Support for Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast *.pak archives

[ksdomino]

I tried to extract Englishc_ham_1a.pak sound file from Outrun 2 Coast to Coast. Game Extractor told me I'd need QuickBMS so I tried to get it to auto download that but that failed so I manually installed QuickBMS and pointed Game extractor, then tried to extract the file but it said no plugins were able to extract the file.

I've attached the file. Please help if you can.

file.zip

[ksdomino]

Never mind, I was able to import the file into audacity. Turns out it is just a raw wav file at 11025Hz.

[wattostudios]

Apologies for the issue - the fact that it was requesting QuickBMS means it was trying to open the file using a plugin that has a QuickBMS requirement, usually for an unusual compression. As you found out though, this was because the game isn't supported by Game Extractor, and as you say, isn't even an archive, it's just a raw audio file. We wouldn't normally expect Game Extractor to ask for QuickBMS for any archive that's supported (unless it's a game that actually needs it).

We're glad that you managed to figure out the format and get something useful.

[ksdomino]

I can open the file and export it out and it works ingame but if I make any changes (even minor volume fixes) then the game crashes. Any ideas?

[wattostudios]

From our investigation of these PAK files, it looks to us like they may still be archives. In the file you sent, it seems to contain 22 separate audio files in it, with very small headers between each, which is why perhaps Audacity doesn't even notice the slight headers.

We have written a plugin for this PAK format, including the ability to replace files in the archive. Could you please reach out to us via email at watto@watto.org so we can send you a development build for testing. We think the edited files should work in the game, but will need to work with you to verify it.

[ksdomino]

Amazing, Thanks so much and am very much looking forward to testing the development build! I have recieved the email and will respond now.

[ksdomino]

Excellent Start, Thanks so much for adding support for this game! I managed to do a lot of testing and managed to open most of the archives but there were some that had a few issues. I have attached the files that I was unable to extract.

Thanks again for your continued support with this. 1 - Problematic Files.zip oh there's a notes.txt in there too..I'll post what I wrote in there : "In the working examples folder I've put some files that don't have problems that might be useful for troubleshooting. I can import the PAS1.PAK file in audacity as raw audio and it shows that there should probably be at least 6 audio files in this archive but for whatever reason, this version of Game Extractor isn't able to see them yet."

[wattostudios]

Thanks for your help, we have now pushed the code for Outrun 2006.

The Problematic Files, as you called them, are a result of Game Extractor choosing the wrong PAK plugin for reading those particular archives - unfortunately PAK files are very common in games, so it can be quite difficult to auto-detect the correct format. You can resolve this by choosing "Outrun 2006" or "PAK_72" as the file type, at the bottom of the Open Archive window, or in the next release of Game Extractor, we will have code to adjust some of the "false positives" in the auto-detect function, so this shouldn't occur in the future.

If anyone wants this plugin before the next release, you can add the attached Plugin_PAK_72.class file into the GameExtractor.jar archive in the folder org\watto\ge\plugin\archive , or you can contact us via our website and we will be happy to provide you a development build.

Plugin_PAK_72.zip