LiveArea Designer v1.24 (VPK Editing + PNG8 Optimization)

LiveArea Designer 1.24 - VPK Editing + Smaller PNG8 Exports (experimental)

This release implements community suggestions to simplify the UI, hide rarely-used palette controls, allow editing existing homebrew VPKs, and explain/improve the image compression pipeline.

New: Open and modify a homebrew VPK

• Web: click Open VPK…, select a VPK locally, inspect its LiveArea background, startup gate, supported frame images and template.xml fields, then edit frame images, text, targets and geometry. Choose Export modified VPK to download a new <original>-livearea.vpk file. The source VPK remains unchanged; processing is local in the browser.
• PS Vita: in Template + VPK Settings, choose Open VPK and browse for a local VPK; after editing, use Patch VPK to export to ux0:data/LiveAreaDesigner/export/modified_livearea.vpk without overwriting the source archive.
• Untouched VPK entries including eboot.bin, sce_sys/param.sfo and unrelated game data are preserved. The web repacker preserves their compressed original data, checksum and ZIP method.
• When only XML text/target/position has changed, the web exporter can reuse the originally imported image bytes instead of recompressing them.

Cleaner UI

• The fallback palette is inside collapsible Advanced appearance controls.
• Advanced language restrictions and seldom-used XML options are collapsed by default.
• Unnecessary technical copy and secondary metrics no longer crowd the preview. The primary action is Export LiveArea Assets; supporting tools are under More tools.

PNG8 compression, explained and improved

• Older versions already produced indexed PNG8 images with zlib/DEFLATE, suitable for LiveArea assets. Version 1.24 additionally removes unused palette entries and chooses adaptive PNG filters before zlib compression; use Optimize PNG8 images (on by default) in the web UI.
• Native PS Vita export uses stronger zlib compression and adaptive libpng filters.
• On a simple 200 x 160 test illustration the PNG8 was reduced from 945 to 126 bytes. Results vary significantly by source image.
• Important: compression is lossless after PNG8 quantization; quantization itself is lossy in color detail and reduces alpha to transparent/opaque. Some imported PNGs retain their exact original bytes when unchanged.

Validation

• 19 Node.js unit tests pass (ZIP parsing/integrity, CRC, compressed streams, paths, PNG8 geometry and frame XML).
• Chrome desktop and mobile integration tests pass, including local import/edit/export of a complete VPK with unchanged executable/SFO/game assets.
• An actual VPK compiled by VitaSDK was read and patched successfully and passed unzip integrity testing with identical executable and SFO hashes.
• VitaSDK VPK build and native host smoke tests pass.

Known limitations

• The web VPK importer accepts only non-encrypted, single-volume ZIP32 VPKs up to 512 MiB. No ZIP64, split or encrypted archives.
• The VPK importer targets ordinary homebrew LiveArea XML with a single editable liveitem per native frame. Complex existing multi-liveitem, animated, signed/protected and vendor-specific XML structures are not fully preserved.
• The native patcher may require enough free space for a complete additional VPK. It keeps the source VPK untouched and modifies a separate output.
• No end-to-end on-device test of the new native VPK editing flow has yet been performed. This is an experimental pre-release: retain your original archive and test patched VPKs on hardware before distributing.

Title ID: LIVAREA01. Web editor · Source and documentation