"Everything should be built top-down, except the first time." - Alan Perlis
Code contributions are more than welcome!!!
A hacked up tool for exploring/extracting/modding files from Avalanche Studios APEX engine files, mainly Generation Zero.
Written in Python, tested only on Linux, code is a mess, because this is an experiment...
https://github.com/kk49/deca/releases
Development Releases are on the Discord
For deca specific and general GenZero, theHunter:COTW, and other APEX engine games modding. Also has a channel for development releases of deca
- Export (modelc, meshc, hrmeshc) to GLTF 2.0 (material models not complete/missing, no bones)
- Export ADF encoded spreadsheets
- Export textures to PNG
- Parsing most ADF files (Gen Zero)
- GUI to explore archive files
- Basic rebuilding of archive files to update textures, Characters/Machines work. Set pieces do not.
Support varies among the games, people are activily using deca for GenZero and theHunter:COTW
| Studio | GAME |
|---|---|
| Avalanche Studios / Systemic Reaction | Generation Zero® |
| Avalanche Studios / Expansive Worlds | theHunter™: Call of the Wild |
| Avalanche Studios | Just Cause 3 |
| Avalanche Studios | Just Cause 4 |
| Avalanche Studios | RAGE 2 |
| Avalanche Studios / Systemic Reaction | Second Extinction |
No installer, just unzip the release file in some directory and start deca_gui.exe. (not signed so windows will complain) Go to the menu and under File select New Project ..., find theHunter EXE, and wait 40 minutes the first time. It does a bunch of work to figure out possible file names, and python multiprocessing on Windows is a pain.
It will uncompress all the compressed sections of the archives and place them into "__ CACHE __" in the project directory.
It currently creates a work/hp directory one directory above where deca_gui.exe is. So you can used File/Open Project and find the project.json file to open it again. Ignore the log tab on the left and take a look at the DIR tab, which shows the entry VFS layout. Double click on nodes and the contents (if deca can parse them) appears in the tables on the right.
Individual files can be extracted with the EXTRACT button after they are selected with one click. They are placed in the project directory under "extracted". Folders can be extracted recursively so be careful unless you want to expand gigabytes of data.
Modding is a work in progress, files are extracted with the PREP MOD button and placed in the "mod" sub-directory. BUILD MOD will then package up all the files in the mod directory (which you can/must edit by hand right now) and places the results into the "build" sub-directory. The build directory contents can then be copied to the normal "dropzone" folder like in JC3 (I have not tested it with theHunter, only GZB, and even then all I know is that the game does not crash before it gets to BETA over screen)
| FILES | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| TAB/ARC | Done | |
| AAF | Done | |
| SARC | Done | |
| AVTX, ATX, DDSC, HMDDSC | Done | |
| ADF | Extractable, Parsed | Partial Handling of GameDataCollection (0x178842fe) |
| Export of modelc, meshc, hrmeshc, mdic to GLTF 2.0 (material models not correct?, missing bones) | ||
| Missing code for types that have hardcoded parsers in EXE(?) | ||
| stringlookup not fully grokked | ||
| RTPC | Extractable, Parsed | |
| OGG | Extractable | Ogg file, can be extracted |
| CFX | Extractable | Autodesk Scaleform https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler |
| .obc | Extractable | found a correlation in file size, guess at record size/count |
| RIFF | Extractable | |
| lFSB5 | Extractable | |
| RBMDL | Extractable | |
| TAG0 | Extractable | |
| btc | Extractable |
- A modified version of HavokLib (Modified version here https://github.com/kk49/HavokLib)
Learned about ALL the files here and used as a basis to understand changes made in GZ.
Big thanks to Gibbed for creating and sharing his work!!!
https://github.com/gibbed/Gibbed.JustCause3
This filled in some holes for the ADF parsing "A Fork of the Just Cause 3 tools by Rick Gibbed" https://github.com/tim42/gibbed-justcause3-tools-fork
This has information about how stranger AmfBuffer formats are "compressed" https://github.com/PredatorCZ/ApexLib
Got most of the info for parsing the custom image formats came from the source documentation for DirectX
I don't have to worry about the CFX files because of this! https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler
add this to chrome command line
--allow-file-access-from-files --allow-file-access --allow-cross-origin-auth-prompt
for object in bpy.context.scene.objects:
if object.type == 'MESH':
object.data.use_auto_smooth = False
Kaitai Format
Format files for .gfx for string extraction and older (for GZ and COTW) non RTPC world.bin files are provide with
Kaitai description files. Kaitai links Main, IDE, docs
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