BI and descr_skeleton.txt

This is a question for Jerome, or any other CA representative that feels capable of answering:

How do we get descr_skeleton.txt in BI to work? I have not been able to, so far.

What I did was rename "bi/data/animations" folder to "bi/data/aanimations", so as to make it not be able to find it. The game still loaded, so I assumed it was because it found the original vanilla animations folder, so I renamed the root "/data/animations" folder as well. Now, as expected, the game complained that it couldn't find the first file referenced in bi/data/descr_skeleton.txt, "data/animations/SG 01 idle 01.cas". So, I created a blank "bi/data/animations", and supplied the file (and I erased all other entires in bi/data/descr_skeleton.txt so that it would have ONLY that entry in the entire file). The game crashed blankly, as before; no error. I supplied the .evt file required. The game crashed blankly, again. Then I took out any mention of the evt file and had just the reference to the CAS file, without any evt file associated with it, but that didn't work either. Finally I re-did the last step but running "-util:animdb" as part of BI's shortcut. Again the game crashed, and again with no errors.

Now Jerome, here's what you said on 7/8/2005 (in this thread), when you suggested a way to fix the problem:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jerome Grasdyke

* if you run with -util:animdb on the command line, it parses descr_skeleton.txt and tries to build the animdb files from it, regardless of other factors;
* if you run without the command line option, it looks for the packed files, and if it finds them it does not use descr_skeletons.txt as all the information is inside the packs;
* if it fails to load the packs, it falls back on loading descr_skeletons.txt, but does not regenerate the packs -- renaming pack.dat, pack.idx, skeletons.dat and skeletons.idx inside data/animations/ should cause it to take this code path;

In order to load from descr_skeletons.txt you need to have a complete set of all the files it references in the correct places - that includes all the .evt files in the zip file that I supplied some time ago, plus the .cas files generated by Vercingetorix's unpacking tool. If it can't find any of the files, the code should warn you, providing that you have -show_err on the command line. In general there should be matched pairs of .evt and .cas files.

This process works correctly when I try it with a dev build in release mode, so in theory it should work for you, but to the best of my knowledge no modder has yet managed to get it to complete... Exactly why is not really clear at this point.

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This was a comment made, unless I'm mistaken, about the dev build of the original RTW, and even Jerome has assumed that it was already part of the original RTW game but that we simply weren't able to discover yet how to unlock it. Well we put it on the backburner for some reason; I personally just assumed that all of this would be finally untangled in BI. But after this experiment, I fear the worst... :(

I would like to say that I am very happy with BI and am REALLY enjoying all other aspects of it and can find nothing else that would be less than I could hope. But this problem is so serious that I feel that I must bring it up. I'm sorry that this is the very first day of the game's launch, but I nevertheless feel that I have to. That's why I'm asking for the devs to -please- help us solve it.

Jerome, any word?

I think he is waiting to reply, as he hasnt asnwered any of the questions since BIs release. :book:

Additionally, while it is possible to use XIDX to extract the animation pack in BI, the same is not true of the skeleton files. This means no custom or re-scaled skeletons can be ported over until this is overcome. Being able to use descr_skeleton would have been a MUCH better solution, since you can then build your dat/idx skeleton files from a readable text file ....

I hope an answer can be found...

In the meantime...does anybody know if Vercingetorix is working on a BI friendly version of XIDX?

I know of the problem... once I finish a tool I'm currently working on I'll look into it in more detail.

I looked into the problem. To fix it, open skeletons.idx with a hex editor and change the 10th byte from '70' to '00'

Or, redownload xidx: http://www.twcenter.net/downloads/db/index.php?mod=32

Hooray!

Now to start messing about with moving all my custom anims and skeletons over to BI!!! Vercingetorix, many thanks for sorting this out.