Hello and Happy New Year.
Well, a lot has happened last year. but i decided to finally expose some well hidden secrets i collected over the past years on packing data and games.
This tutorial is 'Part 1',
Part 2 'Very Advanced Packing techniques - SFK Live Patch.' can be found
HERE
The Game i decided to play with this tutorial is Sekiro Shadows Die Twice, its a favourite game and also GOTY.
The main focus of this tutorial will be to give Fitgirl a bit of a challenge!!!
Primarily get Notepad++, Hex editor from their free sites.
Spoilers Alert: keep a second back up of the game. we will manipulate data which is compressed and at some cases encrypted.
Step 1.
Whatever the game you decide to "destroy" first you need to unpack it.
Check for the data which you will be eliminating.
Sekiro, we know that the sound data are also included in "Data1.bdt"
so even if you delete all soundfiles from the sound folder, you will be left with a copy of them inside the pack itself.
Unpacking the files will give you the duplicated files which we will manipulate.
Other Example. Resident Evil 2 has movie files inside the gigantic pack.
Step 2.
Hex Editor Check Photos.
Find as many files as you wish for them to be replaced and proceed to part 3.
Tips: in Sekiro you won't be needing to patching back those files whatsoever.
So leaving them blank is OK.
HOWEVER there are several games, what will require to keep track of the offset or even show offset in normal numerical value.
This will help later to use SFK partcopy function to patch back the files. Videos or Sounds.
More Tips: Save the file each and everytime you do this, by doing so it will even create a back up of the previous replacement. you wont be needing to start all
over.
Step 3.
Compression Selection.
Split the game into reasonable Data. you won't be needing to pack movies with textures.
i have splitted sekiro as follows:
Pack1: sound folder with all sounds expect voices. and all bdt files. oo2reck+srep+lolz2
Pack2: movies = bpk+srep+razor
Pack3: sound folder with only jap voices = srep+razor
pack4: all executables, DLLs and other various small files along with bdh files srep+exe+razor
Overall Packed Size = 7.11 GB
If you want to pack sekiro like i did here are the blocks that you can delete safely with hex editor
offset (hex)
Block 1
17f332aa to 1b898ca9
Block 2
28c02dba to 53ae4699
Block 3
55e2a35a to 59987939
Block 4
5d37301a to 622e4cf9
Block 5
647e7c6a to 66b999a9
Block 6
6acdb9ba to 754c22d9
Block 7
79eb250a to 7c00e649
PS: I am making a video out of this
