Removing white border (Step by Step)

This guide follows the other guide about this, created by the user Aetherion (thanks man!). But i will provide the necessary file and the instructions will be a lot more detailed because I struggle following the other guide tbh.
Also, this only removes the white border in the actual game(on the map). IT does not remove the white border in the menus or pre-rendered cutscenes

Required Files

-File without the white border vl_cvr.htx -3.14Mb
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FOrEvO3ID4h4-XjwS7EhLpbbaBiLUuRn

-YACpkTool
https://github.com/Brolijah/YACpkTool/releases
For this guide i downloaded "YACpkTool_v1.1.zip"

Disclaimer

*We are going to UNPACK the 23GB, BASE.CPK file with YACpkTool,
the extracted folder will use around 45GB of disk space. The unpacking is a pretty quick process.(around 3 to 5min on a decent cpu), so you will need at least 70GB free on your hard drive.

*Now, the bad news is the packing, it can take some hours to finish. I did it on a Intel i3 8350k, and the process took around 2 to 3 hours to finish.

But in my opinion, it was worth it, the game looks so much better without the white border (personal taste of course)

Steps

1 - Download YACpkTool (download link in the Required tool section of this guide) and extract all the files on a new folder on a disk with at least 70gb free. (i did explain why in the disclaimer section)

2- Go to your VC4 installation folder and COPY (DO NOT CUT IT) the file BASE.CPK (23GB) to the new folder where you extracted YACpkTool.

Your Folder should look like this:


http://prntscr.com/muox7r

3- In a white space on your folder, press Left Shift button and Right mouse click, a contextual menu will appear, then Click on "Open Command Window from here"

3.1 it can also sometimes say "Open PowerShell/Terminal Here" that's fine too. BUT if you open with Powershell or Terminal you HAVE to type "cmd" and hit enter.. This is only for Powershell/Terminal people.

Like this:

Screenshot: https://prnt.sc/muouaz


****IF YOU HAVE YOUR FILES ON THE C: DRIVE. YOU WILL NEED TO RUN CMD AS ADMIN, OR IT WILL NOT WORK. ****

4- Run this command on the CMD window

 
YACpkTool.exe -X -i \BASE.CPK

after a few minutes, you will have a new folder called BASE (44.8GB)
it should look like this now


http://prntscr.com/muoz7d

***DO NOT CLOSE THE CMD WINDOW YET, we are going to use it one more time later***

5- Now copy the file I provided in the Required Files section of this guide. ( vl_cvr.htx (3.14Mb) ) and paste it inside the recently created BASE folder. It will ask you if you want to replace the file.. Hit YES.

6 - Delete or Rename the BASE.CPK file you unpacked in step 4, Because It will be replaced on the next step by YACpkTool.

7- Now the worst part, Packing the BASE folder. Run this code on the cmd window we used in step 4.

 
YACpkTool.exe -P -i \BASE --codec LAYLA

Now, we wait for 2 to 3 hours... The process goes fast until it reaches 48%, this is where it takes most of the time, once it passes 54% is fast again.


****BE AWARE OF SOMETHING*****

 
if you are on win 7, 8 or an older version of windows 10 this will NOT affect you, but if you are on a newer version of windows 10 please be aware that the cmd window has a "pause" function now. IF your CMD title windows says "SELECT" (like this http://prntscr.com/mup7td  )  is in pause mode and YACpkTool is NOT doing anything. YOU NEED TO HIT ENTER KEY ONCE inside the cmd, to make cmd work again.

*Another way to see is YACpktool is actually working is selecting the new Base.cpk file and see the file properties, the file size need to be larger and larger every 30 sec. 

8 - When YACpkTool finish, you should have a new BASE.CPK file.. Move it to the VC4 installation folder. Replace the original base.cpk that comes with the game. It will be a good idea to make a backup of the original file, just in case the process didn’t work and you don’t want to download 23gb again.

7- Play the game!

Screenshots

[Vincent]

Looks like it also remove the "Streak" effect. Any possibilities to remove or reduce the effect of the White Border, while keeping the Streak ? Valkyria Chronicles 1 had mods to to adjust such things separately.

[ElixiR]

Hikari your file works perfectly to remove border, thanks

[Hikari Sakai]

Here, I'll save everyone some time. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoOTwyLCaI8yiI0wlcdMzubgPvMotQ?e=sBG0pz
feel free to download my version of the BASE.cpk file, realized this guides method takes ages even with a decent PC so feel free to just download this file instead and put it in the installation folder of the game and you're good to go.

[Hikari Sakai]

Man you weren't lying, I have an i7 12700K, 3080 and an SSD and its taking hours lol

[BigBoss828]

This works as of May 5th 2024. As a commenter said below, you will need to do EXACTLY as the instructions said.

[huntersorce20]

just tried following all the steps, not only did it not get rid of the border for me, now the game audio does not work for me. oh well, back to base game files.

[Joueur00]

It works and its amazing, thank you very much

[Gunderwar]

The repacking process works fine however if you use other files to modify the unpacked BASE.CPK the new repacked modified BASE.CPK will be an abnormal file size. In my case I used 1 additional file to remove the small quips Miles has at the Research tab at Headquarters (town0003.lua) and repacked the BASE folder into the new BASE.CPK, the final size came out to 44.8 GB, significantly larger than what the original compressed BASE.CPK was (23 GB) so I guess the repacking process did not compress the files back to what they were.

I retried the repacking process, I made a mistake in not properly setting the compression codec,
made an error on my part. One problem I have with doing this is being able to specify the CPU usage. I have a i7-7700k OC to 4.5 GHz and PowerShell's performance was only showing around 14% to 16% CPU utility thus making the process take longer than needed when you have the processing power to spare.

[JunglePredator]

Well... this worked fine on Windows 10 but on Windows 11 when I'm trying to repatch the base.cpk I keep getting errors from all the CPK tools.
Extracting causes YaCPKTool to give the error linked below & attempting to use the rebuild modes causes it to complain about the other error in the same pastebin link.
CriPakTools also gave an error & I can't understand xtool.
Anyone have any ideas?


Errors can be viewed at : https://pastebin.com/tSwVaYHd

[🅵🆁🅴🅳🅴🆁🅸🅺]

This worked flawlessly. One part I forgot was to hit enter when the re-packing was halfway done, as it got stuck at 50%. But the process was over in about three to four hours, and the game looks so much better without the borders and that comic book effect. Why the developers didn't give us an option to disable it, I will never understand. Now I just need to find a way to store that huge base file somewhere so I don't have to repeat this process again. xD