NoMansSky:Tutorials/Running NMS in Unpacked Mode

Running NMS in Unpacked Mode

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Introduction

No Man's Sky has all its assets commpressed into files, the .pak files. So to add a mod, we need to extract pak files, convert them to final files, edit the files and do the reverse.
It's possible though to run No Man's Sky with all of the assets unpacked. This makes it easier for modding as you don't have to repack your mods every time you want to test, just directly edit the files. It may also make game loading a bit faster.

NOTE

If you are not yet familiar with NMS modding, then I suggest you get yourself familiar with the general process of modding NMS before running the game unpacked

Moving Files

1. Unpack all the assets (NMS/GAMEDATA/PCBANKS/*.pak) to a new folder (eg, NMS/UNPACKED)
2. Move all the *.pak files and the BankSignatures.bin file from PCBANKS to a backup location like NMS/PCBANKS-BACKUP. (A warning will display at game launch if BankSignatures.bin files are still in PCBANKS folder.)
3. The NMS/GAMEDATA/PCBANKS/ folder should now only contain:

   PCBANKS/Mods/ folder (if you have created it)

   PCBANKS/ENABLEMODS.txt (or DISABLEMODS.txt if you have not renamed it)

4. Delete everything in the GAMEDATA folder, EXCEPT the PCBANKS folder. It's all generated files that will be recreated once you run the game. There should be nothing in there but PCBANKS.
5. Move all the unpacked assets from NMS/UNPACKED into NMS/GAMEDATA. It should look like:

NMS/GAMEDATA/AUDIO/
NMS/GAMEDATA/FONTS/
.. etc
NMS/GAMEDATA/PCBANKS/
.. etc
NMS/GAMEDATA/GCAISPACESHIPGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN
.. etc

That's it. You should be good to go. If the game won't start, you've done something wrong. Try restoring your game to run in packed mode and start again.
A common problem people have is placing the assets in the PCBANKS folder instead of directly in the GAMEDATA folder. Unpacked assets must be in GAMEDATA, not PCBANKS. You can still put packed mods in the PCBANKS/Mods/folder though.

For testing, unpacked mods should be merged into GAMEDATA (keep backups of the originals for your own convenience!)