How to unpack a .love file

[NobodyWise]

I'm playing a RenPy game called Emerald Dawn (It's a fan VN for the Fire Emblem series) and since there isn't an in-game gallery menu I wanted to try to save the image files onto my PC. RenPy games typically compile their images using a .rpy file, but Emerald Dawn's resource files are saved in a .love file instead.

I read that you can normally just convert the .love to a .zip and open the files using an extractor software like 7-Zip, however when I change it to a .zip file and attempt to extract the files, my PC treats the file like it's empty despite being able to recognize a 145mb file size.

This is probably super easy and I'm just being a dumbass, but I'm honestly completely stuck. I have no clue why changing the file to a .zip makes it unreadable, and I'm not sure how to solve the issue and actually access the image files like I want to. Any help would be much appreciated!

For reference, I've linked the two error notifications that I've gotten; one was from trying to extract the files using Windows File Explorer and the other was from trying to do it through 7-Zip.

fail zip 2.png (33.72 KiB) Viewed 1406 times

fail zip 1.png (32.96 KiB) Viewed 1406 times

[Andlac028]

The error clearly says that the file is not a valid zip (maybe it is just missing some headers and you have to bypass something, but it may not be zip archive at all)

[BrotSagtMist]

.love is not a file format. Its a zip with a different name.
The file you encountered there is likely in no way related to Löve, you know, people can name their files whatever they want and love just happens to be a cool name.

[zorg]

If it's a ren'py game, then that's probably a compiled ren'py file renamed to have a ".love" extension.

[NobodyWise]

If it's a ren'py game, then that's probably a compiled ren'py file renamed to have a ".love" extension.

Well that's confusing. If it's a compiled renpy file that should be a .rpyc, but regardless of the extension/file type I change it to (.rpa, .rpyc, etc) I'm still facing the same issue of being unable to unpack/decompile the file.

Thanks anyway. I'll keep on trying and hopefully I figure this out eventually.

[zorg]

If it's a ren'py game, then that's probably a compiled ren'py file renamed to have a ".love" extension.

Well that's confusing. If it's a compiled renpy file that should be a .rpyc, but regardless of the extension/file type I change it to (.rpa, .rpyc, etc) I'm still facing the same issue of being unable to unpack/decompile the file.

Thanks anyway. I'll keep on trying and hopefully I figure this out eventually.

simplest way is to open the file with a hex editor and look at the first couple of bytes, maybe see a specific pattern that might be a header... or check the very end for a zip footer.