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+++ extraction [2026/05/11 12:40] (current) – ultracomfy
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 <WRAP centeralign>Video Games/Assets/\\
 <fs xx-large>Extraction</fs></WRAP>
-Video game file extraction is the process of ripping assets from a video game's game files. In 2026, video game assets are still stored on the local machine and streamed from the disk. This makes all game assets accessible from the local machines, allowing talented individuals to extract them into their individual parts.
-//This page is a documentation on extraction-related concepts and not a Tutorial on how to extract assets from video games. For that, see [[Extraction Tutorial]].//
+Welcome! This is my hub for video game asset extraction related information and guides. I will be going through everything one step at a time to explain how everything works.
+Please note that these tutorials presume a basic, general understanding of how to work with a computer. It demands that you are comfortable with the Windows file system, understand file paths and are capable of performing basic PC procedures like installing and running applications, able to use WinRAR (or whatever alternative you use), editing standard file formats like ''.txt'', download files or programs from Github and can perform basic operations in Command Prompt or Powershell. For example, I will not be teaching how to open the Command Prompt or how to navigate between folders with it. However, this tutorial does //not// expect you to be advanced enough to actually build Github projects, for example.
+===== Step 1: Basics =====
+Before you can work with video game files, you need to understand some basic game development concepts.\\
+I have compiled the most important ones here:
-====== Video Game Files ======
+  * [[Extraction Basics]]\\
-Video games store their assets in bits and bytes on a computer's hard drive. If you hear a sound or see a particular image inside a video game, it is almost certain that that is stored as a file somewhere on your computer((I say that because there can be some internet streaming which can bypass the hard drive entirely)). The task of a user wishing to extract these assets is to know where to look and to understand some fundamental video game concepts, especially in regards to file and file formats.
+This page includes only the strictly necessary information related to extraction.
-===== Plain Files =====
+===== Step 2: Identify Game Files =====
-Some games store their assets plainly, ie. their textures, sounds and many other things are just literal picture and sound files. In this case, "extraction" is as simple as copying the folder's contents elsewhere. [[DEFCON (Game)]] is one such case. As a "dataminer", it's useful to know what is a plain file and what isn't. More on that in a bit.
+The approach to extraction depends on what the game files look like.
-===== Video Game Engines =====
+Games on Android, for example, come packaged as ''.apk'' files. That's all you need to know for now and you can already move to Step 3.\\
-While it is possible to build games from a text file - and is in fact how the earliest video games were made - that method is an incredibly tedious and painful endeavor. This is particularly notable when you consider that much of the legwork in video game development is similar to each other, and building completely new systems for //a 2D or 3D renderer, physics engine, audio engine, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threads, localization support, scene graph, and cinematics//((Copied directly from Wikipedia)) every time you make a game is expensive and wasteful. A game engine provides basic structures for all of these which lets developers focus more on actually making the game.
+On Windows, you will now need to dig into the game's folder and see what you can find.
-===== Engine and Middleware Files =====
+  - Unreal games, for example, tend to place their files into the ''\<gamename>\Content\Paks'' folder and contain ''.pak'' and ''.utoc'' files.
-Video game engines and plugins tend to use their own, custom file formats for things. For example, a very popular middleware audio plugin called [[WWise]] uses the file format WEM (amongst others), in place of things like MP3 or WAV, for audio. The technical reason for this is that creating your own audio format gives you full control over the features it should have. Your own audio format can be programmed to support audio layering within a single file, to contain data about the context in which it is played, to contain data about the programming [keyword 'Event Data'], other instructions to the audio or the game engine and all kinds of other information and interfaces to the audio that aren't present in more standardized formats like MP3.
+  - Unity games often have their files in the ''\<gamename>\<gamename>_Data'' and contain ''.assets'' and ''.res'' files.
+  - In some cases, the game might store middleware files //outside// of the game engine's files. Rocket League for example stores many Wwise files in ''rocketleague\TAGame\CookedPCConsole''.
-The same applies to the game engine's files. They contain all kinds of information for the renderer, the physics engine, the audio engine, scripting, animation, AI, networking and so on and so forth. It's stored directly within the file. All of this is cool for a developer, but it means that your audio player won't be able to decode these files anymore. It will encounter data in the file it doesn't know what to do with. This will typically require //conversion//.
+==== Optional: Make Copy of Game Files ====
+Instead of messing with the game's original installation, it is always a good idea to instead just make a copy of the full game folder (ie. everything). All extraction tools work just fine, even if you select to extract assets from the copies rather than the live installation. The benefit of this is that you can mess with copied files as much as you want without accidentally breaking the installation you use to actually play the game. Some games may also not like seeing foreign files in their folders and may delete them without warning. By keeping a copy of the game files, you are protecting it from game changes in the future that remove assets, and it allows you to re-extract assets from the game easily at any time in the future without needing a live installation of the game.
-===== Container Files =====
+===== Step 3: Select Approach =====
-When nearing completion, game's made in game engines need to be "baked" or "cooked". That means compiling the game so that it no longer is a project file in a developer's game engine but rather a finished product that can be played by players. During that process, many game engines take all the game assets, index them and store them in [[Container File|Container Files]] from where they will be loaded when the game is played by a player. These files are essentially just a bundle of many files, comparable to ZIP or RAR archives. Like ZIP or RAR archives, they cannot be loaded directly and require specialized software to read.
+Depending on the file identification, follow the following links:
-Middleware does this as well. BANK files are container files generated by [[FMOD]] that contain multiple audio files (typically). Opening them requires knowledge about how those files are structured. To see all of this in action, you should read [[Extraction Tutorial]].
+  * [[Unreal Engine Extraction|Unreal Engine]]
+  * [[Unity Extraction|Unity]]
+  * [[Android Extraction|Android .APK]]
+  * [[WWise Extraction|Loose WWise Files (.bank, .wem, etc.)]]