Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Extraction and unpacking of game archives and compression, encryption, obfuscation, decoding of unknown files
Graesholt
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2017 1:54 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Graesholt »

Hey guys, I'm a little confused (because I'm not very smart).

I have extracted most of the models from Shadow of Mordor, and would like to graduate to the sequel.
However, I am unclear on which script I use to unpack the game's .arch06 archives.

I understand that shadow_of_mordor.bms has been updated to unpack the Shadow of War .embb files, which I assume are found within the .arch06 archives, but which script do I run to get them out of there in the first place?

Thank you.
erik945
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2017 7:30 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by erik945 »

This is same script for both types of files.
Graesholt
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2017 1:54 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Graesholt »

erik945 wrote:This is same script for both types of files.


You are correct. Thank you very much for your help :)
dondrick01
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Feb 23, 2018 6:05 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by dondrick01 »

how is everyone converting the emb. files to viewable meshes like .obj? how do I oopen the stuff I unpack in a program like blender
dondrick01
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Feb 23, 2018 6:05 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by dondrick01 »

ive found .mesh files for the olog beast head but having hard time getting rest of body, let alone a format to get them into blender or zbrush
Mana
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:12 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Mana »

Is there any way to reimport these archives? Even unmodified I've been getting filesize errors.
Mana
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:12 am

Any way to repack .arch06 files (Middle Earth: Shadow of War)?

Post by Mana »

Even if it involves manually altering things. I've tried unpacking an archive, not editing anything, and just repacking a few files and even with no changes the files are still slightly larger. Can't use the alternate version since afaik the files have no offsets. Is there anything I can do? Make a new archive? Anything?

EDIT: I've looked into Oodle and could it be that its due to a version difference in the Oodle used by the game archives vs Quickbms? The differences in these unaltered files was pretty small, only a few bytes in some cases.
Mana
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:12 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Mana »

I had some spare time available and decided to try and figure out how the archive format works on my own. Help me understand it a bit better so I can ask questions better. I've noticed that the extractor often turns out files with the same name, that it then auto-renames. I've got a hunch that those files are actually all supposed to be one archive, and the extraction script is reading it wrong.

Lets take Patch_00.arch06 as an example. When used to unpack it, Quickbms gives a prompt to rename duplicate files, and ends up extracting 8 files total. fortwallgameplay.bndl, fortwallgameplay.embb, and three additional pairs of files that had to be automatically renamed. My hunch is that this archive is actually only supposed to contain two files. It seems like the file structures within fortwallgameplay.embb are listed in such a way that the extractor ends up treating different subfolders within that archive as different archives completely.

EDIT: I've extracted all of the automatically renamed embb's from that patch archive. Each one was a different subfolder in the same file structure. I'm almost certain my hunch was right. I know nothing about bms scripting, so I can't fix it. Hopefully someone who does know what to do sees this. Will keep digging. I guess I'm technically making a bug report for this specific script. I have no idea where I would make such a report more formally, so I'll just have to hope that the creator sees it.

EDIT EDIT: Apparently aluigi already handled this problem. I'm certain I'm using the newest version of the script.
Mana
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:12 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Mana »

Success! Thanks a million aluigi. By setting the offset/size/zsize variables to 01, I was able to get a file appended to the archive. It didn't work completely, some bytes got garbled, I had to manually add some values to the newly appended file since it included the contents but not the actual sizes associated with them. But after making all the adjustments, it worked. I have an arch06 archive with a custom file added to it. Next step is trying the same thing but with something more complicated, a mesh file.

EDIT: Mesh worked. I re-extracted it and tested it by importing it into 3ds max. Its intact. Next is trying out folder structures, seeing if the process still works when I'm using multiple files, and then finally, trying to replace an in game model.

EDIT2: I've now tried this with multiple files at once. I imported a mesh, skeleton, and cloth file. The manual hex editing required is going to make it unlikely anybody but me will use this, but it seems to work. Next step is to either figure out how to do file structures, figure out if I need to alter the gamedb file to get it to load these assets, etc.
Mana
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:12 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Mana »

No luck actually pulling off a replacement. Files get into the archives just fine, but I cannot for the life of me find the right file to replace to actually affect the game. The archives are definitely being loaded, because if I put in an incorrect one the game won't launch. No crashes happen, just nothing occurs. No idea what to do from here. Hopefully aluigi can shed some light on the BNDL files, which might help.
Mana
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:12 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Mana »

Aluigi has released a script 0.4 that addresses an issue with file paths, resulting in output folders and files being mangled. I've tested it on a few archives and I no longer get asked to rename files during extraction. The output folders make far more sense than they used to. Haven't tried using it for a replacement yet, but I'm far more hopeful now. Thanks a million aluigi.

Script 0.4
http://aluigi.org/bms/shadow_of_mordor.bms
Scofield_TR
Posts: 99
Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2014 12:44 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Scofield_TR »

@Hi aluigi, How are you? :)

Extract this file, but wants to overwrite because it is the same file.

Image
Last edited by Scofield_TR on Sun Nov 25, 2018 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
aluigi
Site Admin
Posts: 12984
Joined: Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:32 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by aluigi »

Try choosing 'r' (it should work even if they are chunked files) but there is not much I can do if the archive has multiple files with the same name.
Scofield_TR
Posts: 99
Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2014 12:44 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Scofield_TR »

aluigi wrote:Try choosing 'r' (it should work even if they are chunked files) but there is not much I can do if the archive has multiple files with the same name.

Thanks, I'm try. 8-)
CheddarBread
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2019 6:15 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by CheddarBread »

I know this is an old thread, but does anyone have a program that can extract the arch06 files?
bahar
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Jun 18, 2019 8:54 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by bahar »

CheddarBread wrote:I know this is an old thread, but does anyone have a program that can extract the arch06 files?


I have a simple tool for the .arch06 of shadow of war. If anyone interest about it, please make contack with me
Grebber
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2020 10:53 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Grebber »

Someone managed to edit language files?
RICARDO
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2020 8:00 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by RICARDO »

Hi everybody, I translated the game "Middle Earth Shadow of War" into our language. The QuickBMS script that wrote for Shadow of Mordor worked very well and extracted all the files, but I cannot recreate the .arch06 file back. Script tries to take the files into pieces and gives an error saying the file size is wrong. It gives an error even when I extract the same file and then close it back with no changes. Can somebody help me about recreate .arch06 files? Thank you so much.
Amir4an
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Mar 18, 2021 6:18 pm

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Amir4an »

aluigi wrote:Try choosing 'r' (it should work even if they are chunked files) but there is not much I can do if the archive has multiple files with the same name.

Hi. I know that you have developed a script to extract models from the game Middle-earth: Shadow of War. I would like to thank you for your efforts and ask for help in solving the problem with UV scanning in the extracted files. I extracted the files in the format I need (.smd/.fbx) using Noesis, but the problem is that when exporting the model to Blender, the extracted UV files look like this (I will attach a photo to this post). All vertices are collected at one point and thus the texture does not fit properly on the model. What could be the problem? Maybe I should choose other export formats? I would be very grateful if you would help me. I apologize in advance for my English, I am not an English speaking person.
Meria
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2022 12:24 am

Re: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (.arch06) HELP

Post by Meria »

Hello! I'm sorry if this has been posted elsewhere, but I've been looking and so far unable to find the latest version of the script and also a guide on how to use it.

I find links to a script all along this post but none lead to a download. Could someone please care to elaborate? I'd really appreciate it!