Agent Character Animation (file format)

Agent Character Animation

Screenshot of the Agent Blue ACF's Explain animation which is stored in a ACA.
Name	Agent Character Animation
Extension	.ACA
Initial release	October 12th, 1998 (27 years ago)
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Predecessor	Agent Animation File

Not to be confused with Agent Animation File.

An Agent Character Animation (ACA) is a file format used by Microsoft Agent characters which stores character animations. Unlike most Microsoft Agent file formats, it cannot be opened directly. The only way to load an ACA file is by loading an ACF file created for Microsoft Agent 2.0 that references the animation.

Usage

While not directly the character themselves, ACA files contain character animations. They contain every different image and sound used in animation, each frame in the animation and its properties such as the duration of the frame, each imaged used in the frame, the offset of each image in the frame, the mouth overlays in the frame, where the frame is located in the animation, and the branching logic for the frame. ACA files are important for ACF files developed in MACE 2.0 as ACF files only contain the metadata about the character.

Trivia

• Originally, character animations were stored in AAF files, but were switched over to ACA for an unknown reason.
• It is unknown how Agent Character Animations would have been decompiled with the Microsoft Agent Decompiler, as the program never received an update after version 1.0.