file is not being accepted by ARMA 3 Launcher.

I have followed the instructions on the github page and downloaded the file for the extension creator easy enough. The error I'm getting from the ARMA 3 Launcher is "There are no PBOs or EBOs in the Addons folder inside the mod folder. The mod doesn't have a correct format. The Addons folder in the mod folder has to contain at least one PBO or EBO file." I have tried 2 different times with different song setups, one song is an .M4a (iTunes typical filetype) and a .MP3 file. That doesn't seem to be one of the problems and I doubt it would even of had an impact on the missing PBO files.

Is there some step I failed to understand or skipped somehow?

One concern is that the process to convert the files to .ogg took a very short ammount of time (~ 3-5 seconds), I don't know if that is typical for some computers or some error happened.

Try moving the tool to a different place, desktop for example. It seems to be a path error. The external script that im using to create pbo's sometimes just breaks with some filepaths.

I moved files to and from folders and desktop, I was able to get a PBO after retrying multiple times while the folder was in desktop, If there was some way I could pull logs from the Extension Creator it may help in troubleshooting this issue.

Some more information about the no PBO issue, I did get it to work once on it generating the PBO, but that was only a test of what it could do. I have been trying to convert a few more in one pack and I have noticed one peculiar thing.

When the Extension Creator was converting the music files the file which I assume was going to be packed into a .PBO was being generated inside the Addon folder. It was only when all conversions were finished the folder suddenly deleted itself when I assume it was supposed to be packed into the .PBO. Could this be a problem that people have been having with the missing .PBO? Could your Extension Creator be deleting the file before it can be packed into a .PBO?

I rechecked the code and I'm sure that the file operations are made in right order. These are the things you can try:

- Make sure that all songs don't include characters like these in their filenames: / \ ^ & # @ ! # ) ( { ].
- Make sure that the extension name, descriptions etc. also don't include above characters.


The a3lib.py script that I'm using to create pbo's isn't written by me and seems to be abandoned.
But it's the only pbo file creator that I could find that had an open source license meaning that I could distribute it with the whole tool. Sadly the script gives almost no information about the progress of creating pbo so it's really hard to troubleshoot it. The script creator states known limitations due to early stage of program:

Originally posted by author:

Known issues/limitations
management of file handles is quite a mess
only basic PBO support:
no compression
(currently) no support for mission type PBOs
no backwards compatibility
almost no exception handling: garbage in -> garbage out
no tests

So this may explain the source of problems that we are coming into. Since I have no knowledge about principles of pbo file format I can't make any modifications to the script.

During all my final tests before tool's release the pbo's were created correctly.

Do you remember what extension name, description etc. you chose during the try when the pbo was created successfully?

Try to create addon with everything named test, extension name, description, creator nickname. songs called test1 test2 and so on. It should work. Let me know about the outcome.

Just finished with a couple runs by naming everything test from the file on the Desktop, first try I did it with everything in the "Songs" folder named "test#" with ~15 songs, failed to create PBO. I lessened the number to 5, failed to create a PBO, reduced it to 3 songs (The same amount as my first test that only 1 song didnt quite work, there was no sound) failed to create PBO. Took out the longest song, could not create the PBO.

The setup that worked (After a few tries)
Name: Guitar
Nickname: Ryan
Description: Never

Songs included
Exile Vilify
Mary Janes Last Dance (This one didnt work correctly, no audio)
Deadwood

I attempted to recreate the file with that exact setup and it continued to fail to create a PBO. If I recall correctly I just got lucky after 3-4 runs with the exact same information.

exact filepaths I used (2 for each test) Both failed to work.

C:\Users\fighter5345\Desktop\Acoustic Guitar Extension Creator

C:\Users\fighter5345\Desktop\Acoustic.Guitar.Extension.Creator\Acoustic Guitar Extension Creator

I now have a copy of all of the songs in their .ogg format that I ripped straight from inside the addon folder before they were deleted, the songs are being converted easy enough and I can confirm that they work.

I have no clue why the pbo isn't being created. I made a special version of the program that won't delete the temporary files used to make a pbo and give some more information about the creation process, it's on the github page marked as pre-release. You will need to use tool like this to manually pack the files into pbo http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=16369.

The temporary file structure looks like this:

-📁@*your extension name*
- mod.cpp
- w_guitar_ca.paa
-- 📁 Addons
---📁*your extension name* <==== pack the files inside this folder into a pbo
----📁songs
---- $PBOPREFIX$.txt
---- config.cpp

Move the created pbo to Addons folder, then delete the folder *your extension name* from Addons. After completing these steps Extension should work.

Luckily I already had the PBOmanager from a previous mod troubleshooting. I packed the file into a PBO file and the only thing left to do it just some troubleshooting on my end.

I'm having an issue where the application is no longer loading past the "Parsing song information"