Surface Formats

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Many people know that images are usually stored in RGB or RGBA format. While this is true, the pixel data can take in a lot of different forms for a lot of reasons, the main 2 being: to reduce the amount resources (compression) or the program requiring more precise calculations (HDR).

This article has a table containing useful information regarding the surface formats used in Telltale Tool games.

Telltale surface formats have their equivalent OpenGL formats for games newer than The Walking Dead. For older ones, they directly use the ones from the original container (XENOS, Xbox 360 for example). If you are unsure in which format to save, stick to RGBA8 or BC formats. The following table has information regarding all Telltale surface formats and their usage.

Softwares such as Paint.NET, GIMP, NVIDIA Texture Tool or DirectX SDK (2010) have labeled their options well enough. The download links are here. Paint.NET or GIMP will be more than enough. More information about different types of textures can be found here.

Telltale Surface Format	Equivalent Format	Notes
RGBA8	R8G8B8A8_UNORM or R8G8B8A8_UNORM_SRGB1	Used for diffuse textures. Use this save option if you do not want to lose quality.
ARGB8	R8G8B8A8_UNORM or R8G8B8A8_UNORM_SRGB1	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB[^2]
BC12	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2
BC22	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2
BC32	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2
BC42	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2
BC52	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2
BC62	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2
BC72	BC7_UNORM or BC7_UNORM_SRGB2	Use this save option if you want your texture compressed.
ARGB16	R16B16G16A16_UNORM	Used for big detailed textures. Only 1 such texture has been found. (Poker Night 2 - ui_endofdemo_items.d3dtx)
RGB565	R5G6B5_UNORM	Used for diffuse textures.
ARGB1555	B5G5R5A1_UNORM
ARGB4	R4G4B4A4_UNORM	Used for diffuse textures.
ARGB2101010	R10G10B10A2_UNORM	Requires swizzling the red and blue channels.
R16	R16_UNORM
RG16	R16G16_UNORM
RGBA16	R16G16B16A16_UNORM
RG8	R8G8_UNORM
R32	R32_FLOAT
RG32	R32G32_FLOAT
RGBA32	R32G32B32A32_FLOAT
R8	R8_UNORM	Equivalent to L8.
RGBA8S	R8G8B8A8_SNORM
A8	A8_UNORM	Used for detail or 1 color textures.
L8	R8_UNORM	Equivalent to R8. Used for old lookup textures.
AL8	R8G8_UNORM	Used for look ups.
L16	R16_UNORM	Use DirectX SDK (2010 version).
RG16S	R16G16_SNORM
RGBA16S	R16G16B16A16_SNORM
R16UI	R16_UINT
RG16UI	R16G16 _UINT
R16F	R16_FLOAT
RG16F	R16G16_FLOAT
RGBA16F	R16G16B16A16_FLOAT
R32F	R32_FLOAT
RG32F	R32G32_FLOAT
RGBA32F	R32G32B32A32_FLOAT	Used for light maps. Use NVIDIA Texture Tool or DirectX SDK.
CTX15
RGBA1010102F
RGB111110F
RGB9E5F	R9G9B9E5_SHAREDEXP
PVRTC23	PVRTC 1 4bpp RGB
PVRTC43	PVRTC 1 2bpp RGBA
PVRTC2a3	PVRTC 1 2bpp RGBA
PVRTC4a3	PVRTC 1 4bpp RGBA
ATC_RGB4	ATC RGB
ATC_RGB1A4	ATC Explicit Alpha
ATC_RGBA4	ATC Interpolated Alpha
ETC1_RGB4	ETC1 RGB
ETC2_RGB4	ETC2_RGB
ETC2_RGB1A4	ETC2 R8G8B8A1
ETC2_RGBA4	ETC2 EAC RGBA
ETC2_R4	ETC2 EAC R11
ETC2_RG4	ETC2 EAC RG11
ASTC_RGBA_4x43	ASTC 4x4
FrontBuffer	X8R8G8B8

1: The output depends on the D3DTX's surface gamma value. 2: BC means Block Compression, which are basically image compression algorithms. They are lossy. 3: Used in Xbox 360 games. (No texture found yet.) 4: Used in iOS games. 5: Used is Android games.

Telltale Surface Gamma	Color Space
Non-existent	Non-sRGB (Linear)
Unknown	Non-sRGB (Linear)
Linear	Non-sRGB (Linear)
sRGB	sRGB

Note

Non-existent means that there is no such field in the relative D3DTX version.

Reading Debug Information

A typical D3DTX debug information will contain a Meta header and a D3DTX header. Other image files will use the DirectXTex metadata information.

The structures, types and fields can be found in the converter source code.