BW2 Stuff Explorer

An OpenIV-inspired, read-only archive explorer for Black & White 2 *.stuff files.

Current release: 0.4.0

Version 0.4 keeps the proven WPF application and StuffCore implementation as its base, with a polished Windows 11-inspired interface and a new application icon. The archive reader, navigation, search and robust export pipeline remain read-only.

• open an archive from a file dialog or by drag and drop;
• validate its footer and 268-byte table-of-contents entries;
• browse the virtual directory tree and see only a folder's direct files;
• navigate with Back, Forward, Up and clickable path breadcrumbs;
• search paths and filenames responsively and recursively within the selected folder branch;
• show the Path column for recursive search results while keeping normal folder views compact;
• inspect the archived modification time, size, offset and file type;
• export one file, a folder or the complete archive;
• export multiple selected files while preserving their internal paths;
• follow byte- and file-level progress during exports and cancel without freezing the interface;
• write each file atomically so cancellation, disk errors and interrupted reads do not leave incomplete destination files;
• preflight multi-file destinations and confirm once before overwriting existing files;
• use File, Edit, View, Tools and Help menus, context menus and keyboard shortcuts;
• sort by name, modification time, type, size or offset and optionally group files by type;
• inspect entry properties and copy internal paths;
• use an English interface with strings separated for future localization;
• never modify the source archive.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+O	Open a STUFF archive
Ctrl+F	Focus the search field
Ctrl+E	Export selected file(s)
F5	Refresh the current view
Esc	Clear the search field, or cancel an active export

Build

Requirements: Windows 10/11, Visual Studio 2022 or .NET 8 SDK with the Windows Desktop workload.

dotnet build .\BW2StuffExplorer.sln -c Release
dotnet run --project .\tests\StuffCore.SelfTest\StuffCore.SelfTest.csproj -c Release

The GUI executable is produced below src\StuffExplorer\bin\Release\net8.0-windows.

Run the release build

The prebuilt Windows package requires the x64 .NET 8 Desktop Runtime. Extract the complete ZIP and start BW2StuffExplorer.exe; the accompanying .dll, .deps.json and .runtimeconfig.json files must stay beside it.

Architecture

• StuffCore: format parsing, validation, bounded entry streams and cancellable atomic extraction.
• StuffExplorer: WPF desktop interface.
• StuffCore.SelfTest: dependency-free smoke test that creates and reads a synthetic archive.

See docs/FORMAT.md for the currently known archive layout and docs/ROADMAP.md for planned stages.