Caches
Although OBB cache one for all platforms, there are 3 different texture caches inside: DXT, ETC and PVR. Depending on the GPU, one of these caches is loaded and used during gameplay.
In a few words there are:
- PVR-is PowerVR cache.
iOS game version has only PVR-cache; - DXT- is S3 Texture Compression, that used in PC version.
Used by nVidia Tegra and Adreno. Default cache format, can be read by game on any device. - ETC- default Android compression, also known as Ericsson Texture Compression.
Used by Mali.
All caches are stored in separate files, but there is a common TXT-file containing a list of textures in other caches. There is no need to explain its structure; just open this file with Notepad (for example, Notepad++).
The caches themselves are represented by three files:
- xxx.DAT- Data file. It represents consecutive rasters, each of which begins with 8 bytes of service information. That is, something like this: [mipmap #0][mipmap #1]...[mipmap #n][mipmap #0]...
- xxx.TOC- offset file. Every 4 bytes of this file correspond to the offset in the previous file, from which the next texture data begins. The first 4 bytes contain the size of the DAT file. The file is NOT required; in case of a size error, the game itself will recalculate the offsets.
- xxx.TMB- thumbnail file, special case.DAT: textures contain only one mipmap.
Although TXT file and contains a large amount of information, in fact, some of it does not make sense, some is ignored, some is taken from the DAT file. Essentially, TXT is a list of textures and nothing more.
Although there is one OBB cache for all platforms, there are 3 different texture caches inside: DXT, ETC and PVR. Depending on the GPU, one of these caches is loaded and used during gameplay.
In general we can say this:
- PVR- accelerator cache PowerVR.
The iOS version of the game only has PVR cache, which is logical; - DXT- the same S3 Texture Compression that was used on the PC version.
He is using nVidia Tegra And Adreno. Default format, can be read on any device. - ETC- a standard format for Android, known as Ericsson Texture Compression.
Used Mali.
All caches are stored in separate files, but there is a common TXT-file containing a list of textures in other caches. There is no need to explain its structure; just open this file with Notepad (for example, Notepad++).
The caches themselves are represented by three files:
- xxx.DAT- Data file. It represents consecutive rasters, each of which begins with 8 bytes of service information. That is, something like this: [mipmap #0][mipmap #1]...[mipmap #n][mipmap #0]...
- xxx.TOC- offset file. Every 4 bytes of this file correspond to the offset in the previous file, from which the next texture data begins. The first 4 bytes contain the size of the DAT file. The file is NOT required; in case of a size error, the game itself will recalculate the offsets.
- xxx.TMB- thumbnail file, special case.DAT: textures contain only one mipmap.
Although the TXT file contains a lot of information, some of it is actually meaningless, some is ignored, and some is taken from the DAT file. Essentially, TXT is a list of textures and nothing more.
Our friends make us incredibly happy again cool programs for GTA San Andreas on Android. Today we were surprised by Nathan Steele. He created a program that allows you to import textures, cars or other things in the game directly on Android. YES - YES you heard right, now it's possible right on your damn phone...
Program name TXD TOOL, now we will tell you more about it:
So, not only can the program import textures into folders such as "gta3" "txd" "mobile" etc. Because it's already built in TXD Workshop, i.e. you can download a regular machine for PC (traditionally there are files such as "name .txd" and "name .dff") and install it immediately, with literally two clicks, the program itself will pull the textures from the .txd file and import them into the game.
Featured system requirements: 1 GB of RAM or more, 4x1.3 GHz processor or more powerful.
TXD Tool allows you to perform many operations with textures:
- Import
- Export
- Removal
- Renaming
- Editing Properties
- Creating Aliases
- This is an unofficial third party application designed for texture editing.
- VC or SA must be installed before using this application.
- You should know a little about modding to be comfortable using the TXD Tool.
- TXD Tool does not support texture overwriting. If a texture with the same name already exists, the import will be performed and the imported texture will have a new name.
TXD Tool also has the following functions:
- Generation of mipmaps
- RLE compression
- Changing topics
- Changing compression settings
- Changing the export format
TXD Tool uses content created in Android Studio and open source code (open source licenses are contained within the application). Disclaimer and Warranties: You are using this application at your own risk.
This article will look at 2 ways to add the model you like to GTA SA Mobiles. For the first method we need a PC. If you do not currently have access to a PC, then still read the first method, as there will be important information regarding the weight of the model, etc.
Method No. 1
We will need 3 programs:
- IMG Tool (or any other program convenient for you for working with img files)
- TXD Workshop
- TXD Fucker
I will say right away: the dff file (the model itself) should weigh no more than 4 MB, and in general for stable operation 3 MB. Regarding the txd file (texture), it is desirable that it also does not weigh too much.
I personally will now install the Nissan Silvia s13, its model weighs 1.5 MB. Now let's finally get to work:
We take out the gta3 and gta3.img folder from the game cache (I will write how to do this at the very end of the article, so as not to burden you with information now). We drop the folder and file onto our computer. Open our gta3.img through any program convenient for you, and drop our dff file there.
Click "save".
The first stage is completed. It was very easy, but then it got more difficult. We have a TXD file. Or rather textures. We need to pull these textures out of the file. We launch our TXDWorkshop and open our txd file in it.
Now we can see our textures. Be sure to pay attention to which textures are marked in red! But how to get them out? Click "Export" >> "Export all textures to png images". Then we select the folder where we want to save our textures, wait until the program finishes exporting, after which we can close it. Now we have model textures in png format
Next, open TXDFucker, open our gta3.txt in it (which will be located in the gta3 folder) and we see a bunch of all sorts of pictures. These are all textures from the game. In order to supply your own textures from our model, click “Import”, and then it depends on what textures we have. If you have textures with an alpha channel among your textures (they will be marked in red in TXDWorkshop), then import these textures by clicking “With Alpha”. Select all textures with an alpha channel and click "ok". There are also models with textures without an alpha channel. Now let's import textures without alpha channel. Click "Without Alpha" and select all the textures that we have without an alpha channel, and click "OK". If the program freezes when importing textures, then it’s okay, just wait a little. Great, the program imported textures into gta3.txt
Now we drop our gta3 folder and gta3.img file on mobile device along the way: and confirm the replacement.
Now we can go into the game and check if we managed to place the car. The easiest way to find a car is through CarSpawner. But how to install cleo scripts on mobile version I'll tell you about GTA SA in the next post.
As you can see, everything worked out for me.
And now let’s talk about how we can get the gta3 folder and the gta3.img file from the cache in obb. To do this, we connect our device via USB cable(the same thing can be done without a PC on the device itself, through any archiver). We follow the path: . There we see 2 files: "main.8.com.rockstargames.gtasa" and "patch.8,com.rockstargames.gtasa.obb".
We change the file extension from .obb to .zip and extract all files from both archives into . Both archives will contain folders with the same names but with different contents, so when extracting the second archive, confirm merging the folders. Now we can change the format back from .zip to .obb.
Attention! After this, the game will weigh 2 times more!
Now we have a gta3 folder and a gta3.img file.
They will be in the game cache, namely in .
Method No. 2
We need one program:
- Img Tool. You can find it on Google Play.
This method is for those who do not have a PC at hand.
This method has one drawback: the cars will have no textures. This is all due to the fact that a program for working with gta3.img was made for Android, but a program for working with gta3.txt was not made...
There is one more problem. Some Img Tool on Android does not open for unknown reasons. It doesn’t open for me either, which is why I will continue to write without screenshots.
Open our gta3.img through the Img Tool. Now we can see all our models. Click "Import" and find our model downloaded earlier. Select it and wait while the program imports the file. Now click Save and exit the program. Now our model is in the game. We go into the game and look for it through CarSpawn. That's all.
In my next post I will talk about several ways to install CLEO on mobile GTA SA, and how to install scripts and how to use them. If you have any questions, or something didn’t work out for you, please write to me in a personal message.
