Specialised editors

Several less-common file types have dedicated views that didn’t warrant their own chapter. Grouped here for completeness.

UnitVariant

Variant mesh definitions for units — which RigidModel goes with which faction colour scheme, kit, etc. The view is a proper structured editor: a categories list on the left, a variants list in the middle for the selected category, and a per-variant form on the right (mesh file, texture folder, an unknown numeric value). Add / clone / delete on both lists from their right-click menus.

A separate read-only JSON debug view for the same file type also exists behind a settings, in case you want to edit the file more freely.

Atlas

Sprite-sheet layout files. Each row defines a region (UV rectangle + name) within an associated texture. Atlas files open in the regular DB editor — full grid editing, TSV round-trip, the whole DB editor toolset.

ESF

.esf is CA’s binary format for save games and startpos files. Massive, deeply nested, and slow to parse. RPFM exposes it as a tree of nested nodes with typed leaves (ints, floats, strings, arrays).

Disabled by default. The ESF editor lives behind the Enable ESF Editor toggle in PackFile → Settings → Debug. Turn it on first; otherwise opening an .esf falls back to the JSON debug view.

• Browse the full structure as a tree.
• Edit leaf values in place via a side detail panel.
• Filter within the loaded ESF (substring + regex toggle, plus an “auto-expand matches” option).

Writing is supported but slow on big files (a multi-hundred-MB save can take a few seconds). Most ESF editing is for startpos files in a campaign mod context.

BMD

Battle Map Definition files — the binary scene description for battle maps (terrain, props, lighting). The current view is a JSON text editor: the file decodes via the lib, gets serialised to pretty JSON, and saves parse the JSON back. Editable but unstructured.

Group formations

Formation definitions for unit groups (e.g. infantry block, cavalry charge wedge). UI is a JSON debug view — the lib supports full read/write for the per-game variants (Warhammer 3 / Three Kingdoms / Troy / Rome 2 / Shogun 2 each have their own decode path), but the editor is the generic JSON editor.

Animation file formats summary

For convenience, here’s where each animation-shaped format lives in the manual: