Pipeworks Spigot Engine

History

The Spigot engine appears to have been developed for Pipeworks Studios' second game, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee (Gamecube, 2002). The June 3rd, 2002 copy of Pipework's Gallery page calls the engine Spigot, confirming the name.

It was expanded and ported to multiple platforms, being used as late as 2012 (Wheel of Fortune for the Wii U) by Pipeworks, and 2014 by external developers (Colossal Kaiju Combat: Kaijuland Battles, by Sunstone Games)

Games possibly using the Spigot Engine

Title	Year	Platform	Bundle version	Game version	Build date	Internal name	Game folder (in debug info)
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee	2002	GameCube	1.18	No version.txt file	?	?
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee	2003	Xbox	?	?	?	?
Godzilla: Save the Earth	2004	PS2	1.3	No version.txt file	?	?
Godzilla: Save the Earth	2004	Xbox	1.3	4.670 (from XBE)	09/09/2004	?
Rampage: Total Destruction	2006	GameCube	1.3	6.1.0.25	02/24/2006	?
Rampage: Total Destruction	2006	Wii	1.4	7.1.0.54	10/16/2006	?
Rampage: Total Destruction	2006	PS2	1.3	6.1.0.24	02/23/2006	RAMPAGE
NHRA Drag Racing: Countdown to the Championship	2007	PSP	1.4	No version.txt file	?	?
NHRA Drag Racing: Countdown to the Championship	2007	PS2	1.4	2.8.7.626	06/01/2007	DRAGRACE
Godzilla: Unleashed	2007	PS2	1.4	1.0.0.0135	10/12/2007	GZ3PS2
Godzilla: Unleashed	2007	Wii	1.4	6.12.0.0267	10/18/2007	Godzilla3
Boogie	2007	PS2	1.4	5.1.1.398	10/15/2007	Boogie
Merv Griffin's Crosswords	2008	Wii	1.03	6.0.0.402	09/26/2008	Crossword
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian	2009	Wii	1.03	1.0.0.779	03/07/2009	Night
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian	2009	Xbox 360	1.03	No version.txt file	?	Night
Charm Girls Club: Pajama Party	2009	Wii	1.03	1.0.0.512	08/04/2009	GirlsClub
GeoStorm	2009	Windows (32bit)	?	?	?	?
Monopoly	2010	PSP	1.13	No version.txt file	?	Monopoly
Jeopardy	2010	Wii	1.20	1.0.0.430	08/11/2010	Jeopardy
Wheel of Fortune	2010	Wii	1.20	1.0.0.415	08/11/2010	Wheel	E:\Build\WheelJeopardy\Wheel
Deadliest Warrior	2010	PS3	?	?	?	?
Deadliest Warrior	2010	Xbox 360	?	?	?	?
Zumba Fitness	2010	PS3	v1.20	?	?	Zumba
Zumba Fitness	2010	Wii	1.20	1.0.0.508	10/11/2010	Zumba
UDraw Studio	2010	Wii	1.20	1.0.0.129	09/11/2010	TabletPaint
Haunted House	2010	Wii	1.20	1.0.0.100	08/19/2010	HauntedHouse
UDraw Studio: Instant Artist	2011	Wii	1.30	1.0.0.213	09/05/2011	TabletPaint2
Deadliest Warrior: Legends	2011	PS3	?	?	?	?
Deadliest Warrior: Legends	2011	Xbox 360	?	?	?	?
Gremlins: Gizmo	2011	Wii	1.30	1.0.0.309	08/29/2011	GForce
Monster High: Ghoul Spirit	2011	Wii	1.30	1.0.0.272	01/11/2013	Monster
Devil May Cry: HD Collection	2012	PS3	?	?	?	?
Devil May Cry: HD Collection	2012	Xbox 360	1.30	No version.txt file	?	X360DMC
Wheel of Fortune	2012	PS3	?	?	?	?
Wheel of Fortune	2012	Wii U	1.30	1.0.0.076	11/19/2012	Wheel
Wheel of Fortune	2012	Xbox 360	1.30	1.0.0.565	09/03/2012	Wheel
Jeopardy!	2012	PS3	?	?	?	?
Jeopardy!	2012	Wii U	1.30	1.0.0.073	11/14/2012	Jeopardy
Jeopardy!	2012	Xbox 360	1.30	1.0.0.537	08/21/2012	Jeopardy
Deadliest Warrior: Ancient Combat	2012	PS3	?	?	?	?
Deadliest Warrior: Ancient Combat	2012	Xbox 360	v1.20	1.0.0.046	10/14/2011	DWarrior
Colossal Kaiju Combat™: Kaijuland Battles	2014	Windows (32bit)	1.30	1.0.0.467	09/24/2015	Kaiju

Pipeworks games NOT using the Spigot Engine

Title	Year	Platforms	Engine
GLOM	2001	PalmOS	?
Prince of Persia: Revelations	2005	PSP	?
Godzilla: Unleashed: Double Smash	2007	DS	?
Prince of Persia: Rival Swords	2007	PSP/Wii	?
Zumba Fitness	2010	Xbox 360	Fabric
Wreck-It Ralph	2012	Wii/DS/3DS	?
Godzilla: Smash 3	2014	Android/iOS	Unity
Prominence Poker	2016	Windows (32bit)/PS4/Xbox One	Unreal
Magic Spellslingers	2022	Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android	Unity

Virtual Machine

Spigot uses a "PWK Virtual Machine", version 3.01 in Wheel of Fortune (2010, Wii). It appears to be used for scripting, and the scripts are contained in matching .pvd and .pvm files.

Debug info

Some games have shipped with debugging information included, allowing for function/class names to be extracted.

Known games with debugging info:

• Wheel of Fortune (2010, Wii)
• Jeopardy (2010, Wii)
• Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009, Wii)
• Zumba Fitness (2010, Wii)
• Merv Griffin's Crosswords (2008, Wii)
• Gremlins: Gizmo (2011, Wii)
• UDraw Studio (2010, Wii)
• Monster High: Ghoul Spirit (2011, Wii)
• Haunted House (2010, Wii)

As for the debug information itself, it's included in a "default.elf" file. This file is not used by the retail game, although supposedly it is a perfect match for the retail executable if stripped and converted. There's no legitimate reason for this file to be left on the disk, so it was presumably included by mistake.

The debugging information in the file is not fully loaded by Ghidra (which seems to just get symbol names). LLVM-dwarfdump can be used to get significantly more of it, though not all of it is decodable, and the output will include a lot of "decoding failed" errors.

Bundle files

A key part of the Spigot engine are Pipeworks bundle files. These contain named, typed, and compressed resources for the game to use.

Bundle files are stored in .bdg files, although some games use alternate extensions, such as .bdx (Wheel of Fortune, 2012, Xbox) or .bd9 (Colossal Kaiju Combat™: Kaijuland Battles, 2014, Windows).

Sometimes there is an accompanying .jnl file, but this doesn't appear to be neccessary, and is more of a log file of the tool used to compile the bundle file.

The bundle file comes in many versions, with the most well analyzed at the moment being v1.20.

Bundle v1.20 format

Header definition

Offset	Name	Size	Type	Value/Notes
0	File signature	40	String	"Pipeworks bundle v1.20 (big endian)   \x1a\0"
40	Bundle name	32	String	Zero-terminated, padded with random bytes
72	File marker	1	byte	Unknown purpose, but must be 0x01
84	Types offset	4	BE Int	Offset to the directory of resource types.
88	Types length	4	BE int	Length of the directory of resource types
92	Unknown count 1	4	BE int	Multiplied by 16 and added to the resource directory length
96	Resource index offset	4	BE int	Offset to the index of resource chunks
100	Unknown count 2	4	BE int	Multiplied by 8 and added to the resource directory length
108	Unknown count 3	4	BE int	Multiplied by 8 and added to the resource directory length

Resource directory entry (variable length)

Offset	Name	Size	Type	Value/Notes
0	unknown	1	byte	seems to be 0x00 or 0x10 in all examples
1	flags/type?	1	byte	Unknown purpose. Seen values: 00, 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 08, 0x0A, 0x11,
2	Type name	n	string	Zero-terminated. Sometimes ends with '\0\xFF' for unknown reasons. (padding/off by one error?)

Resource chunk index entry (16 bytes in length)

Offset	Name	Size	Type	Value/Notes
0	Data offset	4	BE int	Offset to where the resource begins
4	unknown	1	byte
5	uncompressed length	3	BE int	The length of the resource after decompression (zlib inflate)
8	unknown	1	byte
9	compressed length	3	BE int	The length of the compressed resource
12	unknown	4	?	Possibly a resource ID?

Other software

at least Wheel of Fortune (2010, Wii) has a separate engine called "RockNRoll" which appears to be used for collision/physics.

It also uses the Fonix middleware for speech (recognition or lip-syncing?), and FMOD for audio playback. Videos are encoded in the THP format.