Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop

Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop

Not enough ratings
Native VPK/VTF editing
By Duke M
How to work with vpk & vtf files in the most unobtrusive way possible
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
Intro
I often read on the forums that Nem's VTFEdit[nemstools.github.io] is "the way to go" with vtf-files.
But my problem with it is, it isn't a picture-editor like Paint .net or Photoshop, it's a picture-viewer like Irfanview or XnView.

The same goes with "just use GCFScape[nemstools.github.io] for your vpk-files".
At this point, I ask myself: Why should I install another program to just open container-files?
I have an unpacker-software for such stuff (eg. 7-Zip).
But sadly this container-format isn't recognized by popular unpacker software.

So my target in this guide is to use the files I am working with, but with the least possible workflow-steps and program-installations needed.
VPK files
STATUS: doesn't seem to work anymore on the vpk-files of AS:RD, back to GCFScape I guess.

As mentioned before, these are just containers. So you want to just pack and unpack them.
The needed packer comes from Valve directly, as soon as any source-engine-SDK is installed.
Just search for it on your harddrive or install one from Steam>Library>Tools.
One of mine is here:
c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Alien Swarm Reactive Drop\bin\vpk.exe
It is 'vpk.exe', an console-application. And it will do, without any needed GUI.

It can be configured to:
  • unpack vpk-contents on double-click
  • pack any folder through drag&drop

And this is how it's done:
Unpacking:
  • configure windows to always open vpk-files with the vpk.exe
  • on double-clicking a vpk-file, it gets automatically extracted into a subfolder of the vpk's destination

Packing:
  • create a shortcut of the vpk.exe (for example, on the desktop)
  • drag&drop any folder onto the shortcut and a new vpk-file (with the folders contents) will land on the desktop (overwrites already existing files without warning)
VTF files
VTF-files are just images with some extra flags, so it should be possible to edit them directly inside your favorite image-editing-software. Importing/Exporting them from VTFEdit creates more distraction/possibility to failure (and increases workflow-steps) than needed.

Since you need to be able to set some flags too there needs to be an GUI for it.
Luckily Nem didn't only create an awesome picture-viewer. He also made 2 plugins which provide just that:


So, installing one of these plugins removes the need for VTFEdit and lets you directly open, edit & save vtf-files.

Thx Nem :]
2 Comments
Duke M  [author] 30 Mar, 2022 @ 8:54am 
@WildCat: thanks for the info, I updated the links
WildCat 29 Mar, 2022 @ 3:30am 
Error 403 for both links