ME3 external psarc file

[cnnps3]

so im trying to get ME3 to play on external. i was told since the .psarc file is too big, i must use the .psarc extraction tool.

im on mac, running bootcamp win7. everytime i double click the exe it wont open. i youtubed a video and some guy drag and dropped the psarc file onto the exe and it did everything.

i tried this it also doesnt work. i tried to make the exe file run in diff modes such as xp vista etc.. still nothing

any help?


once i get the psarc file extracted, i just need to put them back in palce and can play me3 external?

why cant i use split4g or opensplit for this?

[BahumatLord]

You might have an old version of PSARC. This is the correct one to support lzma decompression. the earlier versions only supported zlib (zip). https://psx.egnyte.com/h-s/20120310/f0c5ed93a8b64895 .
I don't know if it's gonna run on mac but it's pretty simple so it should. What you do is type psarc main.psarc or you can drag and drop the main.psarc to the psarc.exe and it will extract the contents. It will take 30 min to an hour depending on how good your computer is. If you do this in your game backup folder it will extract everything and put it in the right place. After that, move main.psarc to a safe location until you test it out and make sure it's working. If the game loads up and you get to where you can control the character, then you're good to go

The reason you can't use split4g or opensplit is because they're different formats. PSARC files are double compressed. Some use zip as a base compression, the one in Mass Effect 3 uses lzma as a base compression, then it is compressed again to be used on the ps3.

I hope this made sense

edit - put the psarc.exe in the same folder where main.psarc is so it's extracted to the right places

[cnnps3]

that is the exact file that i have. i downloaded it from the TB compatibility thread.

when i boot into win7 via bootcamp, i get all those errors about it not working.


thank you for the explaination about split4g and the files

[BahumatLord]

that is the right version tho. Tested thorughly with ME3. Try this. type "psarc.exe extract main.psarc" - pulled that from the readme.txt. Old versions didn't need it, maybe this one does. I'm not very familiar with MACs, but I know there are several PC emulators for it. You may have to find another one or if you have access to someone's PC, then do the extraction on that computer instead of yours. It does work

[windrider42]

I had to use this commandline for it too work on my Windows 7 x64

psarc extract -y main.psarc

The game works perfectly off an external drive now.

[cnnps3]

I had to use this commandline for it too work on my Windows 7 x64

psarc extract -y main.psarc

The game works perfectly off an external drive now.

tried this and now it is working. thank you!

once extracted.. is there any way to rejoin them?

[BahumatLord]

psarc is supposed to be able to build the files too. Read the documents that came with it for the parameters. There are 2 files that don't belong in the archive. I don't remember which ones off the top of my head, but they are mentioned on the TB compatibility thread a couple weeks ago in the posts. If you do rebuild it, you'll need those 2 left out so the game will still launch. 1 points to the update server and the other points to an initialization file so the game will boot.

I'm glad you got it working

[cnnps3]

thanks for your help


so i was looking through all the games that i originally used opensplit on and killzone3 and shadow of the colossus also have psarc files over 4gb, would i also need to do the same if i want to run these games on external? im asking to double check

[BahumatLord]

thanks for your help


so i was looking through all the games that i originally used opensplit on and killzone3 and shadow of the colossus also have psarc files over 4gb, would i also need to do the same if i want to run these games on external? im asking to double check

It should work, but I haven't tested on those games. I have tested the entire Uncharted series (1,2,3) and it works on all of them. It works like that for when the devs are working on the game, they can modify a couple files that they need to at the time, then when it's ready for the public, the files are compressed into psarc to both increase access speeds on Blu-Rays and to speed up the disc mastering process. You should be able to extract any PSARC with that version of psarc.exe. Don't lose it, because there are older versions of the program out there that only support zlib, and not lzma too. We had a hell of a time finding this version after the file hosts went down. Just remember to always test your new copy before deleting original files just in case

[cnnps3]

i split the psarc for both kz3 and shadow of the colossus and both do not work. shadow has over 170k files so it will take forever to load and kz3 loads up to where it shows an update for the game and freezes.. im not sure how one ps3 chart shows it works extneral