UZ file

The file extension .uz identifies a file, usually an Unreal package, that was compressed by an Unreal Engine 1 game. It is the equivalent to Unreal Engine 2's UZ2 file and Unreal Engine 3's UZ3 file. UZ files are usually stored on "redirect servers", i.e. HTTP servers the game client can fetch packages from that a game server requires.

Usage

The .uz format is a general-purpose compression format, i.e. it is not limited to Unreal packages. To compress a file into UZ, run the command

UCC Compress path\to\file.ext

from a Windows command prompt. This will create a compressed file in the same directory that has the .uz extension appended.

To decompress a UZ file, use the command

UCC Decompress path\to\file.ext.uz

and the decompressed file with be created in the same directory but with the .uz extension removed.

Note that UCC Compress and UCC Decompress will override any existing file without warning!

There are also 3rd-party tools for compressing or decompressing UZ files.

File format

(needs clarification) The format of UZ files is relatively simple. It consists of a header and the compressed data:

Field	Type	Length	Value range
UZ File Tag	int (little-endian)	4 Bytes (DWORD)	0x000004D2 (decimal: 1234)
File Name String Size	int (little-endian)	4 Bytes (FCompactIndex)	0 - 231-1
File Name String	char-array	(needs clarification)
Compressed Data	bytes	(needs clarification)

The compression format is defined by the Zlib library's compress() and uncompress() functions. The entire file is compressed as a single unit.

Links

• UnrealDeps by Mc.Gugi - Includes source code for compressing and decompressing uz1, uz2, and uz3 files.
• UZ by SeriousBuggie - Includes source code for compressing and decompressing uz files.