Modding Discussion .Pak files What are they, how do they work?

well i have windows 8.1 and whenever i put the code in cmd and press enter, it says i cannot run this app ?!
The Code is 100% fine. anyone know how it worked ?

 

I tried it several times and now i guess i got the right idea:

for me its like:
c:\STEAMPATH\steamapps\common\Starbound\win32\asset_packer.exe
c:\assets\test
c:\assets\test\test

so the first c: is the path to the asset_packer.exe
the second c: is my path where the extracted .pak files are (the assets) i put em in assets\test because the cmd has to create a new folder (i dunno why)
the third c: is the packed.pak file with modificated asset files inside (the files have the name "test" you just can rename it to packed.pak or type packed.pak instead of test in the cmd)

the new .pak file have now 700mb instead of 360mb thats kinda weird

 

Has to do with compression I think Reekuchan.

 

cmd was acting up for me, and i'm also using 8.1. did get it to work now though.

First copy the packed.pak to C:, this is so it doesn't get the path wrong. (it didn't recognize my program files folder prob due to the spaces in it)
then use cd command with path to go to starbound\win 32

then type:
asset_unlocker.exe C:\packed.pak C( wherever you want it, make sure you type out a new folder though)

that worked for me at least.

 

works like charm - thx for that !
and its indeed bigger now (708MB and i just added a custom ship ^^)

 

Ok i just worked with this a few times and I got it fixed....it came from what wurmheart said. If you're having issue with the asset unpacker jut repeatedly telling you how to use it. Then the issue is you have spaces in your folder names (or similar) copy the pak file to a simple folder you can type in quickly, and point it there (do the same for where it unpacks to).
So reekuchan is a good example of what I'm talking about

But basically the unpacker dosn't understand spaces in directory names and that messes it up (isn't there some way to make it accept them..like with quotes or something?)

 

This is all fine and dandy now, but would someone be able to help those with macs on how to unpack the assets from the .pak, and mod Starbound?

 

yeah i just tried this and it made my 1.7mb file jump up to over 6mb lol

now just need to figure out how to load the pack file, other than editing the bootstrap...

 

Starbound.app\Contents\MacOS maybe

 

I tried all these manuals but i got only Access denied... -.-

 

I believe custom pak files are currently broken, but mods written the old way (with files in the mods directory and appropriate merge sections) work fine.

Perhaps wait for the official pak file tutorial to be posted, which will presumably happen with the pak issue is resolved.

Don't use a folder that already exists.

 

Would it be possible for them to make the packer and unpacker do everything automatically? Just double clicking and the files are here?
It's not like the location of the files within the starbound folder are different for everyone.

 

They're not broken, I've successfully loaded my mod as a pak file and everything worked fine. I had to edit my bootstrap to load it the same way they load their packed.pak file though, which is not ideal. There's probably something new we need to do to load it directly from the mod folder as usual.

 

There is a file in the Starbound.app package for the unpacker, using the terminal you should be able to access it.

Open a terminal

Type

Code:

cd /Users/andrew/library/application support/steam/steamapps/common/starbound/starbound.app/contents/macos

Type

Code:

./asset_unpacker

See if it returns something like

Usage: asset_unpacker <assets pak path> <output folder>

If it does then you can use the command to unpack the package file.

 

What you need to do is wait for them to finish that part. As you say, distributing a mod that requires bootstrap editing isn't particularly sensible when you can just distribute mods in the old way still. Why the rush to distribute using pak files? As I said, they've said they're not completely working yet.

To be super clear:

So just relax.

 

I'm not in a rush to do anything? And you said you "believe" they don't work properly yet, but if the devs said themselves they don't then ok you are right.

edit: ok you're right, and I still don't understand why you're telling me to relax lol.

 

Ah, well then. I'll download the unpacker i guess, and try this.

 

I don't know about any other Mac users, but I've still got everything in basically the same place after updating.

 

One of the big draws to this game for me, before the update, was that you could go in and change any file you wanted and it was in plaintext.
Now, you have to unpack them? Does the game access the unpacked assets instead of the packed ones, after unpacking, then? Do I have to re-pack the changed files? It used to be so quick to make one little change.

At least they won't get too many people complaining about editing their files wrong. Not many people will be able to test little changes easily anymore.

 

Erh, what's that command? xD ./is sorry

I'm not very good at this, as you can see.