How to use custom Cryopods data

[connorwyatt]

When I'm using the JSON in order to see the stats and colours of all my creatures, I can see that the filled Cryopods have some custom data which is a byte array. Is there any documentation on the structure of that byte array? I would like to parse it and do something with the data, but I'm not sure what the structure is

[miragedmuk]

Sounds like a long pointer - possibly an offset to the contained dino data in the cryopod. It's something I'm going to be investigating myself in the new year so if I find anything I will update you.

[miragedmuk]

It's actually a byte array making up an ArkArchive in and of itself containing 2 GameObjects (the dino and it's status component).

I don't really know Java but have managed to extract them using a C# version based on this original toolkit. I skip the first 4 bytes (version possibly?) then read in 2 GameObject's

[connorwyatt]

Thanks for the info, how did you figure that out out of interest? Reading binaries is new to me and I'm wondering how you knew the structure of the file. I've read the byte array as a string, and I can see values there, is it a case of guessing what the value means based on the values you've seen for the field?

[miragedmuk]

I went from a hint on the SurviveTheArk forums that it was a "file within a file".

I was then able to write the bytes from the custom data out into their own files and could visually see they were similar to a normal ark save.

The only thing I had to work with was a "ArkArchive" class in the C# converted toolkit Im using (based on this one) which read it in perfectly.

To see how I did it in the C# toolkit check my pull request out - ark-mod/ArkSavegameToolkitNet#15

[connorwyatt]

Thanks for the info, I've managed to read it in 👍