Best Compression Methods for 'Specific' Games. Q&A

[L33THAK0R]

Based on latest CSF

xtool (marginal zlib gains) + srep + lolz

Original Size: 22.9 GiB
Without Ripped Videos: 12.9 GiB
With Ripped Videos: 14.4 GiB

Non-EN loc., 894 MiB of "optional videos" (start-up cinematics and a 853 MiB promotional video that was used for the "Dawn of the Rise of the Fallen Machines" DLC (same video as seen in this YouTube video), as well as the credits cinematic. Should be noted for ripped videos a dummy Bink video needs to be written from the start offset of a given ripped video, otherwise the title softlocks.

Bink videos are also unable to be packed despite being KB2j variants, either with the xtool plugin or with bpk, bpk refuses outright, xtool plugin at least detects the streams, decoding with the RAD Video Tools shows no visual or audio artefacts strangely.

Attached are some modding scripts that are useful if anyone wants to dig around the files further, I know the original XBOX release had assets compressed with LZ4 (From watching GDC talks where Insomniac developers directly reference this) however I was unable to find any LZ4 streams in either the asset archives or in the decompressed assets, zlib streams are largely in the toc/dag files from testing.

Further gains could likely be made by compressing the audio, encoded with the *.wem structure. Spent a long time trying different approaches, very disappointed with how this one turned out but I've got quite the backlog of projects and alas I have to move on.