ARK Smart Breeder Viewer
Open and explore ARK Smart Breeder .asb creature library files in Visual Studio Code.
.asb files are stored as a single line of JSON, which makes them painful to read in any editor. This extension turns that into something you can actually use.
Features
Visual editor (default)
Opens .asb files into a structured table view, grouped by species:
- Named stat columns (HP, Stamina, Torpidity, Oxygen, Food, Water, Temperature, Weight, Melee, Speed, Temp Fortitude, Crafting) with full names on hover.
- Wild / mutated / domesticated levels rendered together per stat.
- Sex, status, mutation, neuter, mutagen, growing, ancestor, and bred badges.
- Taming effectiveness and imprinting bonus.
- Owner, tribe, color regions.
- Lineage display when parent GUIDs and generation are present, including mutation counters and imprinter name.
- Live filter across species, names, and owners.
- Server multipliers, players, and tribes shown in a collapsible section.
JSON text view with semantic highlights
Right-click a .asb file and Open With → Text Editor (or run ARK Smart Breeder: Open as Text) to view the raw JSON with custom inline color highlights:
- Sex values colored male/female.
isBred: true, status, mutation counts, imprinting, and taming effectiveness highlighted.- Species blueprint, name, owner, and tribe values colored distinctly.
- Color region IDs prefixed with a small colored swatch — anchored to canonical ARK colors for IDs 0–50, deterministic HSL fallback for the rest.
- Single-line
.asb files are auto-formatted on open for readability.
ARK Smart Breeder: Format Document pretty-prints the JSON in place.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
arkSmartBreeder.formatOnOpen |
true |
Pretty-print single-line .asb files when opened. |
arkSmartBreeder.decorate |
true |
Apply inline color highlights to .asb files in the text editor. |
Editing
The visual editor is read-only by design. .asb is the on-disk format consumed by the ARK Smart Breeder application; round-tripping edits through a third-party tool risks dropping fields the format may add in future versions. Edit your library inside ARK Smart Breeder itself.
Attribution
ARK Smart Breeder, the .asb file format, and the icon used by this extension are the work of cadon and contributors, licensed under the MIT License. The full upstream notice is bundled with this extension as NOTICE-ARKStatsExtractor.txt.
This extension is an independent third-party viewer and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the ARK Smart Breeder project or Studio Wildcard.
License
MIT
| |
