Pbo Tools (PBOView & cpbo)

[Darkguerilla 10]

If your an editor you're probably going to end up wanting to open pbos at some point. There are tools to do this. That is the good news. However, the bad news is that they will have some problems.

First lets talk about PBOView.

PBOView is great for beginners and will open up most pbos. I say "most" because as of yet it does not do Operation Arrowhead, PMC, BAF, or OA Advance And Secure pbos. The good thing about PBOView is its simple layout and ease of use. It can open up Armed Assault and ArmA 2 pbos with no problems as well as package up anything you want to be a pbo such as missions you create.

DOWNLOAD: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=1434

Now for cpbo.

cpbo is not that simple to use. Good news, it will open OA pbos. To get cpbo to work properly you have to understand "-" and "=" and how they apply to shortcuts. Usually in the form of "-mod=", "-world=", or "-maxmem=". In the case of cpbo you would use "-e '(Whatever you named your pbo.pbo)' ", minus the ' and " and (). Of course by now you're supposed to know that. Now you probably want to know how to use cpbo. Instructions below:

DOWNLOAD: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=411

1. Give a huge thanks to "enemy at the gate" at the armaholic website for his instructions which I expanded on.

2. Download cpbo and place it where you want it to be

3. Create a shortcut to the cpbo.exe and keep it in the same folder as cpbo.exe

4. Copy the pbo you want to open up and look at and place it in the same folder with cpbo.exe and shortcut to cpbo.exe.

5. Right click on the shortcut and click Properties.

6. in the Target line add -e and the name of the pbo and click apply.

7. now double click the shortcut and you should see the dialog box running through a list of things in the pbo.

8. a folder will be created with the same name as the pbo in the folder with cpbo.exe, shortcut, and your pbo.

Edited July 30, 2011 by DarkGuerilla

[kylania 568]

Huh? cpbo.exe is the absolute easiest to use. Move it where you want to keep it. Run it as administrator and click Yes. Then just Rclick -> Create PBO on a folder to make a PBO and double click a PBO to extract it. There's literally nothing easier.

The only 'gotcha' is if it doesn't install properly you need to add the -e to a few registry keys:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pbo\shell\Extract\command

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\cpbo.exe\shell\open\command

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\cpbo.exe\shell\open\command

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.pbo\shell\Extract\command

They'll show this:

"C:\Wherever\you\put\it\cpbo.exe" "%1"

Just add the -e to it:

"C:\Wherever\you\put\it\cpbo.exe" -e "%1"

Done, never have to drag pbos anywhere or use shortcuts, just double click or rclick.

All that said, due to continued development Eliteness can now open more PBOs than cpbo.exe can and is probably a better (even if it suffers from Windows 3.1 ugliness) solution these days.

[Gunter Severloh 4079]

Theres other tools that do the same thing:

Tools list:

http://dev-heaven.net/projects/mikero-pbodll/files

Eliteness2.88.rar

and

ExtractPbo1.80.rar

i find being the easiest to use but this topic is old news, if you did a searched cpbo you'd come up with quite a few posts on it already.

[GROM64 10]

I use this older plugin, for Total Commander file manager.

It lets me look into .pbo and .bin really quickly, like any other directory, or archive.

And with BI Tools 2.5.1 I open files inside just by clicking or entering them :)

That's, how it looks:

Plugin description:

The ofppbo pluggin's control completelly depends on the Total Commander©'s user interface,

that means its the same as for all other packer pluggins. Therefor I describe here only the basic UI actions :

Opening PBO file : double-click a PBO file or press Enter key while the file pointer is on the PBO file.

Extracion from PBO file : press F5 key (Copy) or drag and drop an archived file from one TC pane to the second one where the target folder should be opened.

Creating a new PBO file : right-click the file you want to archive. From the context menu, that appears, select the "Pack files" item.

In the "Pack files" window select the ".pbo" packer from the combo box than click OK button.

The key shortcut for this operation is Alt+F5.

Add a file to an existing PBO archive : open an existing PBO archive in one TC pane.

From the second pane copy the desired file to the PBO archive using F5 or drag and drop operation.

Decoding and displaying BIN file (or encoded SQM, FPS, CFG etc.) :

OFP BIN file (or any other OFP encoded file) can be displayed by pressing Ctrl+PgDown key combination.

While doing this the BIN file is automatically decoded to CPP.

Note: The BIN file must have the OFP signature (there are other BIN files than only OFP BINs).

When a CPP file is adding to an existing archive no encoding is made (the CPP file is not converted to its BINary representation).

Date and time of extracted files : when a file is extracted from a PBO archive it is saved with the current date and time rather than with the date and time stored in the archive.

This approach has been chosen to keep better lucidity between extracted and archived files. The user can better monitor changes made to the extracted files since they have been extracted.

Note : Some PBO archivers, such as StuffPBO, don't save the date and time (it's an error, even when the archiver's signature is appended to the end of an archive). In such a case files in the archive are shown with the time the archive has been opened.

Edited July 31, 2011 by GROM64

[[aps]gnat 29]

I use this older plugin, for Total Commander file manager.

It lets me look into .pbo and .bin really quickly, like any other directory, or archive.

Bugger!

Unfortunately I get an error when CTRL+PGDwn on a BIN file :(

Works for other (standard) file types ......

[GROM64 10]

Gnat;1994787']Bugger!

Unfortunately I get an error when CTRL+PGDwn on a BIN file :(

Works for other (standard) file types ......

Hmm...' date=' check if your TC can write to it's temporary directory.

That's where .bin content is temporarily unpacked, when you CTRL+PGDwn.

It works fine on my end, as seen in the picture above.

That config.cpp is a .bin -> CTRL+PGDwn

What error do you get exactly ?

Does .7zip plugin work for you ? Or you get errors also ?

I'm trying to think what could be a cause of this.

Edited August 1, 2011 by GROM64

[anthropoid 1]

I hate to necro this old thread, esp. since some of the followup posters indicated that this was "old news." But . . . I'm having trouble getting CPBO to work with Win 7 and I'm wondering if what the OP suggests might fix my problems: (a) putting CPBO in the same directory as the .pbo files; and (b) creating the shortcut and putting IT in the same directory too?

Anyone out there who uses Win 7 who also uses CPBO with no problem?

[hellfire257 3]

I hate to necro this old thread, esp. since some of the followup posters indicated that this was "old news." But . . . I'm having trouble getting CPBO to work with Win 7 and I'm wondering if what the OP suggests might fix my problems: (a) putting CPBO in the same directory as the .pbo files; and (b) creating the shortcut and putting IT in the same directory too?

Anyone out there who uses Win 7 who also uses CPBO with no problem?

Yeah, what I did to get it to work was to delete all references of .pbo from the registry, rebooted, installed cpbo (run as admin just as a precuation), then rebooted. CPBO then worked AOK for me.

[[aps]gnat 29]

Better suggestion, use one of the many other tools available, like

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?128485-PBO-Manager

[Foozlekiller 4]

Just wanted to stop by to say that I have had the most success with Eliteness for extracting and repackaging .pbo files.

You can find the latest dl here: https ://dev-heaven.net/projects/mikero-pbodll/files (had to separate due to inability to post links! Sorry)

Pick up Eliteness2.91.rar and DePbo3.91. Make sure you extract the .dll file from DePbo into the same folder as Eliteness to get Eliteness to work for you.

Enjoy and happy modding!

Foozlekiller

[Hughie 1]

Hi. I followed the guide in the first post but whenever I try running the shortcut with the PBO's I always get the error 'extract of one or more files failed' with literally no work aside 'extracting <PBO-Name> - failed!' in the cmd. box. Did I do something wrong or is it just me?

[giraffe 10]

Does this work on the original Operation Flashpoint?

I was hoping to open some pbos in the editor for that game

[xXPinkFloyd92Xx 11]

Hey I am new to editing can you please tell me which program would be easiest to edit in the editor? Like how do you open it in the editor? I have a mission that's in .pbo file format how can i place it in the editor? P.S I'm using steam i heard somewhere that you can put a command in the "Set launch command" to open a mission in the editor haven't tried it yet ill go check it out....Thank you!!

 

 

Got it sorry just unpacked/extracted and then placed in my Mission folder super easy sorry to waist your time!!!