Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia/ROM map

The following article is a ROM map for Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia.

Filesystem

• data/battle/
  • bg/ - ???
  • result/ - ???
  • system/ - ???

• data/effect/ - ???
• data/encyclo/ - ???
• data/ending/
  • edobj000_LZ.bin - ???
  • edu???_LZ.bin - fullscreen images shown in the credits

• data/event/ - fullscreen images shown in cutscenes
• data/eventicon/
  • eventicon000_LZ.bin - animated sprite (moving finger icon)

• data/field/
  • character/ - ???
  • effect/ - ???
  • map/ - map data and textures

• data/font/ - fonts in usual NFTR format
• data/interface/ - ???
• data/menu/ - ???
• data/message/ - text data
• data/npc/ - NPC overworld sprites
• data/opening/ - ???
• data/param/ - ???
• data/player/ - player overworld sprites
• data/poke/ - animated Pokemon sprites
• data/pokeOBJ/ - single frame Pokemon sprites
• data/Script/ - script files
• data/sendbin/ - ???
• data/Sound/
  • sound_data.sdat - audio in the usual SDAT format

• data/system/ - ???
• data/target/ - overworld target clear sprites / animations
• data/targetOBJ/ - single frame overworld target clear sprites
• data/title/ - ???
• data/uppict/ - fullscreen images shown on top screen?
  • uppict000_LZ.bin - gray screen with styler, shown in a cutscene near the ending
  • uppict001_LZ.bin - image shown during the ending cutscene

Background file format

LZ10 compressed NARC containing an NCGR tileset, NCLR palette and NSCR tilemap.

Sprite file format

LZ10 compressed NARC containing (possibly multiple sets of):

• NCBR/NCGR tileset
• NCLR palette
• NCER animation data
• .cac file (???)

Text format

In the US version of the game text is stored as .mes files in data/message/. It's format is the following:

Offset	Size	Description
0	4 bytes	Size of the entire file
4	4 bytes	Number of strings in the file
8	rest of the file	Text strings

Each string starts with a 4 byte integer telling you the length of the string in bytes (excluding these 4 bytes), followed by the string encoded as UTF-8.

In the EU version, these message files are LZ10 compressed and their file extension is .meslz.