Perhaps, now few people recall the time when mobile phones hardly reproduced polyphonic MIDI melodies, and their displays boasted only 65 thousand color gradations. Modern smartphones are, in fact, portable microcomputers with a productive central processor, their own RAM cells , a drive, and so on. It is not surprising that the owners of such systems often have a desire to play real computer games. And one of the difficulties that you have to deal with is how to unpack the cache.
Feature of applications on Android
Now you will not surprise anyone with the impressive volumes of computer game distributions, but in the world of smartphone programs, several tens of megabytes are considered the norm. Or even less than that. In fact, this is only partly true. The user, for example, downloading a game of 5 MB in size, may not suspect that after its launch in the background the main data of the application is downloaded. This set of files, in fact, is a game. It is called "cache" ("cache"). Although, theoretically, APK files of several gigabytes are possible, and problems can arise with their installation. In order to save traffic and more convenience, the entire mentioned set can be pre-downloaded from any other source and transferred to your gadget. The main thing in this case is to understand how to unpack the cache on Android, or, in other words, how to correctly install the application.
Training
You need to select the cache specifically for your gadget. The type of video accelerator (Mali, PowerVR, Adreno), the amount of available memory, the processor, and, first of all, the screen resolution are important here. Most often, the cache is offered for download as a single archive file, which is more rational than many small ones. Thus, the first thing you need to pay attention to is how to unpack the cache located in the archive. The most popular formats are zip and rar. Initially, it is recommended to download the archive to a personal computer, unpack it there, and then transfer it to the gadget. To work with archived data, you must install WinZip and / or WinRAR programs. As an example, consider how to unpack a cache on a computer. First of all, you need to start WinRAR; then select the downloaded archive as an analog of a standard explorer; point to the “Extract” icon in the program header and confirm the proposed path. So simple. It remains only to transfer the unpacked files to the memory card of the mobile device using Card Reader or a regular USB cable from “charging”.
The right way
One of the questions that needs to be clarified is how to unpack the cache on Android through a computer. Indeed, it is not enough just to copy the decompressed data to an arbitrary place on the SD media. It all depends on the game developer. So, in most cases, you need to transfer the cache along the path: Android / Data / (name of the game program) or, which is most common, in Android / obb / (name). All this, as a rule, is indicated on the pages of the resource where the cache is downloaded from.
For some devices, the capacity of the internal drive is acceptable. Note that there are many ways to transfer data from SD0 (internal memory card) to SD1 (external). In particular, Obb-on-SD, FolderMount, and a drive swapping script handle this. However, most owners of mid-range mobile gadgets will not encounter such problems.
Basic method
Let's consider how to unpack the cache for the game on Android using the solutions provided by the developers. First of all, you need to download the APK-file of the desired game application to the gadget from the Google store or third-party resources. Install it and run. After that, the user will be informed that the program will download the necessary data from the Network. Sometimes a confirmation dialog box appears. This method is one of the most convenient, since it automatically detects the characteristics of the gadget and downloads the current cache. The only thing worth paying attention to is the fact that downloadable volumes of hundreds of megabytes require high-speed Wi-Fi, not 3G and, very slowly, outdated GPRS.
If the game directory is not exactly known
We mentioned earlier that files should be placed in a specific folder. However, how to unpack the cache if its name is not known exactly? In this case, you can do the following:
- Install the game client (the same APK file).
- Run it and interrupt the download of the cache after a few seconds.
- The program itself will create a folder with the desired name in Android / data or obb. All that remains is to look carefully at the directories to determine where to put the cache files.
Perhaps this is one of the most accurate methods. Of course, you have to “sacrifice” a few megabytes of traffic needed for the first files.
How to unzip the cache for the game from Gameloft
This game developer is known to many. At least on Asphalt 8. One of the alternative ways to unpack the cache on Android, in the case of a game from Gameloft, is as follows:
- Download the APK installation file to your smartphone (tablet). For now, refrain from installing.
- Download the GLZip (executable) application and run it.
- In the window, select the "View Links in APK" command and specify the game file. The result will be the output of links for downloading and unpacking this or that cache, depending on the hardware configuration of the gadget.
- Choose the one you want (very easy). The popular Mali video decoder here is designated as ETC, Adreno as ATC, PVRT, as you might guess from the abbreviation, PowerVR and, finally, DXT is needed for gadgets with Tegra.
- After downloading the selected cache, you need to extract it from the archive. This task will help solve the team Unpack. Unpacking is carried out in the same directory where the packed file is located. Note that all data will be placed in the Sdfiles folder.
- At the last stage, this directory is renamed to the desired name (discussed earlier) and its transfer to Gameloft / Games.
The advantage of such a solution is the guarantee of the absence of viruses in the cache, which is explained by the fact that the data is downloaded from the official GameLoft servers. In addition, the download speed in this case is very decent. Sometimes game lovers ask the question “How to unpack the cache?”, Although, as it may seem, everything is quite simple. The fact is that the archivers Rar and Zip do not work with jar files, in which data for applications is sometimes distributed. GLZip copes with this task.
To summarize
As you can see, there’s nothing complicated about unpacking the cache. The process is no more difficult than replacing files in a regular computer game. Recall the algorithm: downloading and installing the APK-file - selecting the required set in the provided archives - unpacking it and placing it in the required directory. That, in fact, is all.