War Thunder Wiki & Datamining Tools

This repository contains Python scripts for auditing the War Thunder Wiki and performing datamining in the game's files.

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Setup Guide
  • Step 1: Install Required Tools
  • Step 2: Download and Install wt-tools
  • Step 3: Unpack Game Files
• Script Usage
  • Naval Weapons Table Generator (naval_weapons_table.py)
  • Wiki Article Checker (wiki_check_articles.py)
• Troubleshooting

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, you must install a few essential tools on your system.

• Python: This is required to run the scripts.

  • Download: python.org
    • The entire process was tested and developed on Python 3.7.
  • Important: On the first page of the installer, make sure to check the box that says "Add Python to PATH".

• Git: This is a version control tool required to download wt-tools correctly.

  • Download: git-scm.com

• A Text Editor: You will need this to configure the naval_weapons_table.py script.

  • Recommended: Notepad++

Setup Guide

Step 1: Install Required Tools

Install Python and Git from the links in the Prerequisites section. Accept the default settings during installation.

Step 2: Download and Install wt-tools

You must use Git to "clone" the wt-tools repository - kotiq/wt-tools. This ensures all files are downloaded correctly, avoiding installation errors. For a detailed guide on cloning, see GitHub's official documentation.

Note

The official installation guide can be a bit misleading, as it appears to direct you towards building the executables, which is a complex process that I personally never have managed to complete successfully on my machine. Instead, all the python scripts within this repository only need the .py files and their dependencies, which can be installed in a trivial way. (You can later use those .py files yourself, without worrying about compilation to .exe)

ℹ️ Installing wt-tools without issues: ℹ️

1. Open your terminal (on Windows, open the Start Menu and type PowerShell or cmd).

2. Navigate to a directory where you want to store the tools (e.g., your Documents folder).

   cd C:\Users\YourWindowsLogin\Documents

3. Clone the repository by running the following command:

   git clone https://github.com/kotiq/wt-tools.git

   This will create a new wt-tools folder in your current directory.

4. Navigate into the newly created folder:

   cd wt-tools

5. Now, install the tool as a Python package using pip:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

   This command reads the setup files and correctly installs wt-tools and its dependencies.

Step 3: Unpack Game Files

With wt-tools installed, you can now unpack the necessary War Thunder game files.

1. Open a new terminal window.
2. Run the following commands, one by one. Remember to replace "$LOCALAPPDATA" with the actual path to where your game is installed.

   python vromfs_unpacker.py "$LOCALAPPDATA\WarThunder\aces.vromfs.bin"
   python vromfs_unpacker.py "$LOCALAPPDATA\WarThunder\lang.vromfs.bin"
   python vromfs_unpacker.py "$LOCALAPPDATA\WarThunder\char.vromfs.bin"

3. This process will create folders ending in _u (e.g., aces.vromfs.bin_u) inside your game directory. These contain the unpacked data.

Script Usage

Naval Weapons Table Generator (naval_weapons_table.py)

Script used to generate War Thunder Naval Weapons Table. You can download your own copy of the naval_weapons_table.html and update <table><!-- (...) --></table> block to get your own personal table. The script can generate output in HTML, JSON, CSV or (default) wikitext. It has its own thread on the War Thunder forums: Research into the naval guns - the naval weapons table.

1. Configure Paths: Open naval_weapons_table.py with your text editor (e.g., Notepad++).

2. Edit the "Paths to files and scripts" section at the top. Replace the placeholder paths with the correct, full paths on your computer.

Tip

A sample path to Steam installation of War Thunder would look like C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\WarThunder. You can find it by right-clicking the game in your Steam library, choosing Properties -> Installed Files and then Browse next to "Size of installation: XX.XX GB on ...".

3. Save the naval_weapons_table.py

4. Run from the Terminal: After navigating to the directory containing naval_weapons_table.py, run the script with your desired arguments.

   Sample Command:

   python naval_weapons_table.py --weaponspath "C:\Users\YourWindowsLogin\AppData\Local\WarThunder\aces.vromfs.bin_u\gamedata\weapons\navalmodels_weapons" --unitspath "C:\Users\YourWindowsLogin\AppData\Local\WarThunder\aces.vromfs.bin_u\gamedata\units\ships" --outputformat html --from 75 --to 138.6

Wiki Article Checker (wiki_check_articles.py)

Caution

Does not work for Wiki 3.0. As of 2025 it can be run only on the https://old-wiki.warthunder.com/

This script checks articles on the War Thunder Wiki for missing sections. It requires no configuration.

To use it, run it from your terminal with the URL of the wiki category:

python wiki_check_articles.py "https://old-wiki.warthunder.com/Category:Sixth_rank_ships"

test_check_articles.py

An old collection of unit tests made to ensure that nothing breaks when any modifications to the scripts are being made. Irrelevant since the Wiki 3.0 got released.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter an error, check this list for a solution.

• Error: 'git', 'python', or 'pip' is not recognized...

  • Cause: The tool was not added to your system's PATH.
  • Solution: Re-install the program (Git or Python) and make sure to check the box that says "Add to PATH" during the installation process.

• Error: Invalid weapons folder path

  • Cause: Either the path after --weaponspath is missing quotes, or you're providing an incorrect path.
  • Solution: Correct the command you are using to run naval_weapons_table.py.

• Error: FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory...

  • Cause: A path in the configuration section of naval_weapons_table.py is incorrect.
  • Solution: The script could not find a file at the specified location. Carefully re-check every path you edited in the script for typos or incorrect folder names.

• Error: SyntaxError: invalid syntax

  • Cause: A typo was made while editing the .py script, like accidentally deleting a quote ("), comma (,), changing indentation or removing line breaks.
  • Solution: Open naval_weapons_table.py and compare the lines you edited to the examples in this guide to find and fix the mistake.

• Error: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'blk'

  • Cause: Somehow you ended up missing the blk module from the python dependencies.
  • Solution: Run pip install git+https://github.com/kotiq/blk@8c92e35 in the console. If that won't work, try pip install git+https://github.com/JareelSkaj/kotiq_blk instead.

• Error: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'click' (or any other)

  • Cause: Same as above, somehow you ended up missing a dependency. This shouldn't have happened if you did pip install -r requirements.txt.
  • Solution: Run pip install click (or replace click with whatever module you were missing).

• Error:

  File "<string>", line 94, in <module>
  ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils.msvccompiler'
  [end of output]
  

  • Cause: Python uses distutils.msvccompiler to build and install some of the C modules. In the post-August 2022 versions (post-v.65) of the setup tool used by Python the way this was handled got somewhat modified, so the version of the kotiq/blk@8c92e35 that we are using, made in October 2021, might have lost some compatibility. I don't know the details, this is out of my depth, but I know that this error happened to me when trying to install wt-tools on pyenv with python 3.8, but not with a locally installed Python 3.7.17.
  • Solution: You could try installing an older version of the setup tools (older than v.65) but realistically: Just run the script you would like, and see what missing module errors is it throwing, when address the errors for these particular modules through pip install. It's far from a perfect solution, but resolved everything I needed. (This kind of BS is why I'm working on PHP version of the Python wt-tools.)