Before I go on to ask my question I realize it's poor taste to make your first post a topic but I really want to get this project out of the way.

For quite some time I've been wanting to write a program similar to the popular Anicro Desapro, however I want to be able to have my program take the converted pattern information and replace it inside of an Animal Crossing save file. I've extracted the save file however I can't read the darned thing and am have no idear what the popular method of reading the file is.

I assume that the pattern information is stored in the .dat file, but I wanted to know what the method for extracting it in a readable format is. I know that programs such as PattView and the AC Toolkit actively modify this file but I want to know how they were read in the first place.

Any help on the matter would be appreciated.