
This is a quick guide for editing a file in the ark using ArkTool Gui.
In the process it attempts to show you some ways of using ArkTool Gui.


I will assume for this guide that you want to edit song and artist
names for existing songs in the game.

The game I use here is Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox360, my main.hdr and
main_0.ark files are both located in the dir "D:\gh2_hacks\ark\x360_gh2".



1)	In order to edit an ark file you need to first open it in ArkTool Gui.
	So first run ArkTool Gui and then choose use the File->Open
	menu or press Ctrl+O. Now navigate to the directory that holds your
	ark and hdr files and select Ok. It will take around 10-20 seconds
	to open the files, so please wait. If you have waited more than a
	minute then chances are something has gone wrong :)
	
	
2)	Next you need to work out which file you want to replace. You can
	browse through the filelist like you would through windows explorer,
	or you can use the "Find Files" functionality. You can do this by going
	to the Options->Find Files menu or by pressing Ctrl+F. When it asks for
	a filename you could try something like "*.dtb" or "songs" (without the
	quotes). It will then search through to find the first instance that
	matches the criteria. If this isn't the file you are after you can press
	F3 to fine the next file that matches the same criteria.
	
	By doing this you can find out that the file you are after is called
	"songs.dtb" and it is found in the path "config/gen/songs.dtb"
	(at least for guitar hero 2 on xbox360).
	
	
3)	In order to edit the "songs.dtb" file you must first extract it onto your
	computer. To do this you can right click on the file and select 
	"Extract File" from the popup menu. You could also select the file and
	press Ctrl+E, then select a filename to save it to on your computer.
	For this example i will save it as songs.dtb.
	
	
4)	The file gets automatically decrypted when it is extracted, so you could now
	directly edit it in a hex editor if you wish. Another way to edit it would be
	to use some of the existing tools for editing these files.
	
	Nachyoz wrote a great tool for editing dtb files, however it was ps2 specific,
	so I made some alterations to make it now use decrypted files so that it will work
	with any dtb files extracted by my tool. (No matter what system they're from).
	
	
5)	Now run GH2DTBEdit_unencrypted.exe and open songs.dtb in it.
	You will see a node for every song in the game. Click on the "+" of the node
	to expand the info for that node. Now you will see "name" and "artist" items.
	Expand each of these items to see the song name and artist name.
	Click on either the song name or artist name and then edit it on the right
	hand side. When you have edited all the songs you want you can save the changes
	from the file menu.
	
	
6)	Time to replace the file in the ark with our edited file. To do this
	you must right-click on the "config/gen/songs.dtb" file and select
	"Replace File". You could also select "config/gen/songs.dtb" and press Ctrl+R.
	
	The file has now been replaced, but the changes have not been saved. If you
	were to exit at this point the tool would remind you that you need to save.
	
	
7)	So lastly to save the file go to the File->Save menu or press Ctrl+S.
	This will save the changes to the original hdr and ark files you opened.
	Alternatively you could choose File->SaveAs or Ctrl+A to save the changed
	ark and hdr file to a new directory so as to not alter your original file.
	
	When this is done you can close ArkTool and insert the new main_0.ark and
	main.hdr files into your game image and you're ready to rock 'n' roll!
	
	NOTE: If the resultant hdr or ark file is bigger than the original ark or hdr
	files you may need to remake your disc image when reinserting these files,
	otherwise the new larger files will overlap other existing files in the disc
	image.


xorloser
www.xorloser.com

