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

[KaktoR]

Just read a topic about unpacking PCK files. Nothing new, honestly, but an idea came in my mind about not just unpacking them, but also encode/decode the WEMs inside the PCK files. So far, nothing new. Just wanted to know, if there is a "elegant" way instead of my idea floating in my head. Maybe somthing more "automated".

I already know that this method works and it's CRC perfect after the last step.

1. Unpack PCK files with quickbms + wwise.bms
2. Copy unpacked files to somewhere else, so you have 2 copys of them
3. Use WEMTool on the first copy in game folder
4. Null all WEM files on the second copy outside of game folder and reimport them back with quickbms to PCK files in game folder. This way you can compress the PCK files* with ~0-1% ratio
5. Compress the game with nulled PCK files* and encoded WEM files

Installing the repack
1. After installing, you have to decode all processed WEM files back to their original with WEMTool again
2. Reimport decoded WEM files and BNK files back to PCK files with quickbms import feature

[Masquerade]

This will absolutely work however you can replace The QuickBMS reimport with XTool erase/decode since the contents of a PCK aren't compressed so the wems will appear in plain bytes.

I've wanted in the past to find some way of adding a wem plugin to XTool so wems don't need to be extracted to disk (which is a long time when there are often thousands of tiny wems).