HAWKEN for example, is being pulled from the PC. I wanted to archive the models and assets to look at later or 3D print myself a little memento. Now they use UE3 not 4, and are packaged into a “upk” not “pak” but the same principle is there. I wouldn’t really call it illegal unless you distribute or profit off their assets. That’s just my 2 cents.
So I have a totally valid reason for wanting to unpak MY OWN WORK. So long story short… I forgot to make a back up LOL! I have a game where I have been trying to achieve some clever camera tricks for controlling pawns both in and out of VR without having to change the actual pawns code, but instead use separate controllers. I made a working concept that was done mostly in the level blueprint. I packed that up and brought it to a game dev event and showed it off. I still have this file. The project file I unfortunately tried to move all the processes into the controllers and the whole thing went bunk and now I can’t make out which way I did things. All I have is the camera transform replicating to the controller transform logic that I needed for this project. That was the tough part to figure out so If I have to I can remake the whole thing, BUT I did do a lot of stuff to the character class and I don’t want to have to re-figure out what I did. I was hoping to unpack my .pak so I can see what stupid little thing I did that broke the whole system. At current all my character does is spin in place regardless of what controller I assign to it and or what order things get possessed. It’s really annoying.
Since I have the original project could I get a key from it to extract the .pak???
The Morality Police make me laugh! Almost everyone has unpacked, just to see how something works. Since sometimes documentation is limited we are forced to unpack and examine. Stealing and or using someone else’s assets is wrong! No one should ever do that! I have ripped into everything I can to see how the models were made or to examine the textures, animation files etc. I build 100% of my own content! I couldn’t give a rat’s hairy bunghole if someone examines my assets, just as long as they do not reuse, repack and or sell without me getting my pie!
The forum has rules against the topic, Epic can’t support that type of thing.
I want to unpack my own game’s pak file to debug something. There is no need to be salty 
Yes, i need to know this too. Copy my Map into another folder, now its broken (1kb). But i Pak it yesterday, so it’s the only way to restore my Level 
Nvm. it’s “…\Engine\Binaries\Win64\UnrealPak.exe” “C:\Temp\MyGamePaked.pak” -extract “C:\Temp\Extract\Here”. You need to correct the path…
Hmm, I was wanting to hopefully edit some Assets of State of Decay 2. The devs have stated they are not going to support modding but are also not going to stop it.
I wanted to find and and extract the textures (i am guessing somewhere in the Paks) and hopefully remove the Red and Yellow glowing eyes.
This might be not even a property of textures but materials or baked into the mesh itself, idk. I am extremely knew to Unreal Engine as in, I downloaded it today. lol
But this is the only reason I got it, to try make some mods for State of Decay 2.
The Packs are all encrypted but I think people have figured out some mods. totally unsure how as its probably all discussed on Discord somewhere, nothing I can find on Google.
But Reading that assets cant be extracted once the game is Cooked, above? So that might be impossible by the sound of it.
I have seen mods that Change zombie types from one to another and increase Zombie Horde sizes. Also ones that remove Certain animations.
I have only ever made mods for Bethesda games in the past and so of course this is completely different, but I don’t really wanna spend too much time trying to learn Unreal engine if I am unable to extract the assets.
It’s 2019 and I’m wondering this too right now, as TwinMotion is available and I’m not using Revit or ArchiCad, the dynamic link plugins are supposed to give access to FBX and material export options, but the option I have is for BIM Motion export, images, and video’s only, the BIM Motion data exports as 2 PAK files with the base UE4 structure, and the TM and other files don’t import into UE4. My guess is that’s where the files that need to be imported back into the engine are to work with them, unless a plugin is created or the importer in UE4 updated to include that format or an update to the Datasmith Plugin, unless there’s another official way to do it. I remember when old pak files used to just be zip files with the extension changed from *.zip to *.pak without any encryption at all, also how the wav and mp3 files were stored etc… Then again compression for that wasn’t used beyond the built in file format’s compression via the codec’s, more of a thing to organize the file structure, later versions of Windows came out and the zip files were treated more like direct folders you can double click on to view things inside.
One example of the usefulness of unpacking a pak file:
I submitted a patch for a game. The owners of the platform that this patch was to shipped on said “Hey, your patch is too big, please tell us what has changed from the last build to this build.”.
Using a tool that they provided, I was able to unpack their package. Then using a tool that Unreal provides I was able to unpack a .pak file. And then finally, I was able to use a simple python script to get a list of all of the modified files from the base game to this patch.
Hopefully can be useful:
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MODS my Bros!
what people do with your product after purchasing it is nobody else’s business but their own. you do not get to own information. it is not your property. imagine if a manufacture of a laptop said that they would sue you if you open it to look at what’s inside. the whole idea of thinking a user shouldn’t be able to analyze a product that they spent their own money on to obtain is completely asinine.
imagine a world that had no protections on intellectual property. if someone opened a laptop and looks at it, no one cares. if you took microcode from the CPU and copied it / used it to modify your own and then released your own CPU? the manufacturer will have a lot of fun with you in court. **looking at something =/= copying something. **you can look all you want.
you need to look at things in context here. this is a game dev forum with game devs asking other game devs how to unpack other game devs work. This isn’t some random person that wants to have a look-see for fun.
“you do not get to own information. it is not your property.” you are completely wrong. You can and do own information, and in most countries, you are well within your right to sue if someone steals it, because it is yours. you own it.
I find it funny that this debate is still going on even though dark has already commented that none of this thread is supported by Epic and has the potential to break UE4’s EULA.
I don’t know why people are still trying to fight with you on this. It seems they’re the paranoid ones and are looking to justify their own actions.
Some of the greatest scientists in history came from poverty, I bet Einstein would have discovered all the great things he did if an “ethically and morally correct” fellow like you told him to pay for every bit of knowledge or made him redescover the wheel.
Also, comparing stealing a car to looking up some code? Yeah, good arguments.
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What about modding? Is that morally wrong?
I disassembled different kind of unity games as a learning experience. I also unpacked blizzard game assets and even Fortnite stuff just to learn from them. It was a good training to see that those folks just do mortal stuff on a higher level than me. Its part of a learning experience everyone should go through. Of cause you have open source stuff like Unreal Tournament. Well that reminds me that I wanted to have a deeper look into that as well.
For the copyright warriors out there, I had to use this to debug an issue with assets not making it into the pak file. It was tricky to find out what was going on until simply unpacking the pak file and taking a look.
Given that Epic provides a tool to do this and the engine by necessity has to be able to do this, and is open source. And plenty of games are open to mods even when they don´t support any convinient methods or tool to do so, arguing about why you shouldn´t instead of anwering the question seems a waste of everyones time.
Including the answer posted originally by Hitemup so I will not make the answer harder to find and waste more developer hours
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Being able to view the work of others does not automatically imply theft or malfeasance of any sort. Those who claim it does are saying that they can not only read the minds, but the intent of…pretty much everyone else. A little bit arrogant if you ask me.
An example of benign use : a game I am helping support has many serious performance challenges…which can be very hard to nail down because items do not individually drag the server down to such a phenomenal degree as to be visible when a single item is placed. But, having been a Senior C++ Dev both for business and games, AND a Senior (L3) *nix System Admin, AND a Senior Performance Test Engineer…i know that optimizing for performance is not something inherently known by, or taught to, Developers. There is precious little code that can not benefit from even a quick read-through by a perf test engineer.
IN this case the blueprint code that was kindly provided to me, which allowed me to find several items that used the attached snippet. If that snippet -name erased to protect the innocent- doesn’t make you cringe then you have no business developing games. BUT the point is - when you take a CLOSED mod to your game, you are placing a HUGE amount of trust in the author(s).
Such rabid declarations as I’ve seen here about how ANY peek at another’s code is immoral suggests that the author of the code is basically claiming to know the intent of every single person wishing to see the code…This ridiculous and offensive claim is really just an attempt to hide that they are not willing to reciprocate the trust they expect us -those who use their code- to extend. This is regrettably common.
Did i steal the code above ? I wouldn’t be caught dead using such. But the Author of the code benefited by sharing it with me.
THE POINT IS : don’t pretend to know my intent. Viewing another’s code is not stealing it - the theft comes with what you do with the code you’ve viewed.
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