Asset Extractor

A modular python library (basically a set of scripts) to read the assets.xml, resolve dependencies, and convert into legible formats. Supports localization and icon conversion.

Setup

Simple Setup

1. Clone this repository.
2. Right click on simple_setup.ps1 and click on Run with PowerShell in the context menu. In case the window immediately closes do the following:
   1. Right click on the file, click properties, and check unblock (skip this step if there is no such checkbox). Refer to the image for guidance:
   2. Right click in the explorer and click "Open in Terminal"
   3. Type and hit enter: Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
   4. Type and hit enter: .\simple_setup.ps1
3. The script will automatically:
   • Install Visual Studio Code, Git, and uv (if not already installed)
   • Set up the Python environment with required dependencies
   • Install .NET 6 Desktop Runtime (required for RDAConsole)
   • Download and extract RDAConsole from the latest GitHub release
   • Test that RDAConsole.exe runs correctly
   • Install ImageMagick (required for Python Wand image processing)
   • Set MAGICK_HOME environment variable
   • Create config.json from the template
   • Run initial RDA extraction from your game directory
4. Visual Studio Code should open with browsing.ipynb. Follow the instructions in the notebook to get started.
5. See assetextractor/conversion/README.md for converter usage examples.

Important: Run extract.cmd whenever there is a game update to refresh the extracted files.

Manual Setup

1. Setup Python environment

   1. Ensure you have uv installed. You can download it from here.

   2. Open a terminal in this folder:

   3. Create a virtual environment:

      uv python install # Not needed if you already have Python 3.13+ installed
      uv sync # Run uv 'sync --extra jupyter' if you want to use Jupyter Notebooks

   4. Activate the virtual environment (Optional):

   • On Windows:

     .\venv\Scripts\activate

   • On macOS and Linux:

     source venv/bin/activate

2. Install .NET 6 Desktop Runtime (required for RDAConsole):

   • Download from: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0
   • Or use direct link: https://aka.ms/dotnet/6.0/windowsdesktop-runtime-win-x64.exe

3. Download RDAConsole:

   • Download the latest release from: https://github.com/anno-mods/RdaConsole/releases/latest
   • Extract to ./RDAConsole/ folder in the repository root

4. Install ImageMagick (required for Python Wand):

   • Download from: https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php#windows
   • During installation, check all checkboxes (except Perl related)
   • Set MAGICK_HOME environment variable to installation path (e.g., C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.1.1-Q16-HDRI)
   • Verify installation by running magick -version in command prompt

5. Check that game_path in config.json points to the installation directory of your Anno game. Make sure to use '/' or '\\' as path separators

6. Extract RDA files by running:

   # Run the extraction script
   extract.cmd
   # Or manually with uv:
   uv run python -m assetextractor.extraction.extract

   This extracts:

   • All files from config.rda
   • Icon files from ui.rda
   • .ifo files from graphics_*.rda files

7. Important: Run extract.cmd whenever there is a game update to refresh the extracted files.

8. Run the project:

   # You can use 'uv run' to run files inside the venv if it's not activated
   uv run main

Development

You should install development dependencies to run typechecking and linters. You can do this by running:

uv sync --dev

To run ruff for linting and formatting, alongside pyright for type checking, you can run:

uv run nox

If you're using VS Code, you can also press Ctrl + Shift + B to run nox.

You should ensure all nox pipelines pass before pushing your changes.

Overview

The project consists of 3 modules (their source code is located in a subfolder of assetextractor with the corresponding name):

1. extraction: Opens the RDA files of the game and extracts the xml, dds, cfg and other required files. These are stored in the cache directory. The extraction module uses RDAConsole.exe to extract files from game RDA archives.

2. parsing: Reads the xml files and restores their hierarchy in memory. Their main components are (all of them have corresponding Python classes in this project):

   • Templates (stored in templates.xml): These define the structure of a group of assets (e.g. product, population level, item, trigger). In analogy to object oriented programming these are the classes whereas assets are the objects.
   • Assets: Concrete instances (e.g. grain, farmer). However, not all attributes are listed in the assets.xml but some are derived from templates.xml or properties.xml. The extractor takes care of resolving all inheritances such that on every asset all its attributes are defined and have a value - thus the output of print_tree() on an asset is much bigger than what you can find in assets.xml.
   • Properties: These are the building blocks of assets. They can be arbitrarily nested. At the leaves of the tree they span are attributes.
   • Attributes: These contain the concrete values (e.g. durations, counts). Additionally, there is a meta definition for each attribute (in properties-toolone.xml). The meta definition defines the data type, allowed values and - in most cases - contains a descriptive comment. To see the meta definition of a template, asset, or property, call print_meta_tree. See AttributeFactory in assetextractor/parsing/core/attributes.py for an overview and how data types are mapped to Python classes.
   • Datasets: Each dataset is an ordered collection of string literals (like enums in Java or C). Certain attributes (e.g. of data type Array, Choice, or Flags) reference a dataset where values are from. To get all literals for such an attribute, call attribute.meta.dataset.literals

3. conversion: Contains several converters to generate excerpts of the assets in different formats (e.g. HTML, JSON) for different programs (e.g. asset browser, calculator). See assetextractor/conversion/README.md for details.