Game data tables - Last War

1,279 balance/config tables, each a data-only Lua module compiled from what is clearly a spreadsheet pipeline: positional row arrays, a column-index descriptor, and a string-interning pool for repeated values.

Table shape

T.index = { id = {1,"number"}, cost_resource = {19,"string",true} }  -- field -> {col, type, isLinked?}
T.data  = { [10100000] = {10100000, "135104", ..., "30030;200|30031;200", ...} }
T.vExt  = { "1;30|14;30", ... }   -- interned strings, referenced by 1-based index when isLinked
T.link  = { [1]={9,512025}, [2]={512026,535161} }  -- split-table partition ranges, for the largest tables

Only 4 field types exist across the entire 1,279-table corpus: string, number, array, table. Compound values are packed strings, almost universally id;count pairs joined by |. Very large tables (world monster spawns, army data) are physically split across sibling files, resolved via the link range table.

Container & versioning

A plain ZIP, one flat-namespace entry per table name, the odd .data extension is misleading; unzip -l works on it directly. Local version manifest, one line: version,size,md5,timestamp, matching the filename table_{version}_{md5}.data. Table updates are tracked and patched (bsdiff) fully independently of the Lua bundle and asset bundles.

Categorized index (1,279 tables)

Group	Count	Examples
`lw_*`: core “live” gameplay tables	601	heroes, army, monsters, buildings, seasons (dominated by `lw_monster*` split-table fan-out, 304 files)
`activity_*`: live-ops events	124	boxopen, hunter, easter_egg, dig
`aps_*`: A/B variant family	52	factory, pve waves, heroes rank
`season*` (non-`lw_`)	46	landmine, pass, reward_group
`build`/`city`/`scene*`	38	building, city_car, construction_queue
`monster`/`pve`/`battle` related	63	boss_stage_reward, monster_refresh
shop/pay/gold related	23	goldbrick_and_price, import_vip_pay
alliance*	26	alliance_resource, alliance_task
misc / long tail	257	daily_quest, government, chat_room, calendar, and a profanity-filter word list

These rows sum to 1,230, not the full 1,279; they’re the dominant categories, not an exhaustive partition. The remaining ~49 tables (hero/troop/army data, resource/economy, rank/leaderboard, guide/novice-flow, item/artifact, and a few UI/language tables) weren’t individually bucketed.

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