VOL File (AGI)
Introduction
VOL files store the logic, View Resource (AGI), picture, and sound resources for the game. They are essentially little more than files which have jammed all the these resources together in a single file. Most games have multiple VOL.* files (where * is a number 0-15) for two reasons:
- the original distribution media for AGI games was 360 KB floppy disks; most games were larger than 360 KB – multiple Vol files allows the game to be split across multiple disks
- due to the way the Vol files are indexed, they have a rough maximum of 1 MB in size
Many fan games only have a single VOL.0 file.
There is no required ordering of the resources within a Vol file. The resources are indexed in the LOGDIR, PICDIR, VIEWDIR, and SNDDIR files, which contain entries for every resource in the game, indicating which Vol file the resource appears in and where in that Vol file it appears. See directory files.
Another limitation imposed by the way the directory files are stored is that there can be only 16 Vol files. As a practical matter, this is well above the limit required by any existing AGI game.
Each resource in a Vol file contains a header that is followed by resource-specific data, as described in the following sections:
Version 2 format
| Byte | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0-1 | Signature (always 0x12 0x34) |
| 2 | Vol number that the resource is contained in |
| 3 | Length of the resource, not including the header |
As is clear from this table, 3 of the 5 bytes provide fairly useless information. The most interesting bytes are bytes 3 and 4, which give the size of the resource. Because this value is two bytes in length, resources can never be any larger than 65535 bytes.
Version 3 format
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References
Also See
- AGI Specifications: Chapter 2 - Overview#2.3 Logic, Picture, Sound, and View Data Files
- AGI Logic Resource
- AGI View Resource
- AGI Picture Resource
- AGI Sound Resource
