Extraction and reverse-engineering tool for Star Citizen game files.
StarBreaker includes several projects, each useful to process a certain type of info or to perform a certain task
Avalonia UI that aims to be an easy way to view and extract things inside the p4k and datacore. It's very barebones right now, I wouldn't recommend using it.
Console application used mostly for development and reverse engineering purposes, has some useful commands to extract and process files. Here's the available functionality:
StarBreaker.Cli v1.0.0
USAGE
StarBreaker.Cli [options]
StarBreaker.Cli [command] [...]
OPTIONS
-h|--help Shows help text.
--version Shows version information.
COMMANDS
chf-download Downloads all characters from the website and saves them to the website characters folder.
chf-export-all Exports all modded characters into the Star Citizen folder.
chf-export-watch Watch for new modded characters and export them to the star citizen folder.
chf-import-all Imports all non-modded characters exported from the game into our local characters folder.
chf-import-watch Watch for new characters in the Star Citizen folder and import them.
chf-process Process a character file
chf-process-all Processes all characters in the given folder.
dcb-extract Extracts a DataCore binary file into separate xml files
dcb-extract-single Extracts a DataCore binary file into a single xml
p4k-extract Extracts a Game.p4k file
proto-extract Extracts protobuf definitions from the Star Citizen executable.
proto-set-extract Extracts the protobuf descriptor set from the Star Citizen executable.
You can run `StarBreaker.Cli [command] --help` to show help on a specific command.Star Citizen can export and import custom characters via chf files. Some examples can be seen here. The Chf project implements this format, being capable of reading, manipulating, and writing back the characters. This can allow for some things the game does not, be creative!
This project was the main reverse engineering work behind starchar, which is a web application that allows for such modifications.
The game communicates with the server via gRPC. With some gRPC clients (including the one the game uses), it is possible to grab protocol buffer descriptors from the binary. This process is done in StarBreaker.Protobuf.
Next, we can write these descriptors to *.proto files, via some code I borrowed from grpc-curl.
After that, we use the standard Google.Protobuf and Grpc.Tools packages in the StarBreaker.Grpc project to generate C# clients for these gRPC services.
This, along with some token grabbing (described in GrpcClient.cs), can be used to make API calls to the game servers on your behalf.
As an extra goodie for the gRPC communications, I've also implemented the necessary filtering for mitmproxy to properly inspect the packages here, as well as the code to convert the gRPC buffers into human-readable json here.
This can be used to inspect what the game is doing, like querying the entity graph for information.
Development project mostly so I can throw in some code and run it. Some miscellaneous things like runners for the rest of the code.
The one interesting part about this sandbox project is the Crc32 brute forcing. Chf files (and possibly others, I'm not sure yet) save the crc32c hashes of strings as a uint32 to the file. It's surprisingly useful to know the original string that produced this hash, so I run the hashing function on every game-related string I can find (running strings on the exe, parsing the entire p4k and datacore, etc).
These projects are useful to extract data from the p4k file specifically. They implement the various custom formats the game uses to archive its assets. Below is a collapsed list of file types found in the p4k, and which ones are supported.
File Types
All of these files can be found when extracting Data.p4k from Star Citizen. Some are common formats and immediately usable, other require conversion, and some are unknown.
Files with these extensions can be opened with a program or converted to a more common format. Some of them require specific parsing, which I've already done.
- dbc = StarBreaker.DataCore
- p4k = StarBreaker.P4k
- xml = StarBreaker.CryXmlB
- cfg = plain text, configuration
- chf = character head file, https://github.com/diogotr7/StarCitizenChf
- dpl = plaintext, json-ish. only one file. depletion?
- eco = plaintext, json-ish. planettech related. ecology?
- dds = texture, openable by many programs
- gfx = flash, use https://ruffle.rs/
- swf = flash, use https://ruffle.rs/
- ini = plaintext, i18n
- json
- meshsetup = plain xml
- opr = plain json, object preset
- pak = zip file
- png = image
- svg
- ttf
- txt
- xml, sometimes
- bk2 = bink video
- bnk = wwise audio bank
- ogg = audio, openable by many programs
- obj = wavefront obj, 3d model
- usm = https://github.com/Rikux3/UsmToolkit
- wem = wwise audio
These files are CryXmlB files, which we can convert to regular xml.
- adb
- animevents
- bspace
- cdf
- cga
- chrparams
- comb
- mtl
- veg
- xml, sometimes
see cgf-converter, TODO.
- cga
- cgam
- cgf
- cgfm
- cigvoxel
- cigvoxelheader
- dst
- soc
see cgf-converter, TODO.
- aim
- caf
- chr
- dba
- img
- skin
- skinm
Investigation needed. most of these are not obvious, not common, and probably not even very interesting (except socpak of course).
- cax = CAXCACHE, very uncommon
- dat = probably just misc data, might have to read header
- dna = DNA v1.6 signature, very interesting
- lut = only one file with header SKYL
- pso = directx pipeline state object?
- r16 = raw 16-bit ints? no clue. heightmaps or something?
- r8 = raw 8-bit ints? no clue. heightmaps or something?
- raw = no clue. from the path it seems to be planet texture related somehow
- RigLogic = RIG V1.9 signature. animation related?
- socpak - server object container pak. zip file. explore me
- vvg = vehicle voxel ?? sig 0xC? 0xBA 0xFE 0xCA | some of these are CrCh
- topology = unknown. medical gown. starcloth? no signature