AssetRipper vs Source 2 Viewer

AssetRipper is an analysis tool for game developers working with Unity game files. It can identify accidentally included dependency assets, broken asset references, and code that could not be inlined or trimmed, as well as convert assets to native Unity format. Unity Project Export creates a project that can be opened in Unity Editor. For viewing content outside Unity, Primary Content Export produces meshes, scenes, and prefabs as GLB models, including for Blender workflows. Supported Unity versions range from 3.5.0 to 6000.4.X, with support quality varying by version. Free stable and nightly builds are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Premium access costs $10 a month while an eligible membership is active, and includes features such as shader decompilation, static mesh separation, prefab outlining, asset path overrides, user-defined package export, and deduplication. Vulkan and OpenGL shaders can be decompiled on any platform, but DirectX shaders are limited to Windows. Traditional Il2Cpp analysis succeeds on about 10% to 20% of methods on x86 games, with lower success on other platforms.

Source 2 Viewer is a free, open-source tool for browsing VPK archives and inspecting or exporting assets from Source 2 games. It can search, extract, and create archives, including VPK versions from Source 1. Its renderer displays maps, models, physics, and particles with real-time lighting and animation playback. The tool also inspects textures, audio, shaders, and other Source 2 resources. Maps, models, physics, and animations can be exported to glTF 2.0, with material conversion and batch export; maps, models, and materials can be decompiled into editable formats for Hammer, ModelDoc, and Source 2 Workshop Tools. Texture tools cover channels, depth layers, mip levels, cubemaps, and HDR, with image export. Its audio player supports WAV, MP3, and Source 2 formats. The graphical interface is Windows-only, though the guide describes running it on Linux and macOS through Wine; the command-line utility is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. The GUI is portable and requires no installation. Some data may be lost during export, and reverse-engineered format support is incomplete. The project is volunteer-built and says it is not affiliated with Valve.