Right....tried some lateral thinking here:
I ONLY deleted the skeleton DAT and skeleton IDX, and the game DOES parse the descr_skeleton text.
Unfortunatley, it can't find the animations in the pack.dat.
I changed the name of the first animation in the descr_skeleton file to ...er...'boll**s.cas' and I got an error message on startup that said it couldn't find that animation. Well...it wouldn't...it doesn't exist. What it confirms, though, is that the game read the file.
When I changed it back to the stock values, though, it crashed saying it couldn't find SG 01 idle 01.cas ... which is the first animation listed in the file.
Easy...I hear you cry...just extract the animations and put them in the anim file...that will cure it.
er...no.
As soon as I run the game with a single animation OUTSIDE of the pack file, I get a CTD. I was expecting it to fail to find the next anim, but it doesn't. The file extracted from the PACK.DAT with V's animation
So, I tried some variations. I moved the animation file I had extracted 'SG 01 idle 01.cas into a subfolder under animations called 'dummy' ... which should have put it somewhere the game wouldn't look..but it STILL ctd's.
OK...this was interesting...
So, I set up a new folder under my RTW root, called 'dummy' and put the animation in there. Changed the descr_skeleton to point at that folder, and ran it again. CTD. expected that! Changed the path in descr_skeleton back to standard, and it again, cannot fild the file.
CONCLUSION:
Delete skeleton.dat and skeleton.idx and the game DOES parse the descr_skeleton file.
CONCLUSION 2:
Running with the stock animations outside of the PACK.dat file is fatal to your game. The game cannot find them IN the pack when the skeleton file archive is removed, but it will not accept them elsewhere. Now..I don't know why, but I am assuming since someone has made a new set of animations for a new skeleton, it MUST be possible to run with new skeletons and externalised anims for them. The new skeleton is a copy of an existing one made through V's animeditor, and the new anims created through the Max plugin. This, however, would NOT have been using the skeleton text file, but the dat and idx files......
confused....you bet!
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