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ZON is built on a “Flat-Buffer” philosophy. It is not designed to be human-readable; it is designed to be CPU-readable.

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64-Byte Alignment

Modern CPUs fetch data from RAM in “Cache Lines”. A typical cache line is 64 bytes. If your data straddles two cache lines (e.g., bytes 60-68), the CPU must fetch two lines to read one integer. This causes a “Cache Miss” or a double-fetch penalty. ZON aligns structures to 64 bytes. This ensures that when the CPU fetches a structure, it likely gets the entire hot path of data in a single cycle.

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Relative Offsets

Traditional pointers (64-bit memory addresses) are invalid when you send a file to another computer. ZON uses 32-bit Relative Offsets. 
[Header] -> Root Offset (0x10)
...
[0x10] -> String Length (4)
[0x14] -> "Hero"
This makes the format:
  1. Position Independent: The file can be loaded anywhere in memory (mmap).
  2. Compact: 32-bit pointers save 50% space vs 64-bit pointers.

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Memory Layout Visualization

+-----------------------+ <--- 0x00
| Magic (ZON1)          |
| Version (1)           |
| Root Offset (Pointer) |
+-----------------------+ <--- 0x40 (Aligned)
| String Length (4)     |
| "Hero" (4 bytes)      |
| Padding (56 bytes)    |
+-----------------------+ <--- 0x80 (Aligned)