[Modding] FTL UnPacker 1.0.1 - .dat un- and repacker GUI
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:21 pm
While Bas's ftldat is incredibly useful and very important for the modding community here, it can be a bit hard to use, with having to install Python and using the command line. Therefore I decided to create a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to make packing and unpacking these .dat files easier.
And to that end I present the FTL UnPacker:
It's written in Java, so you will need to install that from Java.com if you don't have it already. But I think for most people this won't be necessary as they already have it installed.
The upshot is that it is multiplatform, so Windows, Mac and Linux users alike can use it. I've only been able to test it on Windows though, so if you're on a different platform, please let me know if it works!
I tried to make the program as straight-forward as possible to use.
The first tab is the 'Unpack' tab, where you can specify the .dat file you want to unpack and the location where you want to unpack it.
The 'Pack' tab is for packing up unpacked files into a .dat file, again with a field for specifying the location of the files to be packed, and a field to indicate where the packed .dat file should be placed.
For all these fields, you can either type in the location manually, or navigate to the file or folder by clicking the 'Browse...' button next to the textfield.
There's a more extensive explanation in the included Readme, but hopefully the program is easy enough to use without having to read that.
The program can also be run from the commandline, to make automated use easier. The explanation is again in the Readme file, but the basics of it is that you can use the arguments 'unpack' and 'pack' to unpack and pack files, respectively. You do have to provide two more arguments, namely the source file or folder and the target folder or file.
An important difference between using the command line and the GUI is, that the GUI will ask before overwriting files, but when using the command line the program will just overwrite existing files if they have the same name. I did it this way to not hold up automated scripts, but it is something to keep in mind.
Download here (version 1.0.1).
Changelog:
Version 1.0.1 (25 Sept 2012):
-Fixed FTL UnPacker not running on Java 6
-Fixed 'Browse' buttons pointing to the wrong folder when using relative paths
Version 1.0 (22 Sept 2012):
-Initial release
Finally, thanks to the people here who dug into the files to see how they were packed together, and to Bas in particular for making ftldat and posting the code online, it made it a lot easier to make FTL UnPacker!
I hope FTL UnPacker is easy to use, but I'm open to suggestions for improvements.
And to that end I present the FTL UnPacker:
It's written in Java, so you will need to install that from Java.com if you don't have it already. But I think for most people this won't be necessary as they already have it installed.
The upshot is that it is multiplatform, so Windows, Mac and Linux users alike can use it. I've only been able to test it on Windows though, so if you're on a different platform, please let me know if it works!
I tried to make the program as straight-forward as possible to use.
The first tab is the 'Unpack' tab, where you can specify the .dat file you want to unpack and the location where you want to unpack it.
The 'Pack' tab is for packing up unpacked files into a .dat file, again with a field for specifying the location of the files to be packed, and a field to indicate where the packed .dat file should be placed.
For all these fields, you can either type in the location manually, or navigate to the file or folder by clicking the 'Browse...' button next to the textfield.
There's a more extensive explanation in the included Readme, but hopefully the program is easy enough to use without having to read that.
The program can also be run from the commandline, to make automated use easier. The explanation is again in the Readme file, but the basics of it is that you can use the arguments 'unpack' and 'pack' to unpack and pack files, respectively. You do have to provide two more arguments, namely the source file or folder and the target folder or file.
An important difference between using the command line and the GUI is, that the GUI will ask before overwriting files, but when using the command line the program will just overwrite existing files if they have the same name. I did it this way to not hold up automated scripts, but it is something to keep in mind.
Download here (version 1.0.1).
Changelog:
Version 1.0.1 (25 Sept 2012):
-Fixed FTL UnPacker not running on Java 6
-Fixed 'Browse' buttons pointing to the wrong folder when using relative paths
Version 1.0 (22 Sept 2012):
-Initial release
Finally, thanks to the people here who dug into the files to see how they were packed together, and to Bas in particular for making ftldat and posting the code online, it made it a lot easier to make FTL UnPacker!
I hope FTL UnPacker is easy to use, but I'm open to suggestions for improvements.