Talk:XPL

I have a strong feeling that in those pairs X../W.. (like XPL/WPL; XTD/WTD) X stands for XENON (XBOX360) and W stands for WINDOWS. The RAGE engine was made for different platforms, although the file formats itself are mostly the same, so I guess the first characher just denotes a platform the file format is designed for. So: Xenon Texture Dictionary and Windows Texture Dictionary; Xenon PLacement and Windows PLacement. Seemann 06:38, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe, since I just guessed that XPL files could include generic objects like trees and so on (In earlier parts those usually were called somehow like "xref"). Perhaps we can find this out with taking a closer look into them, or into the games map processing... if they are realy called after Xenon then this would mean that XPL files are ignored under windows, what I don't belive. But I can also be wrong! --Aschratt 16:39, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Aschratt, take a look at the Xbox version of the game if you get the chance. There are only x* files, and it becomes very obvious that they have been replaced with w* versions on the PC. XTD files contain textures optimized for the Xenon platform (e.g. swizzled), while WTD store textures for PC (e.g. DXT). The Endian-ness is platform-specific too. It's very likely that XPLs are leftover and not used by the game at all (on the PC). I'd say we stick to documenting the Windows formats, don't make up funny names, and possibly only mention the purpose of x* formats in a short paragraph and then link to their w* counterparts with the detailed format description. --Steve-m 20:09, 20 February 2009 (UTC)