FModel can be used to extract game archives and inspect the resources of games made with Unreal Engine. In this guide, we'll use it to inspect the contents of Equinox: Homecoming.
Follow the official tutorial to download and install FModel here.
When you first open FModel, you will be presented with the directory selector. Because Equinox: Homecoming is not a detected game, you must first click ADD UNDETECTED GAME, then enter the path to your Equinox: Homecoming installation directory under Directory. Give it a name of your choice.
Next, click the blue + sign to register the game. Change the UE Version to GAME_UE5_5 (84213760). In the end, it should look like this:
Then click OK. FModel will restart, and Equinox: Homecoming will be opened by default.
At this point, you can browse through the files, but you won't be able to open them because FModel does not yet know how to interpret them. We need to supply a mapping.
Download the mapping here and save it somewhere you'll remember.
Next, go to Settings:
You will see the following settings screen. Check the box for Local Mapping File, then choose the mapping file you just downloaded. Optionally, configure whether Discord shows your activity; set Discord Rich Presence to Never if you prefer to stay stealthy. You may also change the Output Directory if you don't want to use the default. When extracting data in a later step, FModel will place the files in this directory.
We'll extract a loading screen image as an example, but the process is the same for data, 3D models, icons, and more. First, you need to select an archive by double-clicking it. For Equinox: Homecoming, most files are inside ThunderHorse-WindowsClient.utoc (which you can also identify by its large size). Double-click it for now, though feel free to explore the others as well later on. Nothing you do here will break anything.
You can search through filenames in the archive with Ctrl+Shift+F, but note that this does not search inside files. For now, however, I'll simply navigate to the loading screen directory (since I already know its location) and double-click to open the package.
You are now inside the LoadingScreens package. By double-clicking a file, you can open it directly in FModel. As shown in the screenshot below, you can also extract the file to use it however you like by right-clicking. This works for individual files, entire packages, or even the entire archive. Though, be aware that extracting everything at once can take hours.
Depending on the file type, you should choose the appropriate save method. For example, a file containing dialogue cannot be saved as a texture, it should instead be saved as .json properties.
