Modding extras by CA (unsupported)

[Vercingetorix]

I've also uploaded a new .evt archive which is up to date with BI, in the same place as before. I would upload the .cas archive as well, but it would have to be cleared with legal, and at 10 mb it is some ways beyond the size limit.

If at all possible this would be much appreciated! One problem that may be causing the CTD is that there are several files in pack.idx/dat that have the same exact filename/path but are not the same file. The only difference is that they have different scale values. So on extraction they get de-scaled and on packing the get re-scaled, so you have the original animations when packed but not unpacked. On the other hand that would just cause some graphical oddities and shouldn't be reason for a CTD. If we could get those .cas files that would be most excellent.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

The .evt files contain sound event markers linked to various animation frames.

There are some fairly subtle game balancing facts involved with the animations, which i should probably mention. For example there is only one attack per animation, so the length of the attack animation determines attack frequency for that troop type. The attack delay values in export_descr_unit.txt are used to balance this, so that it doesn't become too restrictive for artists.

About the scaling... generally things with the same name are referring to *one* file on disk which is getting rescaled at load time by the amount stated. The requested scaling factor is stated in the animations text file, and is preserved so that the memory-saving device which maps loaded animations into skeletons can distinguish between identical animations at different scales.

The other thing to beware of is named nodes. The animation system looks for a number of named nodes in animations, namely these ... bone_H_Saddle, bone_camel_root, bone_E_platform, bone_wheel, bone_Lhand, bone_Rhand ... for marking a number of things in animations. Saddle and camel root should be self-explanatory - this is where the riders are attached, wheel and platform are used for siege engine animations, and the hand bones are used for various display things such as the pikes. These things not being present might well be at the root of the problem, and I imagine it wont be easy to reconstruct all the data in .cas form from the animations database.

I'll look into making the .cas archive available... it would almost certainly need some sort of EULA though, so it may take some time and the powers-that-be may decide it's not worth the effort.

[wlesmana]

Crashes while starting up with no error message.
I guess I'm stuck with it just like everyone else.

[SigniferOne]

Oh Jerome, if you could do that, that would be SO WONDERFUL! :) :)

Here's the thing, while like you said the CAS files extracted with Verc's program may indeed be somehow incompatible with the game, thus causing the crash, when they are packed into the archive -- again using Verc's program -- they work properly! That is how we've been able to modify animations using Verc's programs -- the stuff works! It's just that it doesn't work when not packed...

So, a couple of issues: if you could make the CAS files available, that would of course be really wonderful, because one of the things it could possibly do would be to help Verc isolate the differences between the CAS files his script produces and the originals.

However, here's a better solution: would it be at all possible to release the native CA CAS tool? You could release that entirely without support, and thus not bother the powers-that-be too much, and yet really help out the modding community! :)

[SigniferOne]

Jerome, even if you can't help with he CA script, or the entirety of CAS animation files, maybe you could provide just a couple, so that Verc would be able to figure out the differences between them and his own files? That would still help a lot, if for some reason you cannot provide the other things mentioned.

[wlesmana]

That would be nice. We desperately need a proper CAS import/exporter. The flippering effect is frustrating me :(

[SigniferOne]

Jerome, I'm bumping this thread because we're still hoping for an answer from you, and I don't want it to be too hard for you to find the thread when you are going to do so.