Need help with descr_skeleton.txt

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!

Can you elaborate on conclusion 2? Specifically on the new skeleton part?

OK...you made a new set of Hoplite anims.

I presume you made them by first copying a skeleton using V's anim editor tool, and creating a new 'blank' skeleton ( fs_hoplite ) and then creating new animations for them.

I also recall your initial release of this was as external files NOT as part of the PACK.DAT and PACK.IDX. I am assuming you got it to run that way while you were working on them. If you didn't....then that might change some things.

Can you confirm any of that?

Now that I have pondered it more.... it seems logical to me that the descr_skeleton file WOULDN'T find animations in the archive. The path to each file listed in the text file is relative to the root of RTW install, and would not be 'findable' in the archived form. What we need to ascertain now, is why extracting the files from the archive causes a CTD. Just having 1 FILE out of the archive screws it.

I wondered if having an animation IN the archive as well as out of it might cause a conflict, but this isn't the case. I created a new anim called 'frogbot' by renaming an extracted anim. Next, I added a new line to descr_skeleton that listed 'frogbot'. I put it in 'root'/dummy and set the path in descr_skeleton to that as well.

So, there was no chance of a conflict..... but it still CTD's . Interestingly, though, rather than an INSTANT one, it took quite a while.

In my release I did have the external folder in addition to the packs, but I later realized that it was rather silly of me because all of the anims were inside the packs anyway. I was a newbie to all of this then, and my next release, were I to do it the same way, will only contain the pack files. I don't know how to make the game access both the packs AND the external anims.

Hmmm... I wonder.

Did you try it WITHOUT adding the anims to the pack file ?

If you didn't, try it. Every time I try and get the game to run with anim files outside of the pack, I get a CTD. There is nothing wrong with the anims themselves. They run just fine, and in the case of my tests, they are actually stock anims too.

I find this a little baffling.

Here's the logic ( or lack of it )

Run the game with no skeleton.dat or skeleton.idx, and it's OK 'cos it looks for, and finds descr_skeleton.txt.

Run the game and force it to look for animation CAS files ANYWHERE BUT IN THE PACK FILES and you get a ctd.

This is nothing to do with the actual CAS file...but seems purely to be down to where the game is finding it. It;s exactly in the place the descr_skeelton files says it should be.... but just somehow 'wrong'

This leads me to wonder....

When the anims are PUT IN THE PACK, they are compressed. Presumably, when V's animation unpacker drags them out, they are 'uncompressed'. This would be a logical thing to do, since only then could they be edited as CAS files.

What..I wonder... if the game engine EXPECTED THE FILES TO BE COMPRESSED AND TRIES TO UNCOMPRESS THEM. Naturally...that is going to fail.

I can only assume that the game engine has been set up to read in ONLY compressed files from the archive and nothing else. V's unpacker is translating them back into their correct form, but the game doesn't know that

Thats all I can think of!

Well I tried a lot of things and still got CTD. I deleted all other skeletons than fs_spearman, and left only those anim files in the data/animations folder. I even doublechecked descr_skeleton.txt for all the files it references and made sure they were there, but still no luck.

But something interesting: if you keep the original skeletons text file, the first skeleton is "named_with_army" or something, which is a campaign map skeleton. If there's a problem there, the game CTDs very soon after starting up. If you delete all skeletons except for "fs_spearman", which is a battle map skeleton, the game really loads a long time before CTDing, and takes a long time to redraw Windows which means a lot of stuff was loaded into memory.

I got a similar 'long time wait for CTD' when I added a non-original file name in a new location to descr_skeleton. It took a long time to CTD, but it still did so with no error message.

When I had no external anim files, I got the file not found thing. External anim files just seem to be a death sentance to running the game. I am SURE the game is translating them into something ( maybe RUM files ) and that translator is ONLY looking at the archive. When it finds anim files in raw CAS format, this takes it out ina CTD.