Repacker for Cities XL

[gfred]

Hello all,

I come to you for a request:
After the success of the Forum to unpack the .Pak files (I thank you for this excellent work) of the Game Cities XL (viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3544), I tried to make a repacker to be able to realize some mods for the Game.
I tried to do it using the BMS extraction script but I'm not a programmer (I work in advertising) so I have obtained no results. (And most BMS commands are Chinese for me)

The bytes having no secret for you, I humbly ask if you could not try to create a repacker for the game ?

PS: there are already repacker, unfortunately the people who own them do not want to share or distribute.They keep it like the Holy Grail.

You can find the game files in this topic viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3544

[aluigi]

PS: there are already repacker, unfortunately the people who own them do not want to share or distribute.They keep it like the Holy Grail.

yeah exist lot of those idiots that are very happy to ask here and there and have big "eyes" when they look at the code/scripts of other people to avoid to spend time on reversing (because they aren't able to do it pfff) or looking for support forcing other people to waste their time for them but then... then they adopt an atypical meaning of the word "sharing":
- sharing from the world to them = sure at full hands
- sharing from them to the world = ops, closed hands (aka "take take take, no give")

well I have taken this thread to explain my position on this matter because obviously this is not the first time that something similar happens, it's enough to read the current last posts in the Avatar and the other CitiesXL thread as most recent examples (and casually both are about games for which I wrote the only public unpackers).
so sorry for the OT but was necessary because I don't like that the wheel is reinvented 1000 times, and is not important if this is something that doesn't interest or touch me (because I have no direct interest in all these games).

returning in topic I already know Fred but I can't help him since my policy is to write only unpackers because they are the only thing I like and do for fun.

[bacter]

Well, aluigi did the hard work with the DirTable decrypter.
That can be used with minimal change to ENCODE The new DirTable!
So it's theoretically possible to write the PAK MAKER proggy.
I'w working on it. (The source code will be FREE! I'm not familiar with C, so I use Delphi)
But I found some unknown bytes:
20 bytes in the Header
20 bytes for each file in the DirTable.
What are these exactly? Maybe some hash values. But how to calculate them?
The calculation code is surely hidden somewhere in the game's core.dll,
but I did't find it yet.
Any idea?

[aluigi]

as already said I guess it's the sha1 hash.
to know on which it's calculated you must do some tests for example first verifying the one you see in each file entry with the archived and the extracted file.
if it's the same (I guess it's the one of the extracted file) the job is done.

[bacter]

Yes! The DirTable stores the SHA-160 sum of the original (unpacked) files!
Now we are one step closer to the end!

[dakutis]

Yes! The DirTable stores the SHA-160 sum of the original (unpacked) files!
Now we are one step closer to the end!

Many of the player is waiting for your result, I am one of them We believe that you can do it, and that you give us the ability to modify this game.

[RexHell]

I think this is something you want.
You'll need .Net Framework 3.5.

CitiesXLLocBin.rar

The hash is ignored in this version.
Maybe it shall be recalculated.

[bacter]

Meanwhile I created a very primitive PAK extractor / maker.

Now I replaced the PAK maker with a new, slightly modified version!
(The final version, with source code is coming soon!)

Now, this is another, bugfixed, the Almost-Final-Version!

[The attached file deleted! See my latest post for the newest version.]

[RexHell]

Ignore this... repeated post.

[RexHell]

Ignore this... repeated post.

[RexHell]

The SHA-1 calculating is handled in the new version.

CitiesXLLocBin.rar

Sorry for not localizing the GUI tool to English.
The command line PackageManipulator.exe is in English.
The GUI PackageManager.exe is simply drag and drop, except that you need to use File(F)-Open(O) to open the package.

en..
This time it requires .Net Framework 4.0.

[RexHell]

The source is here.

CitiesXLLocSrc.rar

Sorry for many repeated posts caused by slow connection.

[bacter]

Here's my PAK maker/extractor with delphi source code.

[The attached file deleted! See my latest post for the newest version.]

[Mr.Mouse]

Nice work!

[arcadoli]

Hi all,

I've programmed a complete tool for pak/unpak, import/export cities / new map, file explorer, etc.
I'm about to finish english localization of the tool, and some minor corrections.
I will post a link here when finished.