MPQ
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MPQ (Mo'PaQ, short for Mike O'Brien Pack, named after its creator), is an archiving file format used in several of Blizzard Entertainment's games.
MPQs used in Blizzard's games generally contain a game's data files, including graphics, sounds, and level data. The format's capabilities include compression, encryption, and the ability to store multiple versions of the same file for internationalization. The compression algorithm used in MPQ files is the PKZIP algorithm licensed from PKWARE. Newer archives (those used in Warcraft III) use zlib for compression.
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[edit] File indexing
In order to meet the requirements of speed generally demanded by a computer game, files are indexed in a hash table using a quick, low-collision hashing algorithm. The offset of the index of a specific file within the hash table is the hash of the filename, allowing for quick verification of a file's existence within the archive. If multiple files within the archive have the same hash, the index of the hash in the hash table points to a linked list which, in turn, points to the positions of the files within the archive. A file called "(listfile)" within some archives often contains a list of filenames in the archive.
Cutscene cinematics with the MPQ extension are included with Warcraft III and, despite the file extension, are not actual MPQ files. Rather they are AVI files compressed with Blizzard's proprietary MPEG-4 codec, BLZ0 (which actually is DivX under a different name). These files are playable in ordinary media players, provided the proper codecs are installed.
[edit] Usage in gaming
Blizzard has utilized the MPQ file format for archiving game files in a number of their games and a few other games, including:
- Diablo
- Diablo: Hellfire developed by Synergistic Software
- Lords of Magic developed by Sierra Entertainment
- Diablo II
- Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
- StarCraft
- StarCraft: Brood War
- WarCraft II: Battle.net Edition
- Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
- Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
- World of Warcraft
- World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
[edit] Icons
The following two icons represent MPQ files on Mac OS X with Warcraft III and World of Warcraft installed. These icons are associated with the .MPQ file extension upon installation of the Mac OS X versions of their respective games. The Windows OS versions of these games do not associate any icon with the file extensions.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- .mpq viewer for .blps (for World of Warcraft BLPs) for Windows OS
- libmpq and associated tools for manipulating mpq files
- jlibmpq, java wrapper for libmpq
- Inside MoPaQ — A guide to the file format. (Not maintained, Win32 only, no source code.)
- MPQ Extractor — A Mac OS X extractor utility.
