Hi, fellow workshop lurkers, it's me that used to take all of your compress requests and took a long hiatus because of some drama.

As unfortunately I won't be active in workshop anymore due to me losing motivation to do so (no, not because of them), I've decided to make a text guide (and video, but soon) of guiding you to compress any mods you like, be it weapons, survivors, or even object models like vehicles. Don't worry though, any pending requests will be done, but like I've said, I've lost motivation = lazy to do.

Before I tell you what softwares you need and the guide itself, let me answer one question some of you are probably wondering: why I haven’t been active modding for months?
Long story short, a Chinese guy name Sa-Daniels decided to start a campaign, and that campaign is anti-compress move, where he began to reach out to other Chinese modders to not let any compresser like me, syahmi2002.sa, and few others I know, compress their mod. You have to keep in mind that, previously, before this ♥♥♥♥ happens, people like Animal33 were absolutely fine for us to compress it, but after Daniel done his ♥♥♥♥, one of his newest mods, back then, added a new sentence in the description. See it for yourself.


Now obviously, not all the Chinese modders are with Dan. Some of them don’t, like Denny (though he’s not active anymore for whatever reason).
Because of him, I had to go hiatus for a few weeks, or otherwise the drama would get more heated, as if it’s not heated enough already, but as you can clearly see, it ended up being months.

That's all my yapping, now onto the meat of the guide itself: teaching you how.

So before you start compressing mods that you want to compress, you need 3 software and 2 optional. Here’s all the software you’re gonna need, and you can download all of it below embedded image, and it’s straight forward, so if you ask me how to download it, I won’t answer:

• L4D2 Authoring Tools
  
  This is a must, since stuff like vpk.exe and hlmv.exe is in this. To get both, you have to download it first, and then you launch the game, or not, it’s been months, so I already forgot.
  
  
• Crowbar
  
  You can do a lot with this. From unpacking, packing, downloading, and more that you can see it by yourself. You have to set up games first before you can do anything with. Stop the video and see the image for reference if you need help.
  
  
• VTFEdit
  
  This is the app where you can compress the mod and to do bulk convert, like from VTF to JPG and vice versa. There are settings you need to change, but I’ll explain it later.
  
  
• VPKEdit (Optional)
  
  You can already do it in Crowbar, but this is basically to see the content of the VPK itself and extract it, or to see the mdl if it has any. Remember, this is optional, so you don’t have to install this, but if you want, then go ahead.
  
  
• XnConvert (Optional but Must)
  
  So, even though this is optional, it’s kinda a must, since, although you can already compress mod with VTFEdit alone, you can actually compress it a bit or further with this. There are settings that needs to be change, but I’ll explain it later.

Okie, now that you’ve installed all the must software, and optional but that depends on you, I’ll explain step-by-step on how to do it. I’ll try my best to explain it with the best of my ability. Before we start, open all the software first, obviously.

• Go to Download section in Crowbar, use the following settings in the image if you want, and see the output to, since it’s the directory the file will be downloaded. Then, paste the link to the mod itself and download it, or you can use the mod ID too. For example, mine is 3262779943.
  
  
  
• After you’ve downloaded the mod, on the bottom right, click “Use in Unpack”, and it’ll redirect you to Unpack section. There, make sure “<root>” is selected and then you want to Unpack it. And again, if you want to use settings same like mine, then stop the video and change it like mine.
  
  
  
• Now on the bottom, there’s a console, and you can see what folder the mod got unpacked, so go to that directory, and on there, first, you want to create two folders on desktop. You can name it to anything you like, but for me, I named it “output” and “input”. It’ll make sense later. Once you’ve created these two folders, now, you want to go root folder of the mod you’ve unpacked, and then, select “materials”, and you want to click all the subfolders until you see VMTs and VTFs, or you can just use search and find .vtf. If it has multiple folders, then you’re going to compress all folders, as in all VTFs of course, but it’s the same thing as compressing a single folder, so it’s not a hard thing to do.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Now, you want to select “all” VTFs, I said it in quote because it’s not all of them actually. If you see any VTFs that is below 100 kb, then deselect it. It’s important, so you don’t need to compress it, beside, it’s already small anyway. Then you cut or drag it to input folder on your desktop I've mentioned earlier.
  
  
  
• Now that you’ve put all VTFs inside input folder, open VTFEdit, click Tools, Convert Folder. This is the place you’re going to execute it. Make sure column inside To VTF is empty, and for To …, select .tga, as tga is better for textures than png, and make sure only “*.vtf” is inside the column for To tga. For input folder, well you want to choose folder input on your desktop, and same goes for output. After do all that, go to Options first and make sure the settings are all the same like mine. Now, there are two settings you don’t need to be the same like mine, and that is the Width and Height. Basically for these two, the higher the number, the higher resolution it’ll be, and lower the number = lower resolution. For me, I usually chose 1024, but you can choose 512 as it’s still not that blurred. Lower than 512 and it’ll be blur to hell.
  
  
  
  
• Well, after you’ve done all that, just click Convert and wait til conversion is done. Now once done, you can just change the Input folder to folder output on your desktop and vice versa and convert it again and wait, but if you have XnConvert, it’s a bit different. Open XnConvert, and drag output folder to Input section. Once you dragged the folder, go to Actions, and make sure all the settings are the same. Once again, in here, you can change the Width and Height to between 25% and 50%, and the principal is the same, lower num = lower res, higher num = higher res. After you’re done, go to Output section, and again, same settings like mine. Directory is obviously different, but once done, just click Convert and wait. Once done, you can do the non-XnConvert step where you change Input Folder to folder output on your desktop, convert and wait.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Once the conversion process is done, you’re pretty much done. You can remove the TGAs inside output, and you dragged the VTFs inside back to its origin. Then you want to pack the folder of the mod back to VPK, and all you need to do is to go Pack section inside Crowbar, browse where you place the mod folder, choose Output to with Parent folder, and pack it, and you’re done. Now you can just drag your first compressed mod to addons folder and try it in-game.
  

That's all the guide, hopefully I'm doing good with the guide. Once again, any question you're confused with on one of the steps, ask away and I'll help.

And like I said, my last upload will be my last time ever active in workshop, after that, I won't be active... For a while. I didn't say anything about retiring from workshop altogether, BUT, if I upload something in the future, that's because I'm interested with that mod and so I compressed it and upload it to here, not because it's a request, and yes, I won't take any requests anymore from here on out. I just lost motivation to work on mods, even though I'm in holiday right now.

Happy Xmas and New Year everyone, bless you all with this guide I've made.


Sigh, you know why I said I lost my motivation to do modding? Here's another reason why.