ArmA 2 Extract bis Configs

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If you want to learn how bis made their configs, if you need to inherit from there or what ever you need, then you must have the configs unpacked and deRapified for human readable text format. This is how you can do that automatically.

This batch file assumes Mikero's tools are installed to \tools\mikero\ directory and your ArmA 2 is installed to \arma2\ directory, if they are not, please change the paths accordingly.

Create DOS batch file into directory there you want to create the configs, we call it now _run_extract_arma2_configs.bat file name.

_run_extract_arma2_configs.bat

@echo off
for %%x in (\arma2\addons\*.pbo,\arma2\dta\*.pbo) do (
\tools\mikero\extractpbo -P -F config.bin,stringtable.xml %%x d:\arma2_store\config_reference\
)
ren ca arma2
move bin arma2
move languagecore arma2
 
for %%x in (\arma2\common\*.pbo,\arma2\expansion\addons\*.pbo,\arma2\expansion\dta\*.pbo) do (
\tools\mikero\extractpbo -P -F config.bin,stringtable.xml %%x d:\arma2_store\config_reference\
)
ren ca oa
move bin oa
move languagecore oa
pause

Replace the directory d:\arma2_store\config_reference\ with the current dir where your batch file is located, for some reason latest ExtractPbo requires this path or it doesn't work. Do not extract the configs into armatools\armawork\ directory as it will confuse binarization process. Any other dir of your choosing will do fine.

Run the batch file and let it process, it takes some time. When its done you have proper directory structure for the config files and their file names are config.cpp in nicely readable text format.

Very good method to search something in these config.cpp files is to use tool like powergrep and use simple plain text search including sub dirs, into this directory there you have unpacked the configs. Just type in search word and voila, you search the whole contents of ArmA 2 config.