User:Yoshi2/SZS archive packing

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Even though Wiimms SZS tools has "SZS" in its name, it doesn't fully support Gamecube-era SZS files (which are yaz0-compressed RARC archives) because people cannot make files bigger than what they were originally in the archive.


A better tool is Lunaboy's RARC tools, found here: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1024/ It's also a command line application similar to wszst, but due to being simpler it supports Drag & Drop operations out of the box.

ArcExtract.exe supports extracting szs and arc files from Pikmin 2. ArcPack.exe supports packing a folder into an arc file. If you want a szs file, you need to compress it using yaz0enc that can be found here: http://amnoid.de/gc/ (If you can find yaz0fast, that should also work and be even faster than yaz0enc)


ArcPack and yaz0enc can be chained using a bat file to create a szs file in one go:

ArcPack.exe %1 packed.arc
yaz0enc.exe packed.arc
MOVE /Y packed.arc.yaz0 packed.szs

You can change "packed.szs" to the filename of the szs file you are replacing. You can even put in a path to the file so when packing the folder it is moved into the game's files from which you are rebuilding the ISO, saving time and effort.


Note: Some people have trouble with Lunaboy's tools because they disappear after unpacking. This is because they are UPX-packed, which is a way to reduce the filesize of an exe. Some antivirus programs dislike that and remove the exe files. After decompressing the executables the antivirus programs no longer have a problem with the tools.

I have added the decompressed exe files, yaz0enc and a pack_rarc.bat which consists of the above commands into a single archive rarc_toolset.zip that I uploaded here: https://mega.nz/#!Pc5zRaLS!s0XT8cZpVX28HiMiqIuOXnyEXqWRjd0pKqClgH0q38w