Topic: What do inside of games look like?

I have a question. You know when you open a Xbox One game and it loads? Of course you do... but what does the inside of that game look like? The files inside of it and stuff... Is it all one big ROM? Is there an executable file inside of it that runs the game? Etc..

I play super smash bros brawl through an emulator called ''Dolphin'', and for me to use it through the emulator , i have to have the game file first - i.e. the game itself. im looking at the file right now , the name of it is "Super_Smash_Bros_Brawl[NTSC](Wii).iso" and the file type is ''disc image file" and the file size is ''7.92GB''.

i cant really open the file from my computer, idk what program to use that can read it either, but when i launch dolphin and look at the game file properties through the emulator it shows a bunch of descending folders.

i see folders called ''effect'' ''fighter'' ''info'' ''info2'' ''item'' ''item_gen'' ''menu'' ''menu2'' ''sound'' ''stage'' ''system'' ''partition 1 2 3 4 etc'' .

this is a really cool question though and ive always wondered the same thing too. i actually would love to see devs make a game from scratch and see how its all done on the computer before they copy it to discs.

edit: you know what , i actually play games on my PC too & i think i have other game files on my computer too. my overwatch folder has stuff like "_retail'' "data" ".build.info" and the launcer.exe to start the game itself. when i click on the data folder it leads to a whole bunch of other folders , so i dont wanna mess with it lol.

If you go to say an archive site with prototypes for example you'll see file names with prototype month year or something. Like for example on the hidden palace and to keep this Xbox related I checked out a Forza prototype (Forza Motorsport (March 05 2005,Build 1.05.03.05.58093).rar) and what people had with video footage later. The rar is because the hidden palace user packaged it (meaning it could be whatever xbox file format which I don't know what that is but it would likely be that file type) but the build dates are there and the date of the file.

With files people see with emulators of the retail games you'd get more a GAME_NAME_PAL.iso or .wad or whatever. Depending on the NTSC/PAL version if it were a US/JP NTSC and PAL for EU/AU of course or the JP/EU/US/AU whatever region next to it instead. Like the commenter above said with their Smash Bros example.

Inside the packages it's just folders with files for different things such as the art assets (levels, characters as 3D models, the texture files, etc.), the music in whatever file format, animations that play and I assume a tied to the characters data or code, the code for many other particular things important to the game like triggering character animations, loading screens to appear, doing general things in the game. To probably making sure the game can be read by the console with the license on there, to whatever else the game needs to do.

I haven't opened any console games as I assume certain programs to open game files is needed but you can look at say Minecraft on Java/PC (has configs, logs, a folder for texture packs, folders for the art assets, music in the .ogg format, character models, textures for blocks and more all in certain places) and see a bunch of folders for different things. You can check out any applications on a computer and see folders and files for all sorts of apps or games you have installed and it's the same thing. If you know where to look on a computer's C drive for that application or wherever your Steam games in steamapps and the games .exe, and assets from there (depending what they use I don't know for other games but for Minecraft you'd get your JSON files or asset ones with no recognisable file format as I don't have the file format to access the models but whatever they used for modelling programs it's likely for that some Autodesk file or something) then you know what I mean.

If you looked at apps you have then you'd probably see other file formats or if files for a website for example a bunch of html, css, .js (JavaScript) not Java which is .java), for Android APKs for example it would be something like .java or .xml files (as someone that learned about that a few months ago). You have comments usually in text files that programmers use to make it easier to tell what something is. If a file is encrypted then it will likely show computer output text then anything readable and that's intentional so people can't mess with them.

Look at any application or game on a computer and while not exactly the same file format (maybe be a .cia for 3DS or .wad for the Wii or whatever else as the package as of course people that use emulators know) you have files and folders for different things. Art assets in one place, animations in another, the cutscenes to play the video files, code that does things in the other (many times programmers have different files for different things. Like you could say the character movement, the weapons, the pulling a lever animation). It depends from game to game of course some games don't have video files for cutscenes and are just well in-engine animations that play.