In Age of Mythology’s folder (both AoMEE and the CD version) there is a file called mp3dec.asi, why is this important?
Well it means AoM can support the files in engine, but why is this important? For context, GTA modders use C++ based scripts (which AoM is built on) to expand game features (i.e more weapons, cars, etc) add new missions, make patches to the source code, and add loader programs, like CLEO, etc.
See, Age of Mythology despite being unchained, is still very limited in many ways, you can’t add new protoactions, expand the command panel beyond 3x8, add multiple pages to the command panel, add new major gods and cultures, can’t add custom minor gods to the top progression bar, can’t load custom .BAR files (or .BAR files at all in AoMEE) etc.
Interesting enough both AoM and GTA .ASI files share the same header (something, something “not compatible with DOS”), which would imply that either ES based AoM’s .ASI system on GTA 3’s, or it’s one of those rarer third party-type things (like Wwise etc)
The only issue though is that if such a thing is true, does AoM load .ASIs natively? or do you need to make a custom loader in order to use it? Not to mention, AoM’s inner workings aren’t as well documented as GTA 3 era’s workings, so that may cause an issue.
Regardless this is one of those mystery things that may or may not be game changing for AoM modding, but I thought it would be interesting to at least mention this discovery just in case…Somebody message Silent!