remove finishing moves all together

[alexgold]

simple question.
is it possible to remove the finishing moves all together? i want to have only hack and slash simple kiling animations i don't like the elaborate finishing moves .

[Eothese]

Simple answer.

Yes, just set your mod up for using unpacked anims as your going to have to edit descr_skeleton. All you need to do is comment all the _victim and _fatality named animations in the whole of the file, then let the game rebuild the anim packs. If you are playing with somebody else's mod and they have custom anims however, then you'll need those in raw .cas format as well.

[BM309K58SMERCH]

I thought it is one of the hardcoded types of animations that cannot be removed / commented out.
Is there a list of all the possible animation types that are used and unused in descr_skeleton? Something like extra moves / animations that were implemented into the code, but unused?
Like an extra death animation, or extra celebration types..etc.
(Sorry if I'm taking this thread off topic)

[alexgold]

thanks for the reply guys. no problem BM309K58SMERCH if it's a bit off topic because what you've posted is interesting.
Eothese thank you for telling me what to do. this " All you need to do is comment all the _victim and _fatality named animations" saved me a lot of time spent on trial and error discovery. i'm stuck at the part of rebuilding the animations. let me tell you what i am doing. i am not working with the vanilla animations but whit a mod's animations. i am unpacking pack.idx and pack.dat leaving the folder that has come out and then deleting the 2 files. ++do i have to unpack also the skeletons?++ have you ever unpacked/packed the animations files can u describe to me step by step. i've read some tutorials but it seems that i am doing something wrong although it all seems right and i still end up in CTD.

[Eothese]

You don't unpack you use the download of unpacked files from the tutorials section. Then follow the instructions in the first post, also you need to remove the packed files from the vanilla folder or the game will default to those.

I thought it is one of the hardcoded types of animations that cannot be removed / commented out.
Is there a list of all the possible animation types that are used and unused in descr_skeleton? Something like extra moves / animations that were implemented into the code, but unused?
Like an extra death animation, or extra celebration types..etc.
(Sorry if I'm taking this thread off topic)

Nope, you can take the fatality's or leave them. There is no list although if you know how you can convert a copy of the .exe to txt and look through, (not illegal) I believe all possible animation types are coded in there. I'm also pretty sure that all the anims are already in descr_skeleton so you could take something from MTW2_Halberd for example that isn't in MTW2_Mace and add it there.

[alexgold]

"You don't unpack you use the download of unpacked files from the tutorials section. Then follow the instructions in the first post, also you need to remove the packed files from the vanilla folder or the game will default to those."

i need the animations from third age total war because that's the mod where i want to change. the tatw animations are different from the ones released for m2tw vanila in the link u gave to me. or i may be wrong?!

anyway i'm not stuck at the unpacking pack.idx and pack.dat but at he repacking i can't get the game to repack the files.

let's get some things straight:
there are 4 files in data/animations 2 skeletons and 2 pack .
can i edit only the pack and leave the skeleton as they are?
can i edit the skeletons and leave the pack as they are?
if so which ones should i edit if i want to remove the finishing moves?
which of the files(pack or skeleton) tells the engine to use finishing moves?

[Eothese]

Lol...

You don't unpack you use the download of unpacked files from the tutorials section. Then follow the instructions in the first post, also you need to remove the packed files from the vanilla folder or the game will default to those.

[alexgold]

Eothese i got you the first time. but how would you reach my goals without unpacking ? would you rather to make all the animations for tatw that were added besides the vanilla ones? i want to get the .cas files how would you get them if you don't mind me asking? and by the way nowhere on twc center is it writen that by unpacking the anim packs is not the way to get .cas files. i NEED the .cas files for TATW i can't do anything with only the vanilla ones.

anyway could we get past this and could someome please tell me how to get the tatw .cas from TATW mod? this one http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=488988 does the same mistakes as the vercingetorix tool. is there a way of geting .cas files without actualy creating them?

[irishron]

Then you need to contact the TATW mod leaders for those.

[alexgold]

but why arent the animations that i get after hex editind and unpacking with vercingetorix's tool good? because tey aren't i just can't repack te pack.dat and pack.idx files back. tryed for 4 or 5 days now.

[irishron]

That one I don't know unless there is something added the tool does not recognize.
Like many programs of that day, it could be an out of memory and you'd never know it unless you're the programmer in its debug mode.
Remember the tool was actually written for RTW while M2 was still a dream in the making.

[alexgold]

this may be right at least the running out of memory part. in that case i can't do anything without .. but wait i can try using another tool developed by EB team i think. the running out of memory scenario works perfectly because i think there are too few files that come out after i unpack. not like 2 or 3 files but still when comapared to the m2tw vanilla unpacked aniamtions they seem fewer. i'll use the EB team tool and see what happens.

ahh the good old days of rtw i was just a little young child fascinated by the romans hacking phalanxes and elephants and chariots and all other things i could have just sticked to moding rtw bun nooooo i wanted to start moding m2tw))


ok so ive changed my approach and finally got some results although not completely good.
i used the source from xidx (the extractor from EB team) along with the other files from vercingetorix extractor and managed to extract the animations from pack.dat and pack.idx. i've also managed to repack hem but unfortunately pack.idx has 100kb less than the original one an obviously doesn't work. at least i can repack the pack.dat which is the most important of the 2 .idx is more like a table of contents and in a case of extreme necesity i could use the original one and edit it by hand leaving outside the finishing moves. a lot of hard work to go but at least there is hope that i might get it done. keeping u posted with my progress.

oh i forgot in order to repack the anims i had to put them in data/animations not leave them where they were.

so i was like ...m2tw/mods/tatw/data/animations/data/animations heve were the unpacked animations


back again still no results. i've tryed removing just for the dwarves the fatality and victim animations from pack.dat pack.idx and skeleton.txt. all resulted in a CTD.
i tried removing them phisicaly by unpacking the animations and deleting the .cas and then geting packs.idx and editing it with wordpad and deleting the lines with the .cas that i have removed. similarily i deleted the lines from skeleton.txt. everywhere i look a CTD i wonder how on earth did the TATW guys did it. if only the game would rebuild the pack.dat and pack.idx according to the skeleton.txt as is should.

[Eothese]

The TATW guys did it by making the anims in raw .cas format and adding them to the unpacked ones that you can download. If you can't get the raw .cas files from the TATW team I'd suggest you stop, I've spent years trying to get berserking working for infantry, you've just got to know when enough is enough. Just don't pay to much attention to the battles...

[alexgold]

i understand thanks for the advice man.
i think i'll do it i've spent 2 years triing to figure out a fix for pikemen and in the end a came up with a solution that makes me happy. you are right this is addicting but we're grown ups and know when to back off.
anyway i wonder how did the TATW team pack the animations. because i can unpack them all and then pack them again only that pack.idx is broken but pack.dat worsk so i can unpack all the animations. i only need to remove fatality and victim anims from the original idx. and i think it's case closed then. i need a idx editor.

[Eothese]

anyway i wonder how did the TATW team pack the animations. .

Like I said...

The TATW guys did it by making the anims in raw .cas format and adding them to the unpacked ones that you can download.

They didn't have the problem of unpacking/repacking because they used the download then added to those files with ones they made. They then let the game engine rebuild the packs from the raw files by launching the game, like it says in that post I linked you to.

[alexgold]

right thank you both for the help you are giving me.

BM309K58SMERCH my problem is that i only used the .cas from the pack files. i haven't touched the skeleton .dat and .idx. mhm i don't really know where i am stuck. let me try to explain.
1- Aquire the .cas files. i am doing this by unpacking pack.dat and pack.idx. i don't do any thing to skeleton.idx and skeleton.dat.
2- Delete the .dat and .idx files (skeleton and pack) i've tryed deleting only the pack got a CTD. i tryed deleting everything got another CTD. in tatw/data/animations there is another folder named engines tryed deleting it got a CTD so it is needed by the game so i've always kept it i never deleted it. also i've kept deleted skeleton.dat skeleton.idx pack.dat pack.idx from vanila m2tw animations folder so that folder is empty.
3- Aquire descr_skeleton. as i can't make the game to rebuild the animations without any modification i havent altered this file so i just copy it to tatw/data/animations while it is also in the data foldet of tatw.

i am conducting all my experiments in tatw/data/animations folder so i just put all files there add the descr_skeleton delete skeleton.idx/.dat and pack.idx/dat leave engine folder as it is and.. get a CTD. should i put them in another folder because i've tryed using vanilla m2tw as a surogat engine hoping that the game would build the packs before it found out that units skeletons and other things are obviously different from the vanilla ) no result there as well.

this is my hunch: either the descr_skeleton is broken or the .cas files i get are either not all of them or broken in any case not good. i got vercingetorix's tool pack the animations after i unpacked them using the same tool and i got pack.dat good but packs.idx smaller by 100kb. pack.idx was broken. but pack.dat was good so i think that the .cas that i get are actually good. wht is the pack.idx smaller?? can this mean that i am missing some animations but if this is the case then why is pack.dat of normal size and working? could it be that the descr_skeleton is broken? how would i know that and how could i repair it?


is there a way to manually edit animation files to remove the anims i don't need? i dunno hex edit them or something like that. i believe that this may be done by altering pack.idx because pack.dat is like a deposit of tools but pac.idx is the one that tells the game how when and where to use those tools. i may be wrong of couse.

bottom line is that when i put .cas files no matter if i delete skel files or not i get a ctd.


=============
i know the source of the problem its the unpacker. i made a test i got the pack.dat and pack.idx from the vanilla m2tw and replaced the first 16 bites in hex and then extracted them with the old vergingetorix tool and the console said it was extracting 2404 files in the end i got 2398 files. when i packed them back i got both pack.idx and pack.dat functional. but when i put them in data/animations from vanilla i got CTD. funnier still the released animations from CA only have 359 files as oposed to 2398 files that i got!!! as you well know the animations released by CA can be repacked by the game. so the problem is the unpacker. i n=know there is another unpacker http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=488988 found here. but i don't know how to use it. this is my prymary question at this moment: how to use this tool?

has anyone ever looked at what kind of cas files is the method of hex editing and extracting with vergingetorix tool you end up with? some are missing others are of different size than they should be. THIS IS NOT THE METHOD OF DOING IT, i doubt anyoane has ended up with working anims with this method.

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT, I CAN'T MOVE FORWARD WITHOUT A WAY O GETTING THE UNPACKED ANIMATIONS. i think the tool in the link above may be the Anduril (sword of Aragorn from LOTR used by him to summon the King of the Dead) that i need. please take a look at it guys and tell me what to do

you were right Eothese but i didn't understand couldn't u have told me that the problem was with the unpacking part? ) kiding much appreciate your help

[BM309K58SMERCH]

Ohh! I thought your name sounded familiar! You contributed in making better pikemen units. Thank you very much for your hard work.

Well, to pack the animations, you must have all the .cas files in the animation folder, then delete the .dat and .idx files (skeleton and pack). The game automatically regenerates them when the game is started.
So if you want to get rid of fatality and victim animations, here it is in a few steps (Just keep backups as well):
1- Aquire the .cas files.
2- Delete the .dat and .idx files (skeleton and pack)
3- Aquire descr_skeleton.
4- Comment out all the fatality and victim animations by putting a ; before the lines that contain the fatality and victim animations.
5- Done.

I know you are stuck on one of the above steps, can you tell us which one?

[irishron]

Have you requested them from TATW? I would ask them if wanted to accomplish this.

[alexgold]

thanky you irishron i've asked king kong for them but i've read that he's not beena ctive for some months now.
i've also started this thread from today on. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...7#post12601807 it's quite simple without their help this project can't be done.

[k/t]

If I wanted to use the animations of one mod in another, would it be enough to replace the pack.dat, pack.idx, skeletons.dat and skeletons.idx files in the "animations" folder and the descr_skeleton.txt file in the "data" folder? If the names are the same, I wouldn't even have to edit battle_models_db, right?