## Table Of Contents
This script is intended to convert original-style packs ONLY, attempting to convert a pack which contains skeletons decompiled from the pack included with RR will cause this to CRASH
Windows users: in order to run this python script, you need to have python installed globally. You can download python here: https://www.python.org/downloads/
Skeletons from the original game DO NOT need to be included in new mod packs, the skeletons from the base game (and also expansions, if your mod runs on one of them) will automatically be included. Including a skeleton with the same name as one in the base game will OVERRIDE the one from the base game with the version included in your mod.
The original skeleton modding tools from Rome Total War are required to modify skeletons and create a new skeleton.idx and .dat, however these will be in the old format (which can be confirmed by checking the 4 bytes at offset 12, they form a version number which will be 3 for old packs, and 4 for new ones.) This script will convert the old version into the new one.
To use, first you need to create your new skeleton.idx and .dat files using the tools and methods (Vercingetorix's xidx packer) created for the original release. Then simply place the skelconverter.py in the same directory as the skeleton packs and run. The script should auto-detect the files and create two new files: skeleton_new.idx and skeleton_new.dat, these can be renamed and added to the animations folder of a mod and should function as expected.
To speed up this process, Dagovax created a batch process to automate some work that otherwise needs to be done manually.
Download the pack_feral_skeletons.bat batch program. Previously using xidx, you would run the 'pack_skeletons.bat' to pack the skeletons. Using the new batch file, the xidx tool will pack the skeletons, and then run the skelconverter.py script. When there are no errors, the old skeleton files will be deleted and the new ones will be renamed, so in the end you skip the extra parts required renaming the skeleton_new.idx and skeleton_new.dat. You can now simply place the new skeleton.idx and skeleton.dat into your animations folder.