Text Resource Formats

Captain Bible divides its study and gameplay text between translation-specific verse indexes inside DD1.DAT and translation-independent companion files named DDLA through DDLG and DDLR. The executable joins them at runtime.

Resource families

The first character of an extensionless archive name selects a Bible translation:

The second character is a bank letter A through G or R. It selects the companion file with the same suffix, such as resource NA plus file DDLA. There are 319 logical verse records in each translation:

The archive contains 33 rather than 32 extensionless members because NG appears at directory indexes 199 and 206. Their expanded bytes are identical.

Extensionless verse index

Each ordinary index record has a three-byte header followed by text:

The final record is only 00 plus a little-endian terminal offset. That offset equals the companion file’s exact byte length and lets the game derive the final ordinary record’s span. Offsets are nondecreasing rather than strictly increasing: repeated offsets represent verses with no associated companion records.

The selector is an exact lookup key, not a record type. Function find_text_record_by_selector linearly compares it against the loaded table. Selectors 0xE0 and above mark mature-topic records. They are filtered by the study exporter and by world-map content selection, not by the runtime text loader.

DDL companion stream

Every companion record is an ASCII tag byte followed immediately by a NUL-terminated CP437 string. There is no file header or terminal marker; index offsets and the file size delimit the relevant ranges.

All eight files contain 1,058 tagged records. Of these, 1,057 fall in indexed verse spans. DDLF begins with one 26-byte E preamble before its first index offset; the game does not associate it with a verse. Some verse spans contain several records with the same tag, particularly multiple wrong guesses or metadata values.

The built-in -gXX export mask connects the two formats. Bit 1 prints L, bit 2 prints P, bit 3 prints *, bit 4 prints W, C, and E, and bit 5 prints the citation and verse from the index. Bit 0 prints the numbered record heading. M is consumed by gameplay helpers but omitted from study output.

Executable implementation

load_text_bank at load offset 0x629C constructs the two-character archive name from the selected translation and requested bank. It loads the extensionless resource and turns every index record into a ten-byte runtime descriptor containing a far text pointer, selector, companion offset, and span. It does this for selectors 0xE0 and above even under the supplied no-mature installation policy, then opens the corresponding DDL file for random access. Supplied no-mature save files independently confirm the full descriptor counts and original ordinals.

The loader reads the next record’s offset to compute each span, including the terminal zero record for the last span. copy_text_record_component seeks to that offset in the open companion file, reads exactly the computed span, and walks its tagged NUL strings.

Conversation opcode 0x7D connects this lookup machinery to the interactive study browser. Its prompt byte selects companion tag * for victim dialogue, P for a paraphrase, or L for a cyber lie, while its variable operand supplies the expected text-record selector. Prompt bytes zero and nine suppress the text. The browser resolves the configured selector directly, regardless of whether that record has been obtained; acquisition state controls the list of answers, not the adversary’s statement. A matching selection returns through state flag 0x14; leaving without the match returns through flag 0x15. The conversation-flow chapter documents the surrounding BIN control flow, prompt-rendering geometry, and QEMU-validated menu system.

QEMU export validation

Ran the original executable’s built-in exporter in a visible, silent FreeDOS QEMU session with -g63 -sTSTUDY.TXT. The installed SOUND.5 configuration contains translation index 1, so it enforced NIV despite the requested T, as the manual warns an installation lock may do.

The game produced a 132,510-byte file with SHA-256 c9ebe2cc4fbd00cd709d87761b38f6a8843eae99ceaa75cef842b93364dad0bc. After normalizing the exporter’s line wrapping, all 302 emitted verses match the parsed N resources exactly. The only 17 verses absent from the export have selectors 0xE1 through 0xE4; these are precisely the records skipped by the exporter’s active mature-topic check. They remain present in the runtime descriptor table. The export also reproduces the parsed L, P, W, C, E, and * companion strings under their documented headings.

Inspection tool

tools/inspect_text_resources.py validates both formats, joins index spans to their companion records, and displays the game-facing result. For example:

tools/inspect_text_resources.py \
  CB/DD1.DAT --data-dir CB \
  --translation N --bank A --record 0

Omit --record to display the complete bank. Translation choices are K, N, R, and T; bank choices are A through G and R.