magic-rw

While it is still quite a way for DFF file support inside of magic-rw I do believe that we should start discussing their internals. DFF files are the combined 3D object container for the RenderWare engine. They contain atomics, lights and cameras. In a way DFF files are models plus surrounding environment data. They can even contain multiple geometries each with special matrix offsets. Geometry information can be encoded in either platform native or generic RW format. There are multiple pipelines that atomics can be attached to which control how their geometry data is processed by the graphics engine.

Now that we have the basic scope of DFF files properly decribed, I would like to point the reader's attention to a very advanced DFF file feature which is ASI file embedding out-of-the-box! It at least works in GTA:SA and can be used to very cleverly hide ASI mods from plain sights or conditionally load them only when the engine requests a certain model to load.

Official GTAForums discussion thread: https://gtaforums.com/topic/964071-dff-files-are-a-sensitive-topic/

I will share more of my DFF file insights here from time to time so watch out.