Agent Character File (file format)

Agent Character File

Screenshot of PM Green's ACF loaded in MASH on the FYI-Net website.
Name	Agent Character File (HTTP Format)
Extension	.ACF
Initial release	September 8th, 1997 (28 years ago)
Operating system	Microsoft Windows

Not to be confused with Agent Character Storage.

An Agent Character File (ACF) (also known as an Agent Character File (HTTP Format)) is a file format used by Microsoft Agent for Microsoft Agent characters. It can be opened with any program which utilizes Microsoft Agent technology, and by web pages on Internet Explorer.

Usage

ACF files are able to be loaded through the internet. This allows for the character to show on the user's computer without the user needing to have the character locally stored on their system. Since the animations aren't stored in the ACF and are instead stored in separate files, this also allows the character to load only the required animations specified in the script rather than all the animations the character has, using less memory.

Structure

ACF files contain metadata for the character, such as the name, description, extra data, text-to-speech voice, system tray icon, and references to every animation used in the character. However, they do not contain the animations nor any sound used in the animation and instead rely off of ACA or AAF files for the animations. This is why scripts that utilize ACF files have a for loop for the Get command so every required animation is loaded.

Differences from ACS

1. ACF files rely on ACA or AAF files in order to load animations of the character, while ACS files do not need any external files.
2. It is a lot harder to download an ACF file than it is to download an ACS due to ACFs not being made for downloading.
3. While ACS files can only be loaded if they are installed on the system, ACF files can be loaded through the internet.

Trivia

• While not originally intended to, ACF files can surprisingly be loaded locally on the system.
  • However, it is impossible to load an ACS file from a website like how users can with an ACF.
• The ACF file used to be the default format that MACE would compile Microsoft Agent characters into until 2.0 switched the default to ACS.
• After the discovery that 1.5 ACS files are just OLE containers which contain an ACF file, it has lead to theories if 1.5 ACF and 2.0 ACF files are similar.
• When trying to decompile ACF files through the Microsoft Agent Decompiler, it will throw the error "This feature is not implemented yet", suggesting that the feature was planned to be implemented in the future.
  • However, MAD never got an official update after version 1.0, and due to the discontinuation of Microsoft Agent, it unfortunately might never get one.