[Apex Archive] Season19 removed pakfiles, where are the cubemaps?

[snake-biscuits]

Recently cracked the cubemaps.hdr.vtf format in respawn_cubemap_tool
Both Titanfall 2 & Apex Legends cubemaps can be extracted from PakFiles

However, in trying to test this is still relevant for current maps, I noticed Season 19 maps don't have PakFiles
Presumably these maps still have cubemaps, but the data is inside a lump?

We'll have to find it.

Due to running out of hard drive storage & needing new tools, I'm missing maps from Season 17 - 19
See:

• Apex Legends Season 18 `.vpk` are gone #121
• fix bsp and wrap file export r-ex/LegionPlus#135
• https://github.com/YOROTSUKI/LegionPlus/tree/wrap_test

The Fandom wiki's Version History page also hasn't been updated since early October 2023

• https://antifandom.com/apexlegends/wiki/Version_History

So, we'll have to pull down old Steam manifests & work out the important map updates:

• https://steamdb.info/depot/1172471/manifests/

At time of writing, there have been 11 patches since the last recorded on the wiki, over the course of ~4 months
It's worth noting the wiki does still have pages for the current season & it's events
The official Apex wiki also lists patch notes:

• https://answers.ea.com/t5/News-Game-Updates/bd-p/apex-legends-news-en

[snake-biscuits]

Might be worth looking at hashing all the maps we have to reduce duplicates first
As well as reducing hard drive use in other ways (got some big games installed I need to finish)

Alternatively, there is the long shot option:

• Create bsp class from bytes / stream #21

Reading directly from .vpk / .rpak would mean not needing to have all files extracted

That ties into improving existing tools like HarmonyVPKTool & LegionPlus tho

[snake-biscuits]

Rexx says cubemaps are in .rpaks, (the materials / particles / models mp_whatever.rpak)
In some kinda unique format w/ multiple texture layers + some extension (extended header?)

[snake-biscuits]

Apex Legends/vpk_nightly.txt lists maps in each release
Apex Legends/build.txt indicates season & midseason number (R5pc_r5-191_* for Season 19, Midseason 1)

Should be able to grab these for each manifest w/ steamcmd
Be sure to add the manifests to the table in:

• [Apex Archive] retreiving manifests from Steam #103

[snake-biscuits]

Might be worth looking at hashing all the maps we have to reduce duplicates first

This was already proposed in:

• [Apex Archive] eliminating duplicates to save on storage #137