i. All files have a 768-byte tail with no component above 63. An 8-bit display conversion can use round(component * 255 / 63).
The row-major addressing and RGB palette interpretation agree with the VGA programming reference; the offsets and fixed lengths above were measured from this collection.
Notes
Require exactly 64,768 bytes for this observed variant. Keep palette indices when exporting, and save a separate copy if converting to PNG. Decode a .VHF first to obtain the same basic layout.
The later level parser cuts 16×16 tiles from three selected sheets: 12 rows from A, 12 from B, and 8 from AN, with 20 tiles per row. That yields 640 tile slots. The exact role of all filename variants and level selection should still be checked against the original game.
Files
Paths are relative to game/.
| File | Stored bytes |
|---|---|
| LBMS/TAA.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TAAN.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TAB.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TBA.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TBAN.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TBB.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TCA.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TCAN.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TCB.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TDA.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TDAN.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TDB.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TEA.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TEAN.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TEB.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TFA.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TFAN.256 | 64,768 |
| LBMS/TFB.256 | 64,768 |
Source code
From re-alienbreed, the open-source browser port and asset viewer:
Credits
The Alien Breed-specific format research and parsers were prepared by VorticonCmdr. If you find this information helpful in a project you're working on, please give credit where credit is due. (A link back to this wiki would be nice too!)