Creating a pack file

By Cauchpotato

Assuming you have downloaded the unpacker for ETW, you will probably like to know how it works and how to make your own pack files. The first thing you do is open up a pack file from steam/steamapps/common/empire total war/data. You will then be shown a whole list of files. One thing you will notice is that they are all shown when clicked on. You will also notice that luac files, tga files, and mesh file are not available in this method.

Choose a file you want to edit and click on ‘choose a pack action’. Then select ‘extract selected’. Choose a directory to extract to and remember it! The files are then extracted to this location. Only one file can be selected at a time to extract. Alternately, you can extract the entire pack file by selecting ‘extract all’. If you search for the extracted files, you will find they have been extracted into their appropriate subfolders. Any new extracted files will be placed in the respective folders.

Open up the unpacker again. Go to file and select new. Go to ‘choose a pack action’ and select ‘add files’. This can only be done one subfolder at a time. When you have added all the files you want to edit, go to ‘choose a pack action’, select ‘change pack type’ and choose mod. This way the game will load these last and use them instead of the original files. Then go to file and ‘save as’. You can then edit the files to your hearts content.

Note. Tga (images), luac (scripts), and mesh (models) files cannot be edited using the unpacker and must be extracted to change. Files changed outside the unpacker can always replace the already extracted file.