opennaja/cobra-tools

A suite of GUI tools for extracting and modifying OVL and OVS archives, as well as editing the associated in-house file formats. Also includes a model plugin for Blender. For downloads, guides, and FAQs visit:

cobra-tools

"Life Modding finds a way."

A simple GUI for extracting OVL and OVS archives and modifying their contents, as well as editors for the associated in-house file formats. Also includes a model plugin for blender.

Installation

Read the instructions steps carefully and do not jump ahead and start downloading everything or you will miss important steps.

Get the latest source code here and unzip to a folder of your choice.

Installing Prerequisites

You need to have installed:

• Python 3.11 64-bit (make sure you select the option "Add Python to PATH" during installation; 32-bit versions of Python are not recommended.)
• Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2017 x64 (needed for texture conversion)
• Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2013 x86 (needed for lua decompile)

Installing Python dependencies

Opening any of the GUI tools after installing Python 3.11 and the redistributables will auto-install the Python dependencies for you. You may also be prompted to update outdated packages.

Simply follow the instructions, typing y and hitting Enter.

---

If you would like to install the dependencies manually:

1. Open the Cobra Tools folder in Windows File Explorer.

2. In the File Explorer address bar, type cmd and hit Enter. This will open a command prompt in your Cobra Tools folder.

3. In the command prompt type the following line and hit Enter

   pip install --upgrade pip && pip install -r requirements.txt
   

   ^{Please note: If you do not open cmd in your Cobra Tools folder, you will need to provide the full path to requirements.txt
   Note: You may need to upgrade pip using python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip instead.}

Blender Plugin Installation

Currently the tools work in blender 3.6 to 4.0.

• Blender Plugin - How to Use

Developers

If you are contributing to the project, in addition to installing requirements.txt:

1. Install the dev requirements. From cobra-tools directory run:

   pip install --upgrade pip && pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
   

   ^{Note: You may need to upgrade pip using python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip instead.}

2. Then install the pre-commit hooks:

   pre-commit install -f
   

How to use

• OVL Tool - How to Use
• List of supported file formats and recommended tools for editing them

Basic Tutorials

• Tutorial: Jurassic World Evolution New Species Mod
• Tutorial: Planet Zoo New Species Mod

Disclaimers

• Remember to backup all mod files and stock files. Any patches will reset or break the mods and will need to be redone and re-released.
• Not all model files are supported at this time. Some may crash on import or export. Even if they (seemingly) import and export fine, the result is not guaranteed to work ingame.

Legal Notice and Terms Of Conduct

This software is developed under 'fair use' by enthusiasts and is not affiliated with Universal© or Frontier® in any form.

By downloading and using this software, you agree to the following conditions:

• Use this software at your own risk. It may cause damage to you, your equipment or your data. The authors are not responsible for your actions.
• Do not use this software to circumvent copy protections. Especially, do not try to unlock downloadable content for free, share official artwork or intellectual property or engage in so-called data mining to announce game content before an official announcement.
• Do not seek monetary compensation for mods made with this software. Do not charge money or ask for donations in order to download the mods. Do not accept payment in exchange for exclusive rights (even if temporary) to commissioners of mods.
• Secure permission to use other parties' work in your mods. This includes but is not limited to using IP, artwork, skin designs and 3D models (eg. porting models from another game). If you don't have the approval of the copyright holder(s), be prepared to face the consequences.
• Porting models when done without strict permission should not seek for monetary compensation. This means that using the tool to re-publish other's work should not be done for profit, but for the modding community. Ported models mods must be opt-out of any direct revenue. General donations for the work done are still fine, as long as they are not tied to any specific port mod.
• Do not affect online modes of the game drastically using this software. Do not try to gain any advantage over other players. Online gameplay and modifications should be restricted as much as possible and not encouraged.

If you still have doubts, consider checking the official Frontier's Mod Policy.

Credits

• Planet Zoo, Cobra, Frontier and the Frontier Developments logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Frontier Developments, plc.
• Jurassic World, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, Jurassic World Evolution, Jurassic World Evolution 2 and their respective logos are trademarks of Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment, Inc.
• Daemon1, DennisNedry1993 and Inaki for initial modding attempts and documentation.
• mpeterv for luacheck
• texconv from DirectXTex is used internally to convert to and from DDS textures.

Get in touch

Some Discords where modding progress is discussed can be found here:

• Open Naja Modding Community

cobra-tools's Issues

Improve workflow for editing models from multi-model archives

Consider the case where one ovl has several ms2 buffers with several mdl2s in each.

Merger tool is complicated and not transparent about which models one has to merge. Maybe store the associated mdl2s in each ms2. Redundant since we store the ms2 name in the mdl2 already, but this would allow us to select a ms2 and check which mdl2s we need to locate so we can update them.

Could delay merging implicitly to importing and do it on the fly; potentially dangerous and could slow down injection a bit.

Some Txt File changes crash JWE if the new Txt is longer than the original.

Noticed when changing herrerasaurus paleoecology text to be longer than the original length

Mip packing for array textures

Array textures that do have mips fail when trying to pack them.

add popup to reload ovl if one unchecks or checks the reverse sets box

Bulk Txt injection causes trouble

Probably padding is not 100% correct.
Proposed fix - store old padding (with OSUD etc) and then pad the result to multiples of 8 bytes:
pointer.update_data(new_txt_bytes+pointer.padding, pad_to=8)

Images with non-power of 2 dimensions

Extraction & injection are most likely not functional.

OVL - Investigate purpose of Indom's unaccounted bytes at start of header data 4

Seems to be a bunch of floats, are not used by any pointer and are dealt with separately on writing the archive.

Writing OVL
Found 872 unaccounted bytes at start of header data 4
Done!

add ability to rename files and generate new hashes across the archive

Matcol for Indom has odd padding

m1_d0 = struct.unpack("<8I", m1.pointers[0].data)
m1_info_count = m1_d0[2]

expected 16 bytes of data, got 24 bytes instead on last attribute count frag in the list.

add scaleform language data and font extraction and injection

add assetpkg extraction and injection

FGM Finding: pDecayNormalConstrastScale

Only tested on JWE dinosaurs, while editing their main fgm file, in this case "ouranosaurus.fgm", there is a section focused on the decay attributes for the model, diffuse color, normal map intensity, etc etc, the one that i tested was the pDecayNormalConstrastScale, which changes how intense the normals become on the dead body, the default value is 1,500 while i tested with 5,000; not sure if there's a limited value so far

add FDB Injection and extraction

OVL tool does not correctly detect Python 3.8

The check_version function in ovl_tool_gui.py does not correctly detect Python 3.8, and reports "Python 3.7.6+ x64 bit is expected".

This is a quick one-line fix in the function as follows:

	@staticmethod
	def check_version():
		is_64bits = sys.maxsize > 2 ** 32
		if not is_64bits:
			widgets.showdialog("Either your operating system or your python installation is not 64 bits.\n"
							   "Large OVLs will crash unexpectedly!")
		if sys.version_info[0] != 3 or sys.version_info[1] < 7 or (sys.version_info[1] == 7 and sys.version_info[2] < 6):
			widgets.showdialog("Python 3.7.6+ x64 bit is expected!")

Note that this won't accept Python 4.x if it ever happens, but that seems like a safe option.

Fins Method of Fur not supported

Frustum bounds

Probably some of the unknown floats in ModelData

Model Variant Dinos from RtJP do not extract

The OVLS of dinosaurs using model variants do not extract at all. seems to be caused by new fgm variants.

Make reverse sets obsolete

Can probably use fragment addresses to solve the mapping problem.

matcol injection and extraction support

Make injection case insensitive

Case should not matter when looking for matching sizedstr entry for an input file.

Lua Sizedstr Entry Protective Hash

Figure out which type of hash is, what it's generated from etc.

MS2 - Joint infos

mod_rf_stairwell has 1 jointdata, with 1 joint, with 1 hitcheck, with 1 bbox

Update OVL header name buffers after name changes

Extracting Content0 Main.ovl causes an error

Attempting to open Main.ovl from the Content0 folder causes an unspecified error which prevents the file from being successfully opened. No error is displayed in the console. Usually but perhaps not always this happens in the "Mapping pointers" stage. All other ovl files I've tried open fine.

Version: 1.3.0 release

I don't know if this error happens on just my machine. Two problems I've ruled out: I'm not running out of RAM, and my ovl file is not corrupt (redownloaded it from Steam just to be sure).

Female 2001 Velociraptor does not unpack

unknown why

FGM Editor experimentation findings

Here's what I've found so far from changing values in the FGM editor

AlphaTestRef: The higher this value, the faster transparent materials will fade into becoming invisible as you move away from them.

gWetBrightness: The higher this value, the brighter the diffuse texture becomes when the animal is wet.

pDirtDryColour: RGB values divided by 1000 that slightly affect the color when the animals are muddy
pDirtWetColour: RGB values divided by 1000 that slightly affect the color when the animals are wet

pRenderLayersOveride: I saw no visible changes when changing this value.

pTransmittance: normally 0, a value of 1 makes light go through the object so shadows are removed, but the object remains opaque.

pWetSpecularStrength: Makes the model more reflective while wet independently of the blue value of the roughnesspacked texture

pMaximumSnowAmount: No visible change.

FGM Editor purpose: psublayer0diffuseTint

Attribute is found in Rocks_Ice.ovl, rocks_01_mat.fgm.
Attribute is "psublayer0diffuseTint" followed by 3 number values which correspond to RGB in a 0-1 scale. It tints the diffuse texture to whatever rgb you input. Used it to make the notoriously blue ice rocks white. Tooltip could read "Tints the indicated diffuse layer to the specified rgb value".

Font problem of the game

Hello, I searched google but haven't solved my problem yet.
I am looking for the font file of the game. Because I want to translate the game's language into Vietnamese but the game's font file does not support my language.
If you know where the font file is, please help me ...
Thank you so much.

Pteranodon OVL does not extract correctly

The Mdl2 and MS2 extraction is grabbing the wrong fragments.

Juvenile Indian Elephant OVL saved successfully; crashes Planet Zoo upon loading save file immediately.

Tested both after editing a texture and saving, and not editing anything and saving. The game crashes upon loading any save file. No errors were shown during the saving process of the OVL.

Notes:
-Other juvenile models did work upon saving with or without edits.
-The juvenile model for the indian elephant has fur shaders, unlike the adult versions of itself.
-The unpacked files for the juvenile indian elephant included files that no other furry animals include when unpacked, an opacity texture for the fins, and a diffuse texture for the fins. Animals like the juvenile gray wolf and the grizzly bear did not have any of these textures despite having fur shaders.
-upon using a backup of the original juvenile indian elephant OVL, the save file loads correctly. But just opening it with the OVL editor, and saving it, causes the game to crash upon loading. Even without changing anything.

unchecking reverse sets or checking frag log crashes tool if no ovl loaded

suggestion: change it to pop up tool tip to load an ovl first instead of crashing.

OVL - Inject non-square images

Mip packing needs to be debugged, ends up wrong by a few bytes.

add VoxelSkirt Injection and Extraction

FIle joins the material mask layers, the heightmap and asii file to create a terrain.
Propablly editable in some Voxel editor.

Add FGM extraction and injection support

OVl tool buffer?

I tried to use the OVL tool to extract OVL files from Jurassic world evolution, however when I try to unpack the files it comes up with an error saying it requires a buffer of 4 bytes. I cannot find answers for this anywhere and I have no clue how to solve this

Extract as .db instead of .fdb

It's a minor thing, but I find regular SQL editors are easier to work with (I think .fdb uses firebird or something? I just know I can't open them with my regular editors, so I need to quickly change the extension to .db before editing). Makes small changes to mods a whole multi-step process (extract, change fdb to db, edit using SQL database viewer, change back to fdb, inject, save - easy to miss a step by accident).
Takes just a few lines across 3 files to change that:

in ovl_tool_gui.py:__init__:
replace:
supported_types = ("DDS", "PNG", "MDL2", "TXT", "FGM", "FDB", "MATCOL", "XMLCONFIG","ASSETPKG","LUA")

with:
supported_types = ("DDS", "PNG", "MDL2", "TXT", "FGM", "FDB","DB", "MATCOL", "XMLCONFIG","ASSETPKG","LUA")

in extract.py:write_fdb(): right after,
name = sized_str_entry.name

add:

if (name[-4:] == ".fdb"):
     name = name[:-4] + ".db"

in inject.py:inject(): on the next line after,
for file_path in file_paths:

replace:
name_ext, name, ext = split_path(file_path)

with:

path_in_ovl = file_path
if (path_in_ovl[-3:] == ".db"):
	path_in_ovl = path_in_ovl[:-3] + ".fdb"

name_ext, name, ext = split_path(path_in_ovl)

Haven't had the chance to fully test if I missed something, but this seems to work for my JWE mod, and makes it a bit more streamlined to update.

AttributterError: 'int' object has no attribute write - while injecting .fgm

For Jurassic World Evolution, while injecting water.fgm into DefaultWater.ovl, AttributeError is catched:
"int object has no attribute write"

the exception is generated in: def to_bytes(inst, data), in file: /modules/inject.py

the simple fix is to just add:

	if isinstance(inst, int):
		return inst.to_bytes(4, 'little')

but for this, additional testing is needed to check if int to be injected needs to be 4 bytes (or 2, or possibly 8), and whether the storing of .ovl file is big or little endian.

OVL - Matcol injection: support fgm names freely

Avoid overwriting for materials that used to share the same name and fragment address.
Update frag map for the affected header entry.

Header data padding

General issue to keep track of all header pointer related padding issues.

Program won't launch

I have C++ and Python installed, but opening ovl_tool.bat a window briefly flickers then closes. Launching as administrator had no effect.

Is there something I should change in the config file? Does it matter what drive I have the program on?

add Lua Injection and Extraction

Plugin - Matcol height blend scale

Documentation of effects of height blend scale tuple:

layer0 is white top to bottom black
layer1 is white right to left black

0,0 texture0

-10,0 texture0

-10,0 texture1

10,0, tex1

-10,0 tex1

0,0 tex1

0,10 tex1

0,-10 tex1

LODs from decimated base mesh have messed up weights

Might be masked by using the bone partition? Could indicate that modeldatas or lodinfos point to the specific armature in ms2.

OVL - Add Prefab extraction and Injection

Scrolling the scroll wheel while hovering a value edits it even if the value is unselected in the FGM editor

Utilizing the scroll wheel to scroll causes problems because you can accidentally edit a value while attempting to scroll down the list of values. If the scroll wheel is restricted to only editing values when the value is selected, it would be easier to scroll down without having to use the scroll bar

Image is not using premultipled alpha

" Image is not using premultipled alpha "
I get this error to be injected into the jpog file

Resaved stock Indom is different and crashes game

Unsure why.

Plugin - banis translation import

FGM Finding: pColourMask_HSLGentic0

Tested in Planet Zoo with the female American bison. It only appears to have an effect when viewing the animal from a distance, and there were frequent crashes.
The specific file I tested was american_bison_female_fur.fgm.
Setting all 3 variables to 1.000 resulted in a mint green colouring.

Setting the left variable to 0.700, the middle variable to 0.950, and the right variable to 0.500 resulted in a yellow colouring.

This finding indicates that the left variable is green, the middle is red, and the right is blue.

Electric Tour Issue

Having a problem opening the .MDL2 file to the Electric Tour. This is my error.

Anyone know whats going on here ?