VDFS virtual file system

VDFS is the virtual file system used by ZenGin to distribute and store many, but not all, game assets.

Loading

VDF

.vdf files can usually be found in the Data/ directory of Gothic installations and the game loads them automatically.

Volumes are loaded based on the timestamp specified inside the .vdf file. The volumes with the latest timestamp are loaded first.

MOD

.mod files are stored in the Data/ModVDF/ directory and loaded when they are specified in the current game .ini.

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// [...]
[FILES]
VDF=MyMod.mod  MyMod_Textures.mod
// [...]

Tools

The community created variety of different modding tools for work with VDFS volumes over the times, such as:

GothicVDFS

Most popular tool for working with VDFS volumes. Allows viewing, extracting and building .vdf and .mod archives, and has CLI interface.

VDFS Tool

New tool for working with VDFS volumes, created to support features introduced by Union. Apart from viewing, extracting and building .vdf and .mod archives, it also supports optimizing and compressing them.

Comparison