How to use the original game assets?

Openage currently depends on the original game assets, so you need a copy of the original AoE II or AoE II: HD. If you use AoE II: HD, make sure it is on patch level 4.3. You have a few options.

  • Use Proton which is integrated into Steam Play to download the AoE II: HD 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_221380.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"  "221380"
      "Universe" "1"
      "installdir" "Age2HD"
      "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 AoE:TC 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.

The version of openage that the media files were converted with is written to assets/converted/asset_version. Delete that file to trigger a full reconversion.