Modding Tools for Anno 1800

This project is not affiliated in any way with Ubisoft.

Anno 1800 is a trademark of Ubisoft Entertainment in the US and/or other countries. Anno is a trademark of Ubisoft GmbH in the US and/or other countries.

Feature Overview

• Annotations, Live Analysis, Syntax
  • Use Anno-specific table of contents to navigate asset XMLs
  • See asset names directly next to GUIDs
  • See errors and hints live in your assets.xml
• Navigation
  • Navigate via Outline
  • Jump to asset from any GUID by right click or Ctrl+T
• Commands
  • Compare: Apply mod and compare unpatched vs patched
  • Build and Deploy: Copy your mod to the mods/ folder and generate DDS (with LODs) and other files automatically.
  • Import from Blender or glTF to .cfg, .ifo and .cf7
  • Various right-click utilities to convert between Anno and editable formats (glTF, PNG, ...)
• Auto-completion
  • GUID conversion
  • Assets XML auto completion
• Other
  • Reskin existing models without touching .cfg, ...

See Feature Details for more, or CHANGELOG for recent changes.

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Setup

1. Extract assets.xml

For some features like auto completion and compare you need to extract assets.xml from the game.

• Get RDAExplorer
• Open the .rda file with the highest number from your Anno 1800 installation under /Anno 1800/data/.
• Extract the data/config/export/main/asset/assets.xml into a folder with the same structure, e.g. c:\anno\rda\data\config\export\main\asset\assets.xml.

2. Install XML plugin

Additionally, auto completion and other XML features work only in combination with a plugin that supports XSD validation.

• Install XML Language Support by Red Hat

3. Check configuration

Go into File > Preferences > Settings... and search for anno and configure the following:

• Anno: Rda Folder: Path with RDA data extracted (mostly assets.xml is used).
• Anno: Mods Folder: Path to your Anno 1800/mods/ folder to deploy and find dependencies.

If you have the Red Hat XML plugin installed, search for xml file associations and add the following pattern:

"xml.fileAssociations": [
  {
      "pattern": "assets*.xml",
      "systemId": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anno-mods/vscode-anno-modding-tools/main/generated/assets.xsd"
  }
]

Note: If you want to force updates for auto-completion delete C:\Users\<user>\.lemminx and re-open VSCode.

4. How to open files

Most features only activate if you open folders, via File > Open Folder.... Best open the mod folder or even the complete mods/ folder.

The plugin has difficulties understanding the mod structure if you simply open individual files.

5. Further Docs

• Modding Guide (separate page)
• glTF Tools VSCode Plugin

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Feature Details

Annotations, Live Analysis, Syntax

Outline

The outline shows ModOps, Assets and where possible names instead of GUIDs.

Top-level sections can be created with <!-- # your text --> comments. The Group keyword can also be used for further grouping. Write normal XML comments above groups to name them.

GUID Annotation

Displays name and template name of GUIDs.

This feature will also consider Mod GUIDs, if they are either:

• part of your own mod
• part of a dependency mentioned in modinfo.json and installed into the game's mods/ folder

Live Analysis

The live analysis applies your mod on save to the game and provides error and performance information.

Syntax Check

The plugin will scan you asset files for common problems like the use of outdated pools (e.g. 190611). The file must match the naming scheme assets*.xml to be considered.

Navigation

Navigate via Outline

You can click on any outline entry to directly jump to that section in the code.

Go to Asset

Right click on any GUID and select Go to Definition or press F12 to jump to the related Mod or vanilla asset.

You can press Ctrl+T and type the asset name to jump to assets as well.

Command Compare

You can check th results of one or more ModOps by selecting them and then right click > Anno: Compare Results with Vanilla.

Alternatively, you can compare full files and mods by right clicking on assets.xml, templates.xml and *.include.xml.

GUID Conversion

You get a list of possible GUID matches to replace to. The list is shown automatically in XML tags that expect a GUID, or after typing GUID=" in ModOps.

Otherwise, trigger the list manually with Ctrl + Space.

Not all GUIDs can be converted automatically due to performance. Most notable exclusions are Test and Audio.

Auto Completion

Check Setup to activate this feature.

Now your code gets validated and you can press Ctrl + Space anywhere in the document and get a list of possible tags, enums or GUIDs.

Note: If you want to force updates for auto-completion delete C:\Users\<user>\.lemminx and re-open VSCode.

Import from Blender or glTF

Steps:

1. Follow naming conventions below
2. Export to glTF
3. Right-click on target .cfg and select Import from glTF.

Import an glTF file from one of the below examples into Blender to see how a project should look like:

• New Town Hall (multiple models in one .cfg)
• Small Gas Power Plant (with animations)

⚠ Make sure to not edit the mesh of the objects, but the object position, scale and rotation only.

CFG file imports:

• PROPs with prefix prop_ (e.g. boxes, barrels)
  • Position, Rotation, Scale
  • mesh name as FileName if it ends with .prp. Don't worry about Blender-style .001, .002, ... endings. They will be ignored.
  • Will be added if they don't exist.
• PARTICLEs with prefix particle_ (e.g. smoke)
  • Position, Rotation, Scale
• FILEs with prefix file_ (included external cfg files)
  • Position, Rotation, Scale
  • mesh name as FileName if it ends with .cfg.
  • Will be added if they don't exist.
• DECAL with name ground (ground texture)
  • Extents is calculated from all vertices of that object (e.g. plane). This modifies the ground texture. The building tile size is <BuildBlocker> in the IFO file.

Entries not existing in the model will be marked as _removed and not removed automatically.

CF7 file imports:

• <Dummies><i>: people, FireDummy, feedback_door, ...
  • Imported from multiple objects with prefix fc_.
  • Position and Orientation are taken from the object. RotationY is calculated from the orientation.
  • <Name> of the entry will be matched against what comes after fc_. E.g. fc_Dummy0 will be matched against <Name>Dummy0</Name>.
  • Entries not existing in the model will not be removed.

IFO file imports:

• <IntersectBox>: clickable 3D area (aka hitbox) of the building
  • Imported from multiple mesh object (e.g. cube) with prefix hitbox
  • Position, Rotation and Extents are calculated from the boundaries of the objects. 1 box per object.
• <Dummy>: transporter spawn, fire locations, ...
  • Imported from multiple objects with prefix dummy_.
  • Position, Rotation and Extents are taken from the object.
  • <Name> of the entry will be matched against what comes after dummy_. E.g. dummy_transporter_spawn will be matched against <Name>transporter_spawn</Name>.
  • Entries not existing in the model will not be removed.
• <FeedbackBlocker>: area people can walk through
  • Imported from multiple mesh objects (e.g. plane) with prefix FeedbackBlocker
  • Positions are taken from mesh vertices. Rounded to .25
• <BuildBlocker>: tile size of the building
  • Imported from one mesh object (e.g. plane) with name ground
  • Positions are taken from mesh vertices. Rounded to .5
• <UnevenBlocker>: area to always keep above ground
  • Imported from one mesh object (e.g. plane) with name UnevenBlocker
  • Positions are taken from mesh vertices. Rounded up in .25 steps

Quickly Reskin Existing Models

Write a yaml file like below and name it .cfg.yaml. IFO, FC/CF7 and CFG files will be generated accordingly. Files are copied if they have the same name as the source. Modifications are currently only supported in IFO and CFG files.

If you have townhall.cfg, townhall.cf7 and townhall.ifo, then a townhall_1.cfg.yaml leads to generated townhall_1.cfg, townhall_1.fc and townhall_1.ifo.

Examples: New Town Hall

variant: 
  source: townhall.cfg
  modifications:
    - xpath: //Config/Models/Config/Materials/Config[Name="building"]
      cModelDiffTex: data/jakob/buildings/townhall/maps/townhall_bluish_diff.psd
    - xpath: //Config/Models/Config[Name="top"]
      FileName: data/jakob/buildings/townhall/rdm/townhall_2_lod0.rdm
    # disable smoke
    - xpath-remove: //Config/Particles/Config[Name="particle_smoke1"]
    # move flag 1
    - xpath: //Config/Files/Config[Name="file_flag1"]/Transformer/Config
      Position.y: 6.97816
  ifo:
    # adjust hitbox to new height
    - xpath: //Info/IntersectBox[Name="Hitbox2"]
      Position:
        yf: 4.34346

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Credits

A big thanks goes to the external projects I'm using for this extension:

• AnnoFCConverter - https://github.com/taubenangriff/AnnoFCConverter/
• rdm4 - https://github.com/lukts30/rdm4
• FileDBReader - https://github.com/anno-mods/FileDBReader
• texconv - https://github.com/microsoft/DirectXTex
• gltf-import-export - https://github.com/najadojo/gltf-import-export
• xmltest - https://github.com/xforce/anno1800-mod-loader