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

[L33THAK0R]

Whats the best method for processing unencrypted UE4 ".pak" files? I've tried just applying xtool's zlib+reflate / oodle codecs but whilst the streams are picked up I always have issues decompressing, with the archives being reported as corrupted. I used to just process the pak's by unpacking and compressing the loose files but with larger titles this isn't very efficient for the user's disk I/O and with some titles I'm investigating currently (such as "Phantom Doctrine"), seemingly random files fail to decompress, pushing me to investigate again into packing the compressed ".pak" files as they're originally presented instead.

[KaktoR]

Originally Posted by L33THAK0R

Whats the best method for processing unencrypted UE4 ".pak" files? I've tried just applying xtool's zlib+reflate / oodle codecs but whilst the streams are picked up I always have issues decompressing, with the archives being reported as corrupted. I used to just process the pak's by unpacking and compressing the loose files but with larger titles this isn't very efficient for the user's disk I/O and with some titles I'm investigating currently (such as "Phantom Doctrine"), seemingly random files fail to decompress, pushing me to investigate again into packing the compressed ".pak" files as they're originally presented instead.

I took your example "Phantom Doctrine" and it works fine with xtool+srep+lzma, so... ?

[L33THAK0R]

Originally Posted by KaktoR

I took your example "Phantom Doctrine" and it works fine with xtool+srep+lzma, so... ?

Ah cheers, maybe it's lolz then thats acting up, I'll definitely have to do a bit of testing I reckon, thanks for testing it on your end!

Originally Posted by KaktoR

I don't know where your "problem" is exactly now. You can ignore the AFR message about corrputed LZO-Streams. This just means that some streams aren't compressed with lzo, use another codec or lzo version or whatever else. Just ignore it.

Ah alright, I'll definitely give recompressing with another codec a shot, since that might be whats messing things up on my end, honestly cant think of what else it could be considering I'm getting decompression issues when just packing with afr+srep (to test).