AOEMods.Essence

C# library and tools for working with Age of Empire 4's Essence engine.

Join the AOE4 modding discord for information sharing, discussions or if you need help: https://discord.gg/h8FX9Uq3vG

Download

See Releases page for downloads.

Screenshots

Load an sga archive, convert/export an rrtex file within it

Usage

A number of Age of Empires 4 / Essence formats are supported right now and more are being worked on.

Supported formats

• sga: Read, Convert (unpack into directory), Write
• rrtex: Read, Convert (most common image formats)
• rrgeom: Read (vertex positions, normals, metal, texture coordinates and faces), Convert (obj, gltf/glb)
• rgd: Read, Convert (xml, json), Write (xml)
• Other chunky (most other files contained in .sga archives such as .rrmaterial): Read (editor has hex view)

Editor

The editor can open sga archives, folders that act as sga archives and individual files. After opening an archive or folder, files can be mass-exported and mass-converted. The archive can also be edited, for example adding / renaming / removing files, and saved as an sga file again.

Note on exporting models: the editor can export models as gltf files including their materials. The archives containing the material and textures has to be already open in a tab in the editor so the editor can find them.

CLI

The CLI has multiple commands. You can get the full description and list of parameters by running them without any parameters or by passing --help.

• rrtex-decode <input-path> <output-path>: Converts a .rrtex file to an image (supported extensions are .png, .jpg, .bmp, .tga, .gif), pass -b to treat paths as folders and convert all files
• rrgeom-decode <input-path> <output-path>: Converts a .rrgeom file to .obj, pass -b to treat paths as folders and convert all files
• rgd-encode <input-path> <output-path>: Converts a .xml file to a .rgd file, pass -b to treat paths as folders and convert all files
• rgd-decode <input-path> <output-path>: Converts a .rgd file to .xml (or .json when passing -f json), pass -b to treat paths as folders and convert all files
• sga-pack <input-path> <output-path> <archive-name>: Packs the input directory into a .sga archive
• sga-unpack <input-path> <output-path>: Unpacks a .sga archive into a folder

Library

The solution contains the library, command line interface and a graphical editor.

Projects

• AOEMods.Essence: Library for working with AOE4's files
• AOEMods.Essence.CLI: Command line interface for working with AOE4's files
• AOEMods.Essence.Editor: Graphical user interface for working with AOE4's files
• AOEMods.Essence.Test: Tests for AOEMods.Essence
• AOEMods.Essence.CLI.Test: Tests for AOEMods.Essence.CLI

The library AOEMods.Essence consists of two main parts, one for processing the Relic Chunky format and another for processing SGA archives.

AOEMods.Essence.Chunky

• AOEMods.Essence.Chunky.Core contains classes for processing chunky files in general
• AOEMods.Essence.Chunky.Graph is a node graph making use of AOEMods.Essence.Chunky.Core
• AOEMods.Essence.Chunky.* uses the core and node graph functionality for processing different chunky formats.
• AOEMods.Essence.FormatReader/Writer unify the different format readers / writers in one reader / writer.
• AOEMods.Essence.GltfUtil/ObjUtil provide functions for converting models to GLTF (.glb) and Wavefront object (.obj)

AOEMods.Essence.SGA

• AOEMods.Essence.SGA.Core contains classes for processing SGA archives
• AOEMods.Essence.SGA.Graph is a node graph making use of AOEMods.Essence.SGA.Core