To make things easier for distribution and sorting of the files, another tool for the community has been released in the form of ModClean by Clivey.

For some time, some members have been distrubting Mods with the whole 40mb gamedata.pak file, even though they were only a few altered files. Due to the upload times of these Mods by the database team, there was a requirement to somehow shrink the Mods, without having to go through a painful and cumbersome task for looking for the files manually to find out what had changed.

The Tool: This is where ModClean comes in. By simply dropping the ModsMyModGame folder into a source directory, ModClean will scan through every file and compare it to the files that already came with Crysis in the default pak files. It will filter out all those files that have not been changed and remove them. Then it will allow you to create a New mod based upong the altered files only, plus any new bespoke files you have.

Example - SDK_Mod: If you copy the contents of the SDK ModGame folder into the source directory you specify and make a new mod, ModClean reduces the size from over 260mb to 50mb. This is manily due to the fact that alot of the files in the SDK_Mod are unchanged from the standard pak files, so there is no requirement for them to be in the Mod folder.

So what does this mean? Well in theory now, when you create a new mod and you unpack all the pak files into your Mod folder, you can mod away to your hearts content with all standard 30,000 files. When you have finished/wish to test your mod, you can simply run the mod through ModClean and it will dynamically shrink your mod to only those files that are needed, thus making the Mod more efficient, faster to load and smaller in size.

Any issues?: Well, the tool can only be automated so far, there has to be a degree of some intelligence. For example, putting the correct file structure in the mod in the first place. It is best to read the readme.txt file that comes with the tool, as it will explain the simple 10 steps plus also the requirements.

Mod Features
* Create 1.2 compatible Mods with a info.xml creation tool
* Removes duplicate files that arent needed.
* Keeps all user created files like texture changes, script adjustments new objects etc
* Clean up any Mod
* Can compressed files into Pak file or leave as is.
* Can Zip the whole Mod up for easy distribution