Entry 12

Characters assembled: hierarchies (HIE) as depth-first skeletons

2026-10-142mformatrenderdecomp

Filescrates/rugrats-data/src/hierarchy.rscrates/rugrats-viewer/src/main.rs

The characters stand up in the port's viewer (rugrats-viewer 22 --hier): Chuckie, Angelica and the rest of DB22's cast, each assembled from its parts at rest.

A hierarchy is a part count, 0x32 bytes of byte lists, then 40-byte parts from +0x34: a depth (1 the root), 16 run-time bytes, the joint's offset from its parent (s32 x, y, z), and a model index. The parts are depth first, so a part's parent is the nearest earlier part one level up. Chuckie (hierarchy 1) is hips, chest, head, two three-part arms from the chest and two three-part legs from the hips.

The layout came from draw_character (0x8003205c): it reads part i's model at hierarchy + 0x58 + 40 i, which put the parts at +0x34 with the model as their last word. Read from +0x58 as a first guess, every part had its neighbour's offset. The format page is docs/formats/hie.md.