FromSoftware engine

Sekiro (2019) and Elden Ring (2022) share FromSoftware’s in-house engine lineage. Sourced · Souls Modding wiki The two games organize their data similarly: files packed in BHD5/BDT archive pairs, wrapped in DCX compression envelopes and grouped in BND4 binders; models in FLVER files; maps laid out by MSB files; collision as Havok files; lights in BTL banks; behaviour in EMEVD event scripts and params. Observed

Several formats identify their structural variant through a version or section chain. Observed Row definitions, resource paths and runtime selection rules can still depend on the game: a PARAM’s type and version, for example, do not include its field definitions. Sourced · Paramdex

What the two games share and where they differ

Area	Sekiro	Elden Ring	Confidence
Archive pairs	Data1–Data5	Data0–Data3, DLC, sd/sd, sd/sd_dlc02	Proven
Archive path hash	base 37, 32-bit	base 133, 64-bit	Proven
Archive file record (40 bytes)	Dark Souls III’s layout	its own layout	Proven
Compression	DCX KRAK (Oodle Kraken)	DCX KRAK; ZSTD for the params	Proven
Params	param/gameparam/gameparam.parambnd.dcx in the archives	regulation.bin beside the executable, AES-256-CBC encrypted	Proven
NPC_PARAM_ST	data version 14, 896-byte rows	data version 9, 736-byte rows	Proven
Map layout	MSBS, eight sections	all 935 MSBs use MSBE, six sections; shared section-chain mechanism, different part headers	Observed · Sekiro Proven · Elden Ring
World structure	separate map areas (m11_01 Ashina Castle, …)	map areas plus open-world tiles of 256 m (m60, m61), each inside larger parent tiles	Observed
Material definitions	MTD	MATBIN	Proven
Compiled shaders	DXBC (Direct3D 11)	DXIL (Direct3D 12)	Observed
Collision	Havok 2016.2	Havok 2018.1	Observed
Light banks (BTL)	checked banks use version 16	107 decoded version-18 banks; two version-15 banks refused; shared 232-byte decoded light record	Observed · Sekiro Proven · Elden Ring
Event scripts (EMEVD)	all 11 scripts use the 64-bit little-endian layout, version 0xCD	examined scripts use the same layout	Proven · Sekiro Observed · Elden Ring
Traversal data	EDGE grapple, hang and wall-hug records	No equivalent established here	Observed · Sekiro
Animation	Havok skeleton and motion, TAE actions; player companion binders	Havok skeleton and motion, TAE actions; divided companion binders	Observed

The archive index, map layouts, coordinate frames, parameter tables and runtime observations describe the scope and limits of these comparisons.

Pages

Archives and files

• BHD5 and BDT archives — How Sekiro and Elden Ring pack their files into archive pairs, hash their paths, and encrypt their indexes and data.
• BND4 and split binders — File groups, optional names and IDs, compressed members, and BHF4/BDF4 pairs.
• DCX envelopes — The compression wrapper around most FromSoftware files, its header, and the codecs Sekiro and Elden Ring use.

Data model

• Character parts, forms and display masks — Character containers, NPC mesh masks and the equipment links for part-built humans.
• FMG message files — The text tables of the message binders, the version 2 layout and what a full-install census found in it.
• Havok tagfiles and type tables — The TAG0 tagfile and TCM0 compendium as both games ship them: SDK versions, the type table and its hash, item and patch tables, and how values are stored.
• PARAM tables and regulation — Parameter containers, external row definitions and NPC display-mask layouts.

World and streaming

• Coordinate frames and map offsets — Placement transforms, map-local collision and the distinction between angular units.
• Map areas and parent tiles — Sekiro area names, Elden Ring's nested open-world tile coordinates and the places of its legacy maps among the tiles.
• MSB map layouts — MSBS and MSBE section chains, models, placements, regions and events.
• Visibility and shadow controls — MSB visibility arrays, independent shadow flags and their unresolved runtime joins.

Geometry

• FLVER nodes and skinning — Transform nodes, dummy attachment points, rigid bone selection and bind-space vertices.
• FLVER vertex formats — Layout members, packed attributes, shader input lanes and vegetation pivots.
• FLVER2 models — Model headers, mesh records, face sets, material references and vertex streams in FLVER2.

Materials

• Character detail blending — Executed detail-layer equations, texture roles, gloss and the two games' reflectance models.
• FLVER material bindings — Material records, texture overrides, GX extensions and texture addressing.
• Layered surface shaders — Vertex blend inputs, height masks, snow, overlays and character detail layers.
• MATBIN material definitions — Elden Ring's material binary header, typed values, sampler records and unreferenced tails.
• Material constant binding and UV tiling — SAT word offsets, colour transfer, boolean bits and centered texture transforms.
• MTD material definitions — Nested material definition blocks, typed parameters and texture declarations of Sekiro and Elden Ring.
• Shader METAPARAM — Texture declarations, pass masks and material constant offsets shared by shader bundles.
• Texture scroll and alpha fades — Vertex texture transforms, GX scroll records, program-driven time and alpha discard.

Shaders

• Effect shader programs — The effect shader bundles of Sekiro (399 DXBC programs) and Elden Ring (488 DXIL programs): stages and families, the vertex inputs and render targets of the effect draws, the constant buffers and resources they read, the programs of the particles that live on the GPU, and what Sekiro's engine binds for the effect draws of a running session.
• G-buffer surface encoding — Deferred render targets, normal bias, gloss, reflectance, metallic and emission.
• Shader bundles and permutations — Shaderbdle containers, program stages, DXBC and DXIL, and material permutation selection.
• Texture and sampler pairing — Which sampler register each texture register of a pixel, vertex or compute program is sampled with in Sekiro and Elden Ring, the engine's fixed sampler registers, and the few textures that are read through two samplers.
• Vertex transforms and camera space — Program-dependent view-projection semantics, palette layout and cloth-cancel transforms.

Textures

• TPF texture packages — PC package headers, variable descriptors, DDS payloads and pixel decoding evidence.

Lighting and sky

• BTL light banks — Bank headers, the shared 232-byte light record and stored light properties.
• Exposure, tone curve and colour grading — How the final picture is formed from the lit scene: the exposure scale and its meter, the Reinhard curve table, the colour matrix, vignette and the 16³ grading look-up, with their constants, files and defaults.
• Graphics parameters and environment selection — GPARAM groups, value IDs, time-of-day keys and unresolved file and volume selection.
• Light records — The per-frame PointLight and SpotLight records the light-organize, tiled and per-light programs read, the tiled pass's distance and translucency terms, the shadowed flag at +64 and +128, and where a shadowed local light's shadow is placed.
• The rendered frame — The renderer's passes in GPU order, from shadow maps through deferred light, fog, sky, effects, exposure and tone mapping, with their targets.

Terrain

• Ground surface materials — What the inspected ground shaders establish about terrain texturing and blend inputs.

Vegetation

• Grass definitions and pivots — Grass meshes with per-vertex densities, GrassTypeParam resource references and pivot-driven vegetation deformation.
• SpeedTree geometry and instances — Elden Ring's stored vegetation streams, runtime instance inputs, LOD blending and wind-off state.

Water

• Water collision and region data — Water hit classes and why collision metadata is distinct from rendered water.
• Water surfaces — Which materials draw water, what the frame binds to a water draw, and how a lake's forward program turns what is behind its surface into water.

Effects and decals

• FXR effect files — Where the effects live, the version 5 file layout, the state machine and node tree, how properties store values, and the point and spot lights.
• FXR typed actions — The 72 action types the installed effect files hold, where an action's parameters sit in its lists and which layout each stores, the node and config grammar, the enumerated parameters, the curve functions and modifiers of properties, and the files an action names.
• MaterialEx action data — Elden Ring MaterialExParam rows and their observed TAE 198 references.
• Particle appearances in the executable — The classes of Sekiro's executable that draw an effect's particles, what its billboard appearance keeps for each particle (size multipliers, rotation, packed colour), the random numbers and constants it uses, and what is not yet read.
• What starts an effect — The records that name an effect by its id (params, animation events, map regions, event scripts, other effects), how many effect files each reaches, and the routes from a spell, a bullet, an item and a weapon to its effects.

Collision and physics

• Collision materials and object bodies — fsnp material lookup, ambiguous triangle rows, hit classes and rigid-body shapes.
• Constraint data and ragdoll atoms — The hkp constraint data objects of ragdolls, hinges, ball and socket, fixed and wheel joints in Sekiro and Elden Ring tagfiles: the atoms each class holds, their type words and the values they take.
• Havok cloth data — The hcl cloth classes characters and armour parts ship, their member lists, particle index widths and enum values, how their transform sets and display buffers bind to the model, and how the running games step them.
• Havok containers and compressed meshes — Tagfile sections, type compendia, packed vertices, shape keys and custom primitives.

Animation

• Behaviour graphs — The Havok Behavior tagfiles of the character binders, the hkb and FromSoftware Custom classes they hold, and the tables that tie a graph together.
• Havok clips and skeletons — Animation containers, track bindings, companion binders and distinct animation and model skeletons.
• Spline-compressed animation — Block layout, component masks, quantized splines and evidence for absent components.
• TAE time-action events — Animation event timing, import headers and mesh-visibility events.

Gameplay data

• EDGE traversal data — Sekiro grapple points, hang segments and wall-hug records.
• EMEVD scripts and world state — Event records, instructions, parameter substitutions and Sekiro's map-state functions.
• Navigation meshes — The nvmhktbnd binders of Sekiro and Elden Ring - Havok AI navmeshes, Sekiro's cluster graph, Elden Ring's query tree and user edges.

Runtime and limits

• Characters and bullets at runtime — Where the running game keeps the player character, its position and flags, and how a Bullet row is launched by id.
• Runtime render state — Direct3D capture observations and the limits of deriving runtime bindings from static files.