bfstool

bfstool is a tool for BFS (Bugbear File System) archive creation, extraction and more. BFS archives are present in most games developed by BugBear.

For a complete list of known official BFS archives please see bfs_file_dat.md.

Support of unofficial archives is present on a best-effort basis and is not guaranteed to work.

File format compatibility list

Examples

List files in FlatOut europe.bfs:

$ bfstool list --format v1 europe.bfs
Listing archive: europe.bfs
Physical size: 4531
Headers size: 4058
File count: 1
| Method | Size | Compressed | Copies |  Offset  | File Name                 |
|--------|------|------------|--------|----------|---------------------------|
|   zlib | 1103 |        471 |    0+0 | 00000fdc | data/language/version.ini |

Extract all files from FlatOut 2 fo2b.bfs to directory fo2b

$ bfstool extract fo2b.bfs fo2b --format v2
Extracted 14 files.

Extract all tga files from FlatOut common1.bfs to directory common1

$ bfstool extract -f v1 common1.bfs common1 "**/*.tga" -v
"data/menu/bg/longjump.tga" 1228844 bytes
"data/menu/bg-mainmenu.tga" 1281282 -> 2359340 bytes
"data/menu/bg/bowling.tga" 1228844 bytes
...
"data/menu/bg/class_a_finish.tga" 1228844 bytes
Extracted 111 files.

Identify an unknown file (Only works with files listed in bfs_file_dat.md)

$ bfstool identify unknown.bfs
Identifying archive: unknown.bfs
File name: FLATOUT.BFS
Game: FlatOut
Platform: PlayStation 2
Format: v1
Filter: fo1
Copy filter: fo1-ps2-usa
Source:
- Redump (USA)
- Non-Redump (Beta) (2005.03.23)
CRC32: CBB29ACA
MD5: 8b7c307a1ad5483b0bee958687d6d94e
SHA1: c02f2111a97d9b24f6be2db433d25eee97bb890a

$ bfstool id ZMenuFO2BFS.bfs
Identifying archive: ZMenuFO2BFS.bfs
File not found in the BFS file database.
Perhaps it's a modded file or not yet supported by bfstool.

Fast identify - the file name needs to be it's CRC32 and will be used for identification:

$ bfstool id --fast-identify E2FA4AFC.bfs
Identifying archive: E2FA4AFC.bfs
File name: common1.bfs
Game: FlatOut
Platform: PC
Format: v1
Copy filter: fo1-pc
Filter: fo1
Source:
- All full PC releases
CRC32: E2FA4AFC
MD5: 95a606038261bfd36c6e48874e644c44
SHA1: 51b6671ab55665521a29b010b86d53fb8d324967

$ bfstool id --fast-identify common1.bfs
Identifying archive: common1.bfs
File not found in the BFS file database.
Perhaps it's a modded file or not yet supported by bfstool.
Try removing --fast-identify and running again.

If the file is present in bfs_file_dat.md, you don't need to specify the format for subcommands reading it, like list or extract

$ bfstool list europe.bfs
Identifying archive: europe.bfs
Listing archive: europe.bfs
Physical size: 4531
Headers size: 4058
File count: 1
| Method | Size | Compressed | Copies |  Offset  | File Name                 |
|--------|------|------------|--------|----------|---------------------------|
|   zlib | 1103 |        471 |    0+0 | 00000fdc | data/language/version.ini |

Filtering

Pattern matching glob syntax is described here

To use a filter pass it as --filter-file <FILTER_FILE> to the archive subcommand. There are a couple preconfigured filters to use with --filter <FILTER>.

Example:

# Compress all files
+ **
# Do not compress any files in data/menu/bg/
- data/menu/bg/*
# Compress data/menu/bg/town2.tga and data/menu/bg/town3.tga
+ data/menu/bg/town2.tga
+ data/menu/bg/town3.tga

This would result in:

• data/cars/car_1/skin1.dds being compressed, because it matches + **
• data/menu/bg/town1.tga not being compressed, because it matches - data/menu/bg/*
• data/menu/bg/town2.tga being compressed, because it matches + data/menu/bg/town2.tga