Pakker - Customise your RL Sideswipe

This tool lets you customise your RL Sideswipe (Android only). Use this at your own risk - any problems as a result of its usage are not our fault. Please only use this if you know what you are doing.

This tool is currently a work in progress, and therefore is not usable yet. If you want to be notified when it is ready to go, join our Discord server.

Setup

The following instructions are for setting up pakker on Linux. This has been tested on Debian through WSL on Windows 11.

1. Install packages

In order to use pakker, a number of packages must first be installed.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unzip
sudo apt-get install default-jdk

2. Install apktool

Apktool is used to unpack the APK to give us access to its .pak file.

curl -o apktool https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iBotPeaches/Apktool/master/scripts/windows/apktool.bat
curl -o apktool.jar https://bitbucket.org/iBotPeaches/apktool/downloads/apktool_2.9.0.jar
sudo mv ./apktool /usr/local/bin/apktool
sudo mv ./apktool.jar /usr/local/bin/apktool.jar
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/apktool
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/apktool.jar

3. Download UnrealPakTool

UnrealPakTool is used to modify the game's .pak file.

curl -O https://github.com/allcoolthingsatoneplace/UnrealPakTool/releases/download/4.27.0/UnrealPakTool.zip
unzip UnrealApkTool.zip

4. Download your game APK

Download the RL Sideswipe from apkmirror. Click on the latest version listed, then download the version with an APK chip. Move this file into this directory, then rename it rl2d.apk.

Usage

Once the above setup steps are complete, running the pakker is simple.

1. Unpack the game APK

Run the following script, which will unpack the apk and save the contents of the script in the ./output directory.

./unpak.sh

2. Select files to modify

This tool works by creating a new pak which patches the existing one with new values. To do this, you can create a modifications.txt file and list the names of the files you wish to include in the new pak.

touch modifications.txt
nano modifications.txt

In nano (or your preferred editor), list the paths from ProductAssets of the contents you wish to overwrite, one per line.

3. Make your modifications

In ./output/pakchunk0-Android_ASTCClient_p, make the changes to the files you included in your modifications.txt. The files in this folder are what will be repacked into the patch pak.

4. Repack the PAK file

./repak.sh

This tool is incomplete. The following steps have not yet been implemented.