Question about ripping/modifying unencrypted CryEngine .pak data files.
 

Hi all,

I was taking a look at the "Sniper Ghost Warrior 3" .pak container files and noticed that in the GOG release the .pak container files were unencrypted and could be extracted as easily as using 7Zip to open them as archives and extract (I'm not sure if other retail releases are encrypted, as I don't have the bandwidth to check). My issue is that when I attempt to remove either all non-English language files, or only keep the English files (as some Western titles when language files are ripped do not function without the English files present), and repackage the files using 7Zip (with no compression and renaming the files to .pak) the title hangs at the end of the boot-up video (with Windows task manager reporting 0 change in activity with any hardware resource).

My first question is, is it possible to rip/modify the .pak container files in CryEngine games and if so could anyone please shed some light on where I might be going wrong? This is the first CryEngine title I've had a look at, sorry if the answer is obvious.

My second and final question is, is it possible for the title to run with the .pak container files unpacked?

Thank you for taking the time to read through this post, any help that anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated!

The pak files are zip files, so if you're making a 7z, the game won't be able to read the files. You can use Deflate on the zip to compress it a bit (although Wolcen: Lords Of Mayhem has no compression).

Both Wolcen and Crysis 3 are encrypted games, and Crysis 3 especially requires all paks to be crypted in order to load. Wolcen will load with decrypted paks, but I never tested rebuilding them.

Thank you very much for this information! I'll investigate this a bit more, I will definitely have a look at Deflate, since I was using Reflate and getting a much worse final output ratio than other users were reporting (36.4gb). I'll update this post in a few days to update anyone following this topic.