Question

I had previously also asked a question on this and was unable to get any concrete reply. I hope this time you guys will help me out.I have graphics files with “.des” extension when I open them in xcode I just see a long number or probably a hash code 1245.5678.2457.3578… like this. Now I want to be able to see these “.des” files in form of image in some software so that I can change them.
I have tried coreldraw and interscope blackbox but it did not work for me.Looking forward to hear from you guys.

Answer 1

DES File: What they are and how to create them

In Open GL ES (this is the name of the low level library for drawing 2d or 3d graphics on your iPhone) you can properly load images only in a specific size – this size is called the “power of two” (read more)

EXAMPLE: 512pixels x 512pixels = 29 pixels x 29 pixels or 1024 x 1024 = 210 x 210

But in real life is really hard to keep all your graphics materials in power of two sizes (POT). In modern OpenGL versions you can find a way to load non-POT images but this is not effective and will eat more memory while holding your textures.

To solve this issue you can put all you small images in to one really big image (sometimes called a resource image, atlas, sprite sheet, sprite list, etc). We call this an Atlas.

So what does DES mean?

A DES file is very tiny plain text file. In this file you can find information about the atlas file including: where to find atlas (resource) image AND describe the position of original image on atlas image.

Basically, this DES file tells us where certain images are in the big ATLAS image.
As example if you have a folder called MainMenu and two files button.png and levelIcon.png after atlas making process you’ll have two DES files button.des and levelIcon.des and two big images MainMenu.png and MainMenu_hi.png ( *_hi.png is for Retina Displays and IPad )