Question about "Serious Engine" ".gro" archives

[L33THAK0R]

Hi all,

Does anyone know if its possible to get the "Serious Engine" ".gro" archives to work unpacked? I'm currently working on "The Talos Principle", which has a significant number of localised language packs I was hoping to rip, however attempting to do so with 7zip causes the titles ".exe" to spout "file integrity fail" errors and the like. Alternatively I was wondering if anyone knows if its possible to remove and add certain files back to the archive post-install. I'd assume you'd have to grab the hexadecimal positions of the desired files but as data-files within ".gro" archives are already compressed I'm not sure how to go about this.

I'm aware it is theoretically possible to re-save all the data-files using the engine editor but this doesn't seem viable for 30k+ files, as well as a handful that cannot be re-saved. I had a brief discussion on the topic with some experienced modders but they haven't attempted to run the title with archives unpacked as its not required, but I was hoping maybe some of you lads have dealt with this tricky title.

[Joe Forster/STA]

Aren't .gro files plain ZIP archives?!

[L33THAK0R]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

Aren't .gro files plain ZIP archives?!

Pretty much, but the title doesn't launch with the archives unpacked. I was hoping to figure out how to either: A) get the title to launch with archives unpacked, or B) extract a given file/s and put these files back into the archive post-install.

My issue is more so with getting the title to work with modified/unpacked archives, rather than unpacking the archives.

[Masquerade]

Forgive me if this is something already covered - but expanding on what Joe is saying: why not just make a new zip file with the modifications?

Not all titles will work unpacked.

[L33THAK0R]

Originally Posted by Masquerade

why not just make a new zip file with the modifications?

I cannot do this (yet), as the title will only read from a handful of specified archives (Main game, DLC archives, patch archives), that are signed (not sure if this is a checksum or a signature yet). The desired files to be ripped are language packs.

I'll probably try going down this route of making a new zip archive for each language pack, if the file that contains the signatures and/or checksums can be modified to read other archives.

Originally Posted by Masquerade

Not all titles will work unpacked.

I'll probably have to do some more investigating myself, honestly I probably shouldn't have posted this question this early into my analysis of the game data.

After comparing the GOG & Steam versions, it seems unpacking may be possible as a "moddable" mode can be loaded in the steam version through an executable not found in it's GOG counterpart.

I'm confident theres a possibility my suggestion is possible, after conversing with various members in the "The Talos Principle" modding community. I do hope its possible, as unpacked, there are substantial gains to be had using the "Media Stream Compressor" and "Oggre" compressors, versus these compressors being applied to the packed archives.

Sorry if not all of this makes sense, its quite early in the morning & my English tends to fail me at these hours.

[FitGirl]

Afair all games on this engine has a separate exe to run them in modded state, in which signatures are ignored but MP is obviously not working.

[L33THAK0R]

FINAL UPDATE 04/08/2021: After extensive testing and discussion with a couple technical leads on the title "The Talos Principle" (under the guise of modding possibilities), it seems it is NOT possible to currently get the title to run with its archives unpacked, as any modification to the archives invalidates the internal CRC check process at run-time. There isn't any plans to make this possible as far as my discussion with said developers is concerned, as there aren't any justifiable reasons to enable this functionality, as currently modding doesn't require for the archives to be unpacked. Perhaps someone will do so in the future, but it won't come from the modding community.

Originally Posted by FitGirl

Afair all games on this engine has a separate exe to run them in modded state, in which signatures are ignored but MP is obviously not working.

I think "Talos_Unrestricted.exe" is the executable in question in this instance, but I was hard-pressed to find any actual information about it. I'm not sure if there's a proper method to modifying the ".gro" archives (perhaps using the included game-editor?), however attempting to modify the archives using "7zip" results in a file verification runtime error, when using either executable.

I'll continue to research & experiment with this.