Macapaka Now Supports Civ5 .FPK FIles

[AlanH]

I noticed that the Civ5 installation includes a Resource folder, and that contains a number of .fpk files. Each of these files contains multiple files, and they seem to perform a similar function to the AssetsX.fpk files used in Civ4, but the format is not identical. So I have adapted my Macapaka utility to extract and create files in this format.

Download Macapaka version 2.0.0 if you want to explore these files.

I understand that the Nexus component of the Windows SDK is able to process some of these files, and a fan-created Windows utility does the others. Now you have one for the Mac

I have not tested it to destruction, and some of the .dds files it extracts don't open in GraphicConverter, but I haven't investigated that to determine whether the files are corrupt or GC is just limited. Please let me know if you find any problems with it.

 

[Helmling]

Could you repeat that in English for me?

 

[bismarrck]

This is a good news! But I do not know much about it. When I was in holiday, I would look into it.

 

[AlanH]

Could you repeat that in English for me?

If anyone ever wants to mod the basic files that are installed with Civ5 they may need to extract some of them from files in the Civ5 Resource directory. The packed files, like their counterparts in Civ4, have names ending in .fpk. I have extended my existing Civ4 utility to extract their contents.

 

[rj86]

Awesome work Alan.

 

[ainwood]

You should cross-post this to the Creation & Customization forum (if you haven't already).

 

[AlanH]

This is Mac-only, and I'm not sure there are any Mac modders yet - the current Mac version of Civ5 doesn't even allow you to load mods! I only did this out of curiosity, really. Windows modders have their own utilities for this stuff, plus they can actually use the files when they've extracted them.

So I'm not sure there's much point in stoking up yet another Mac flame war over in C&C at this stage.

 

[Keinpferd]

When helping on the Mac mod PAE III, which will be released within the next days, I was using your Civ IV .fpk-extractor every day. It is a very useful tool! So I take the fact, that you decided to do the same thing for Civ V, too, as a quite optimistic statement, that sooner or later the modding situation with Civ V will change for the better. Actually, you must have some info from behind the scenes, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered, I reckon?

I wish there was some kind of wikileaks revelation of what's going on behind those scenes, for it seems, that they hardly ever talk honestly about anything and feel they have to hide their thoughts behind some mask of professionalism. That's my only speculative explanation for the Civ V (Mac modding-) disaster, since we know, the lead designer is a modder himself, who kind of "emerged" from the Civ community.

 

[AlanH]

Actually, you must have some info from behind the scenes, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered, I reckon?

Actually, not in the slightest. I only have the same information that you can read here and in other public forums.

Macapaka is reasonably modular, and only needed a few changes to make it capable of reading the Civ5 files, so I did them. Not a big deal.

 

[civ_king]

When helping on the Mac mod PAE III, which will be released within the next days, I was using your Civ IV .fpk-extractor every day. It is a very useful tool! So I take the fact, that you decided to do the same thing for Civ V, too, as a quite optimistic statement, that sooner or later the modding situation with Civ V will change for the better. Actually, you must have some info from behind the scenes, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered, I reckon?

I wish there was some kind of wikileaks revelation of what's going on behind those scenes, for it seems, that they hardly ever talk honestly about anything and feel they have to hide their thoughts behind some mask of professionalism. That's my only speculative explanation for the Civ V (Mac modding-) disaster, since we know, the lead designer is a modder himself, who kind of "emerged" from the Civ community.

If we make our own tools Aspyr might be willing to make some changes in the Civ V Mac code that allows easier coding

The reason we don't have mod tools is because they are built in .NET 4.0 which being made by Microsoft doesn't have a Mac version

 

[Helmling]

See, I really, really want to make a mod, but I also really, really don't want to have to spend that much time in Windows--of course, I've already spent a ton of time in Windows playing Civ 5.

I wonder, Alan, if you think it's going to end up being possible to make a mod for Mac (would it be Mac-only then?) that tweaks some of the core game...or is the Windows SDK still going to be a deal breaker for serious modding?

 

[Skwink]

If anyone ever wants to mod the basic files that are installed with Civ5 they may need to extract some of them from files in the Civ5 Resource directory. The packed files, like their counterparts in Civ4, have names ending in .fpk. I have extended my existing Civ4 utility to extract their contents.

Thanks for this info!

 

[AlanH]

I wonder, Alan, if you think it's going to end up being possible to make a mod for Mac (would it be Mac-only then?) that tweaks some of the core game...or is the Windows SDK still going to be a deal breaker for serious modding?

I'm pretty sure Aspyr will enable some level of mod compatibility in a future release. This will be limited to loading basic mods containing custom maps, graphics or lua script changes. In theory, that *ought* to allow us to run all mods that are available for Windows today. If enough graphics and mapping tools are created, either by Aspyr or by fans, it should be possible to build such mods on a Mac, and they *ought* to be able to load and run in Windows.

Currently, the Windows installation contains a file called "CvGameCoreDLLFinal Release.dll". I believe it is expected that the source code for this DLL will eventually be released, and that it will be recompilable using the Windows GameBuddy SDK, enabling Windows modders to develop and adapt the game logic. From that point on, most mods created for Windows will cease to be compatible with the Mac version.

As far as I can tell there's no equivalent to "CvGameCoreDLLFinal Release.dll" in the Mac version. It is therefore very likely that Aspyr have done the same thing they did with Civ4, and compiled the DLL code into the main application. So there are no hooks for linking an external custom library to. Even if we could modify and recompile the DLL code on a Mac, there would be nothing to run it. Nothing published so far gives any hope that this will change in a future release.