Pipeworks Spigot Engine

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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[1] 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.

  1. Possibly only uses Spigot for the menu system between the games