Skip to main content

Mirror's Edge — XeNTaX Forum Knowledge

Extracted from XeNTaX forum discussions (2008–2017). Covers the original Mirror's Edge (UE3-era, 2008) and Mirror's Edge: Catalyst (Frostbite, 2016). The Catalyst threads are the technically valuable content — the original game thread is largely off-topic chatter.

1. Mirror's Edge: Catalyst — Frostbite Engine Asset Pipeline​

Overview​

Mirror's Edge: Catalyst uses the Frostbite engine (Frostbite 3 lineage, same family as Battlefield 4/Hardline and Star Wars Battlefront). Its audio and assets are packed in the shared Frostbite bundle/chunk model, so the community Battlefield / Star Wars Battlefront dumpers work with minor edits.

(daemon1, brendan19, 2016-04)

Frostbite asset model (as used by Catalyst)​

  • .bundles — the container files holding game resources.
  • .chunk files — raw resource blobs; filenames are not meaningful. Resource names live in EBX metadata files, not the chunk names. (daemon1, 2016-04-25: "Names are in EBX files. That's OK.")
  • EBX — object/type metadata database. Each sound/mesh/etc. is described by an EBX file that references chunk data by hash/GUID.
  • Chunks with no proper filenames are expected — you map them back through EBX.

Dumper / decoder workflow​

The working pipeline for Catalyst beta (2016):

  1. Extract bundles → chunks using a Battlefield 4 / Star Wars Battlefront dumper script (bf4dumper.py, sw_dumper.py). The community-edited swbf_me-c_edit version is adapted specifically for Mirror's Edge Catalyst. (brendan19, daemon1, 2016-04-25)
  2. Decode audio with fb3decoder.py (the "FB3" Frostbite 3 audio decoder script). It walks the .ebx files, finds the audio chunks, and writes decoded .wav files using the ealayer3 tool for EALayer3 codec (the EA-proprietary MPEG layer-3 variant used by Frostbite). (daemon1, 2016-04-25)

Required script edits (from brendan19, 2016-04-26):

# sw_dumper.py
targetDirectory = r"<THE DIRECTORY WHERE YOU WANT THE FILES TO EXTRACT TO>"

# fb3decoder.py
dumpDirectory = r"<THE DIRECTORY WHERE YOU EXTRACTED YOUR FILES>"
targetDirectory = r"<THE DIRECTORY WHERE YOU WANT THE DECODED .WAV FILES PLACED>"
# Download Zench's ealayer3 tool so the script can handle EALayer3:
ealayer3Path = r"<THE DIRECTORY THAT HAS THE EALAYER3 TOOL>\ealayer3.exe"

Tool note (ealayer3 versions):

  • Zench's ealayer3 extracts multi-file chunks incorrectly — e.g. a chunk with 5 sounds produces 15 files, 10 of which are duplicates.
  • daemon1's updated ealayer3 fixes this. (daemon1, 2016-04-26)

Frostbite EBX numDict (field type lookup table)​

fb3decoder.py decodes EBX fields via a numDict mapping of 16-bit type codes to Python struct format chars. The known entries (from the script, 2016):

CodeStructMeaning
0xC12DQuint64 (8 bytes)
0xC0CDBuint8 (1 byte)
0x0035Iuint32 (4 bytes)
0xC10DIuint32 (4 bytes)
0xC14Dddouble (8 bytes)
0xC0AD?bool (1 byte)
0xC0FDiint32 (4 bytes)
0xC0BDbint8 (1 byte)
0xC0EDhint16 (2 bytes)
0xC0DDHuint16 (2 bytes)
0xC13Dffloat (4 bytes)

Gotcha: Newer patches introduce field types absent from the table. A user hit KeyError: 49437 (0xC11D) while decoding non-audio EBX files — the code was not in the dict. daemon1's guidance: the new type is unrelated to audio, so you can safely delete non-audio EBX folders and rerun. (Hello, daemon1, kkdf2, 2016-06/08)

  • kkdf2 (2016-08-29) suggested 0xC11D: ("q", 8) — an int64 (8 bytes) — as a likely fix (low-confidence community guess).

Practice notes​

  • Extraction of the full beta yielded ~28.5 GB across /bundles and /chunks. (Hello, 2016-06-11)
  • Successfully decoded named SFX from the initial package; then decoded the full cat/cas pair set. (brendan19, 2016-04-25)

2. Mirror's Edge Textures (original game)​

Ripping approach​

  • Textures ripped using Ninja Ripper and Texmod (runtime D3D rippers) for the original Mirror's Edge. (kellne, 2017-06-05)
  • Both tools work on the UE3-era original; no native texture container reverse-engineering is documented in this dump.

3. Tools Mentioned​

ToolPurpose
bf4dumper.py / sw_dumper.pyBattlefield 4 / Star Wars Battlefront Frostbite bundle→chunk dumpers
swbf_me-c_editCommunity-edited SWBF dumper adapted for Mirror's Edge Catalyst
fb3decoder.pyFrostbite 3 audio decoder (walks EBX, writes .wav)
ealayer3 (Zench / daemon1)EALayer3 codec decoder; daemon1's version fixes multi-file chunks
Ninja RipperD3D texture ripper (original ME)
TexmodD3D texture ripper (original ME)

Source: XeNTaX forum threads t=3245 (Mirror's Edge), t=14259 (Mirror's Edge Catalyst), t=16367 (Mirror's Edge Textures).