Game Shrinker v1.0 (GekiHEN Contest Entry)
Once again, a developer has come forth to help people with small memory cards. This time the credit goes to Dakor for creating Game Shrinker, an application made to help you get rid of padding and useless stuff in your dumped games that you don’t want (such as extra languages voice-overs, etc). According to the developer himself, here is what his application does:
Game Shrinker automatically searches for manuals, language (text, audio, images) and video files in the game directories and offers you the possibility to shrink them to 0-Byte.
This is very reminiscent of UMDGen which, for those of you that weren’t around, was a very nifty application that allowed you to remove padding and do other edits in PSP games so you could reduce their size. What Dakor says about Game Shrinker creating dummy files (aka 0-Byte files) to replace the originals is something I used to do when editing PSP games such as my copy of Daxter where I created symlinks between audio language files, allowing me to delete about 300MB of data and redirecting it to the English files. Dakor also says that Game Shrinker has this very useful feature:
Game Shrinker comes with a “Try-A-Dummy”-Feature, which let’s you temporary replace a file with a dummy-file. After you tested the game you can then decide to make this change permanent or undo it. (This saves you from having to reinstall the game if you shrinked a file that is obligatory for the the game)
This will be great for people to figure out what they can and can’t dummy out to reduce their game’s size. Great job!
Instructions for Game Shrinker
In case it’s not clear, here’s a general how to for Game Shrinker:
1. Select the game which you want to shrink
2. Press to search the games folder for shrinkable files
3. Select a file you want to shrink (like language files in Multi-Lang-Versions)
4. Press to Shrink the selected file or Directory
4.1. Or use “Try-A-Dummy”-FeatureRegarding the “Try-A-Dummy”-Feature, this is how to use it:
1. Select the file you want to shrink.
2. Use to backup the file up and to shrink the original file.
3. Start the game and check if it crashes (this usually happens when the starts up or when the video would usually be played)
4. Go back to Game Shrinker and navigate to the “.backup_”-version of your file
5.1 If the game Crashed press LT to on the .backup file to restore the backup and remove dummy file
5.2 If the game runs fine, press to permanently delete the backup file and free space on your Memory Card
Links :
I recommend looking at these threads, if you are looking to get (or want so share) some information about which games or files can’t be shrinked (yet):
• https://gbatemp.net/threads/reducing-game-size-by-deleting-language-files-and-or-movies-list.440978/
• https://wololo.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=47059
Download Game Shrinker
To get your hands on this useful little application, all you need to do is head over here to entry page on the GekiHEN website and, as usual, download the VPK file from the huge button that no one can miss.
Enjoy the release everyone!
Very nice.
nice
SHWEET! Thanx dude.
This would be great for much of EUR-exclusive or non-exclusive releases who wanted only a specific language with certain games and thereby conserve some needed memory space. Especially useful now that Sony’s PS Vita memory cards have skyrocketed from their already very expensive prices.
This was needed. Thank you.
Amazing tool. This is like UDMGen on the go!
This would probably be more useful on PC. VPK files are nothing more than renamed ZIP files so working with them isn’t really an issue. Aldostools already had a similar program for PS3 on PC. You might have to make a couple changes to the filter list if you want to exclude the manual or anything else PS3 games don’t have, but overall it’d probably be a better option
superb… great.. and excellent…
or save yourself the trouble and save some money for a bigger memory card
Fudge NO!
im waiting for the hate msg’s :p lol
My 64 GB card fills up plenty fast if I try to load my PSP and PSone games along with my Vita games… So any space savings is welcomed savings.
bigger memory card or not, its still worth to use this tool to fit even more games, regardless of mem card size. with ARK eCFW around the corner, ill say its definitely worth it so you can cram in psp games
Or just save your money and not waste it on a memory card lol
Does this affect performance?
does it have an option for choosing what language to erase? I have games with EN and JP voices, I fear it would chose to keep EN based on the region but I actually prefer the Japanese voices.
Wow a really great program! Thanks!
now guys i hqve a 4gb card and i am trying to nstall a 1.7gb .vpk .. gameshrinker does not shrink files that are not installed? or does it because i cant install it..
link is dead or nonexistent on the “here”