Nintendo File Formats

AGL > Binary Shader Archive (SHARCFB)

A SHARCFB file contains compiled shaders. This page describes version 8 of the file format.

Header

In little endian mode, the whole header is swapped (even the magic number).

Shader Binary Section

This section contains the compiled shader binaries.

Shader Binary

Shader Program Section

This section contains named shader programs that reference shaders from the shader binary section.

Shader Program

Shader Variation Section

A single shader program may have different variations. Variations are defined by a set of macros, each of which can be set to a predefined set of values. Every possible combination of macro values has its own shader binaries, so the number of shader binaries in a program grows exponentially with its number of variation macros. This is why some sharcfb files are much bigger than others.

Each shader program has two shader variation sections. The first one defines the list of possible values for each shader macro. The second section only has one value per macro: its default value.

The following algorithm can be used to find the shader binary index of a specific variation:

def get_variation_index(base_index, shader_program, settings):
    index = 0
    for macro in shader_program.variation_macros:
        index *= len(macro.possible_values)
        index += macro.possible_values.index(settings[macro.name])
    
    if shader_program.has_geometry_shader:
        return base_index + index * 3
    return base_index + index * 2

Now load the vertex shader from variation_index, the pixel shader from variation_index + 1 and the geometry shader from variation_index + 2 (if it exists).

Variation Macro

Shader Symbol Section

Shader Symbol