How do I combine UltraArc and CIUv2?
 

Hi guys,

So I can make a setup.exe with CIUv2
and I can compress a game with UltraArc

Now how the heck do I combine the two? So that I have the setup.exe that installs the game (unpacks it from the compressed files) using that setup.exe?

I have tried reading all the wikis and using the FreeArc for Inno that is posted in other threads, but I am still confused how to actually tell Inno "here are the files to compress" etc?

Thanks

You only need:
1. Setup.exe (with your choice of compressors from "External Compressor.ini"
2. Compressed game archives
3. Records.ini (it will be created by UltraArc automatically

That's all.

Run Setup.exe and just install.

Is there a sample of "External Compressor.ini" somewhere so I know what its supposed to look like? I am using precomp and LZMA2

Precomp is no more included in latest CIU version (because simply no one use this).

Whats the most used? And how do I find out?

Check for streams in game files (use GFS/ooscan -> https://fileforums.com/showthread.php?t=96782)

Use xtool/ztool with fitting codec

Example:
zlib => xtool:zlib (xZLib)
lz4 => xtool:lz4 (xLZ4)
and so on

Not all games have streams (or they are crypted), then use just srep+lzma(2)

Dont see either GFS or ooscan in that list, are they called something else there?

Oh sorry, you can find GFS here > https://fileforums.com/showthread.php?t=99270

ooscan is only for oodle compressed games (you can identify them by having a file in game folder called "oo2core_#_win64.dll") which are not that often until now.

Thanks, trying to use xtool.... but am struggling. Is there a tutorial on it? I see that included bat file is passing switches to arc.exe, why not xtool.exe?

When I point pack.bat to my game it says:
Compressing 6,042 files, 7,398,507,966 bytes. Processed 0.0%
Then just quits immediately without any errors.

Which pack.bat you use? And what game?

Dark Souls Remastered

and the pack that was included with xtoolV10
arc.exe a -ep1 -r -ed -s; -w.\temp -mxprecomp data.arc "pack\*"

Have you copied/moved the game to pack folder? Is :zlib set in arc.ini?

Yes the game was moved (it detects 6042 Files)

and arc.ini is default:

So what streams the game use actually (use GFS and choose zlib+lz4+lzo+zstd)

If the game use zlib then change in arc.ini
Sometimes it happens that pack.bat do nothing and process seems finished after 1 or 2 seconds. In this case just retry (it has some bugs I guess).

Tried that, same deal. At this point the issue is not that it wont compress... the issue is that it just does nothing.

Do I need to do something in xtool.ini?

edit: wait a minute... am I using xtool wrong? Can xtool be called to compress a directory with a ton of files? Or does each file to compress have to be specified?