Firaxis PakBuild is an obstrepterous beast

[drjest2000]

As I have been adding content to the CivGold, the loading times were starting to get pretty long. I looked and discovered that I had nearly 650 MB worth of LeaderHeads (so far). Well, I decided to make an FPK.

I read the tutorial, I followed the instructions, I got a 0 byte file.

Okay, so I figured I did something wrong, so I re-read the tutorial, every post in the thread this time and see where I went wrong.

So I go at it again.

Rinse, repeat... 587 MB file that the game cannot read....

Okay, I try it in different folders, still nothing.

So I re-read the tutorial again. I do it step by step by the process. Again I get a 0 byte file.....

I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get it to do the thing it is supposed to do. I do it the same way EVERY time and get a different result every time... one time 121 MB, the next 288, the next 1.2 GB, and so on.

Long story short, on the 19th attempt of doing it precisely the same way, it creates a file that the game can read AND works... however, now the game cannot find the icons for the leaderheads even though they are in the FPK and the directory structure was preserved *head desk*

So I call my friend Pete in San Diego who is a more experienced modder and he says "Oh... well, I'll say this much: PakBuild has personality, the kind that is usually followed by disorder."

It seems that he has had quite a lot of experience with PakBuild, very little of it good. So his solution is to just put up with the long load time.

His final advice: "Make a sammich or something, it's just a game...."

 

[orlanth]

Really? I'd never encountered any problems with FPKs, & basically just went by the tutorial as you did. Well 587MB is a really huge amount of LHs though, maybe that's just too large an amount for it to deal with. I do remember you do need to let it run a long time & be absolutely sure it's finished, otherwise the FPK you get may be only partially complete.

One thing with FPKs is, it seems the game looks in the actual /Art folders first, and only loads from the FPK if it can't find what it looks for in the /Art path directly. That's convenient if you need to upload a patch since you can just make a zip of the needed /Assets/Art files without redoing the whole FPK. But also keep this in mind since it can easily get confusing when it's actually loading from different sources

 

[drjest2000]

Okay, that makes sense. I probably didn't give it long enough to complete its work. It indicated that it was finished, but, then, I am coming to expect nothing less than lies from software >_<

Edit: Okay, after looking at the size of the FPKs in Civ4 vanilla, I limited the size of the files to 100 MB and created enough to accommodate all 650 MB (7 files) and don't you know, it worked the first time without a problem.

I tried again with the files size set at 200 MB limit (4 files), it worked perfectly.

I tried again at 300 MB and it started getting hinky. When I tried 400 MB, it really started messing up. CPU and RAM usage shot up to 100%. So I'm thinking that smaller is definitely better where PakBuild is concerned.

 

[Kailric]

Okay, that makes sense. I probably didn't give it long enough to complete its work. It indicated that it was finished, but, then, I am coming to expect nothing less than lies from software >_<

Edit: Okay, after looking at the size of the FPKs in Civ4 vanilla, I limited the size of the files to 100 MB and created enough to accommodate all 650 MB (7 files) and don't you know, it worked the first time without a problem.

I tried again with the files size set at 200 MB limit (4 files), it worked perfectly.

I tried again at 300 MB and it started getting hinky. When I tried 400 MB, it really started messing up. CPU and RAM usage shot up to 100%. So I'm thinking that smaller is definitely better where PakBuild is concerned.

Well, I have never had any issues with PakBuild, not to make you bang your head anymore. M:C is over 700mb and works just fine. When I run pakbuild it seemingly freezes up for a while but if I leave it alone it eventually finishes what it was doing.

 

[drjest2000]

I'm going to guess and say that you being on a 64-bit system makes things run better in all ways.

Like I said, I'm not sure when to "believe" that PakBuild is "finished".

The first three times I tried, it displayed the files in the FPKs on the right hand side, but the hard drive activity light kept blinking for about 20 minutes, then I ended up with a single file that the game didn't recognize.

When I did the files with a 100 MB size limit, it packed them in under a minute and they worked without error. I figure the guys at Firaxis limited the FPKs in Civ 4 vanilla to 100 MB for a reason. My guess is that once the internal file manifest exceeds a certain size it causes issues with memory and CPU usage on 32-bit systems like mine.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Okay, that makes sense. I probably didn't give it long enough to complete its work. It indicated that it was finished, but, then, I am coming to expect nothing less than lies from software >_<

Edit: Okay, after looking at the size of the FPKs in Civ4 vanilla, I limited the size of the files to 100 MB and created enough to accommodate all 650 MB (7 files) and don't you know, it worked the first time without a problem.

I tried again with the files size set at 200 MB limit (4 files), it worked perfectly.

I tried again at 300 MB and it started getting hinky. When I tried 400 MB, it really started messing up. CPU and RAM usage shot up to 100%. So I'm thinking that smaller is definitely better where PakBuild is concerned.

Yeah, it's always wise to have several smaller PAK files
I usually keep them around 100-200 MB
(I also use a 32 bit OS)