How to use the original game assets?

Openage currently depends on the original game assets, so you need a valid copy of the original game files.

Currently we support conversion for these games:

• RoR: Age of Empires 1 (1997) + Rise of Rome
• AoC: Age of Empires 2 (1999) + The Conqueror's
• SWGB: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds + Clone Campaigns
• DE2: Age of Empires 2: Definitve Edition

The following versions are currently unsupported, but will be added later:

• HD: Age of Empires 2 (2013) (formerly: Age of Empires 2: HD Edition)
• DE1: Age of Empires 1: Definitive Edition

On Linux, you may have to use additional measures to download DE2 versions from Steam:

• Use Proton which is integrated into Steam Play to download the DE2 assets (and even play it).
• You may use Wine to run Steam for Windows.
• You can trick Steam for Linux/Mac into downloading the Windows game assets with a game manifest file.
  1. Save the below code to appmanifest_813780.acf
  2. Place the file in your steamapps folder, typically found in ~/.steam/steam/SteamApps or ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps
  3. Restart Steam after placing the file

    "AppState"
    {
      "AppID"  "813780"
      "Universe" "1"
      "installdir" "AOE2DE"
      "StateFlags" "1026"
    }

• Alternatively, you may download the game assets using SteamCMD.
  1. Install SteamCMD by following the instructions on Valve's developer wiki.
  2. Download the assets with the following command (replacing USERNAME and ASSET_DIR as appropriate):

./steamcmd.sh +@sSteamCmdForcePlatformType windows +login USERNAME +force_install_dir ASSET_DIR +app_update 221380 validate +quit

In the future, using installation disks may be supported.

Conversion

The original AoC game asset formats are, lets say, "special", so they need to be converted in order to be usable from openage. That conversion is performed by the openage.convert python module when the game is run for the first time.

The game will ask for your AoE II installation folder; examples include:

~/.wine-age/drive_c/programs/ms-games/aoe2
/var/run/media/windisk/Program Files (x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Age2HD
~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/Age2HD
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/Age2HD

You will find the converted files in assets/converted.