Modding (CPK Files) (NoIntro and Canvas)

How to mod the game by repacking and modifying it's .cpk files.

Intro

To mod this game you need to extract / repack it's huge .cpk files. Those are compressed by LAYLA codec.

I have managed to remove the Intro and the White Canvas Frame but it is very time consuming as BASE.CPK has a compressed 23 GB and uncompressed about 45 GB (35,158 files) and this needs to be done by everyone. Such files cannot be distributed easily.

Tools & Ressources

YACpkTool

Yet Another CPK Tool
https://github.com/Brolijah/YACpkTool
Used to extract and repack. Sadly I could not get it to simply replace on the original files, might work if .cpk was rebuilt by this tool

CriPakTools (Optional)

Tool to extract/update contents of CRIWARE's CPK archive format.
https://github.com/esperknight/CriPakTools
Had errors for initial extracting, can replace but possibly only after .cpk was rebuilt by YACpkTool

VCTool

Texture Extraction Replacement
http://quackfluffy.tumblr.com/post/102839575967/valkyria-chronicles-texture-extractionreplacement

Blank usm

https://steamcommunity.com/app/212480/discussions/0/864958451467170604/
use logos.usm as a blank video

GIMP

GNU Image Manipulation Program
https://www.gimp.org/]https://www.gimp.org

Details

This is a basic guide of what to do.

Intro Movie removal

YACpkTool\YACpkTool.exe -X -i ..\BASE_MOVIES.CPK
copy /Y /B blank.usm ..\BASE_MOVIES\adv.usm
YACpkTool\YACpkTool.exe -P -i ..\BASE_MOVIES --codec LAYLA

White Canvase Removal

This requires extracting vl_cvr.htx from BASE.CPK, extracting .dds from it, modifying .dds and rebuilding everything:

YACpkTool\YACpkTool.exe -X -i ..\BASE.CPK
copy /Y /B vl_cvr.htx ..\BASE\vl_cvr.htx
YACpkTool\YACpkTool.exe -P -i ..\BASE --codec LAYLA

The packing took many, many hours and did to not move at about 50% for a very long time.
Process seems to run on just one core and heavily utilizes the disk. I had to run it on a 7200 rpm HDD for space reasons, so this might not be as bad on a stronger CPU and with a SSD.

Canvas .dds can be found in vl_cvr.htx which needs to be extracted by using VCTool

extract vl_cvr.htx
replace vl_cvr.htx

I used GIMP to modify 01.dds, 03.dds, 04.dds, 05.dds, 06.dds (deleted Image and saved with Compression: BC3 / DXT5 and Mipmaps)

This seems to work well enough, but might not be correct. Did not affect book menus and map intro, some overlay might be hardcoded or defined elsewhere. Works fine during scenes and on map. Has some minor artifacts when aiming, as the frame would actually make sense there but there is still some distortion in the middle displayed. I could not find where this is defined.

After BASE.CPK was rebuilt I kept using CriPakTools to replace vl_cvr.htx, taking a few minutes each time.

Pictures

[🅵🆁🅴🅳🅴🆁🅸🅺]

This is just horrible. I think the best way for this would be if you just upload modified base files, especially the one without canvas as a torrent file. There no way in hell people would go through the process of waiting hours for this to repack without being able to use the disk.

[Evilserge]

Also there is a better/forked version of CriPackTools with GUI: https://github.com/wmltogether/CriPakTools

[Evilserge]

Hey buddy! There is a Blender plugin for VC engine models. https://github.com/gomtuu/import_valkyria