Treatise On The Architecture Of .GCI Format Gamecube Saves                    -

This document is written in the hopes of mapping the internal structure of
gamecube save files. There is no information presently available on this
subject, and I hope to find a way to extract the Logo and Icon data from these
files. NOTE: All values ending with "h" are hexadecimal values.

Address-Length  -Description
----------------------------

0000h-28h  -The first several bytes seem to be some sort of unique game code.

0028h-80h  -Contains game name and last save date?

0084h-C00h -Logo GFX data. Logo is 92 by 32 pixels.

0C84h-200h -these 512 bytes are the Logo Palette.

0E84h-400h -This is where the Icon data resides. The length of this section is
            400h per frame of animation. Icon is 32 by 32 pixels.

1284h-200h -Palette data for the Icon.

1484h-EoF  -Save data for the game untill the end of  the file.

A perfect example of the above structure is the Metroid Prime GCI, as it
contains only one frame for it's Icon, and thus exactly matches the values
given for the Icon palette and Save Data addresses. The GFX data itself
seems to be stored in a standard 8bpp format, with non-standard tiles.
The data is a series of 8 by 4 pixel tiles, rather than 8 by 8 tiles. You
can see some examples of this at my site (www.geocities.com/MetroidPrimeMap).
Palette data format is still being determined.

Written By:
-Jason Haffner (JasonHaffner@Hotmail.com)