Adding new factions in VI

[Turbo]

According to ECS's post, we are supposed to be able to add new factions without having to overwrite existing ones. Has anyone figured out how to do that yet?

I am running into the same issues I had with MTW when I try to add factions.

[Stormer]

erm i think you mean the units?

there are 10 empty bif files to make new units http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Lord Krazy]

New factions are suposed to be moddable I tought.
I don't have it yet so I can't confirm that.
However from the docs I'v seen so far it looks
more possible I just need an engine and the rest of the
files to make sure. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

sorry.

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Stormer @ May 09 2003,16:39)]erm i think you mean the units?

there are 10 empty bif files to make new units http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
No he means factions by some of the startpos info ECS gave us it indicates you can add your own factions to the game . I just got my copy this morning and I am giving the files a good look and should have an answer after a few tests here is the data block from the viking era file in Campmap/Startpos. Faction declarations.
//
// These MUST be declared before
// being used anywhere else in this file.
//
// The number of factions is restricted to >.
// Faction 0 is always the faction used to
// identify rebel groups.
//
// The proper game will search for these
// faction labels and act upon them for
// a number of things such as historical events.
// MODDERS use different names to avoid this.
//
// Faction ID's are assigned in the order the
// declarations are found in.
//
// eg:-
//
// DeclareFaction:: "rebellious_badger" -> assigned to 0
// DeclareFaction:: "faction_underpants" -> assigned to 1
// DeclareFaction:: "abc" -> assigned to 2
//
// When refering to factions in the production files
// you must use the names you have declared here.
//
// For factions set to FT_MAJOR ( playable )
// files need to be placed in the campmap\GameEnd
// directory in the form "MyFactionName_win.bif". Looks like it will be fun to figure out. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

[/QUOTE]max amount of factions was 20
It had always been intended to handle 31 + rebel factions, but due to some unknown oversight or bug, it seems on one has managed to add in extra factions. With VI it is easy to add factions, you can have up to 31 plus rebels.

[QUOTE]This qoute was from Eat Cold Steel CA programmer the original is in a pinned thread "Changes to startpos files in VI" here in the dungeon. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[WesW]

Adding factions should be easier than it was before. You just have to go and find all the text files that need to be altered. I think someone added a Scots faction to the game some months ago. I assume that it is posted here at the org. I would get it and use it as a reference. Then you just need to find out what is different in the VI file system.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (WesW @ May 09 2003,21:38)]Adding factions should be easier than it was before. You just have to go and find all the text files that need to be altered. I think someone added a Scots faction to the game some months ago. I assume that it is posted here at the org. I would get it and use it as a reference. Then you just need to find out what is different in the VI file system.
I am looking how to add new factions not alter existing ones. Up until VI, adding additional new factions wasn't possible.

It would be interesting and challenging to have more factions available in MTW, particularly for the early campaign. The additional units open up some interesting opportunities.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ May 09 2003,19:53)]max amount of factions was 20
It had always been intended to handle 31 + rebel factions, but due to some unknown oversight or bug, it seems on one has managed to add in extra factions. With VI it is easy to add factions, you can have up to 31 plus rebels.


This qoute was from Eat Cold Steel CA programmer the original is in a pinned thread "Changes to startpos files in VI" here in the dungeon. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Yes, I read that too and tried adding a new faction. I had the same issues as before. I was asking if anyone had been successful in adding one.

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Turbo @ May 10 2003,09:06)]
Quote[/b] (WesW @ May 09 2003,21:38)]Adding factions should be easier than it was before. You just have to go and find all the text files that need to be altered. I think someone added a Scots faction to the game some months ago. I assume that it is posted here at the org. I would get it and use it as a reference. Then you just need to find out what is different in the VI file system.
I am looking how to add new factions not alter existing ones. Up until VI, adding additional new factions wasn't possible.

It would be interesting and challenging to have more factions available in MTW, particularly for the early campaign. The additional units open up some interesting opportunities.
Actually adding new factions to MTW was and is possible using the fn_free slots it involves alot of work but it can be and has been done on TW.com a guy named AOD Bradford had a mod with 30 factions functional.He posted a faq on how to I have most of it but it was never completed. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Westland]

As far as I know nobody ever saw this infamous 30 faction mod. Although several people asked AOD Bradford if he could sent this mod, he never did and never responded to this questions. His modding guide was very good but I seriously doubt he really made this mod. He stopped posting parts of his modding instructions just when he wanted to explain how to create a new faction.
Several other people claimed to have made mods with new factions but nobody ever saw any proof of this.
As far as I know the fn_free slots did not work in the original MTW. Hopefully VI will change this.

[WesW]

Here. This is at the top of the Early campaign file. Just append your faction's name, and go from there.

//========================================
// Faction declarations.
//
// These MUST be declared before
// being used anywhere else in this file.
//
// The number of factions is restricted to >.
// Faction 0 is always the faction used to
// identify rebel groups.
//
// The proper game will search for these
// faction labels and act upon them for
// a number of things such as historical events.
// MODDERS use different names to avoid this.
//
// Faction ID's are assigned in the order the
// declarations are found in.
//
// eg:-
//
// DeclareFaction:: "rebellious_badger" -> assigned to 0
// DeclareFaction:: "faction_underpants" -> assigned to 1
// DeclareFaction:: "abc" -> assigned to 2
//
// For factions set to FT_MAJOR ( playable )
// files need to be placed in the campmap\GameEnd
// directory in the form "MyFactionName_win.bif"
//========================================

DeclareFaction:: "FN_REBEL"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_ALMOHAD"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_BYZANTINE"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_DANISH"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_EGYPTIAN"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_ENGLISH"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_FRENCH"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_GERMAN_HRE"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_ITALIAN"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_POLISH"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_RUSSIAN"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_SPANISH"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_TURKISH"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_ARAGONESE"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_BURGUNDIAN"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_GOLDEN_HORDE"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_HUNGARIAN"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_NOVGOROD"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_PAPIST"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_SICILIAN"
DeclareFaction:: "FN_SWISS"

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Westland @ May 10 2003,16:41)]As far as I know nobody ever saw this infamous 30 faction mod. Although several people asked AOD Bradford if he could sent this mod, he never did and never responded to this questions. His modding guide was very good but I seriously doubt he really made this mod. He stopped posting parts of his modding instructions just when he wanted to explain how to create a new faction.
Several other people claimed to have made mods with new factions but nobody ever saw any proof of this.
As far as I know the fn_free slots did not work in the original MTW. Hopefully VI will change this.
I never saw the Mod myself either, but as far as the FN_FREE slots working I asked the same question of Eat Cold Steel ECS programmer and he says it is possible heres is a prtion of his response
Quote[/b] ]The maximum number of faction ever is 32. I donno what problems people have when using FN_FREE slots, as long as you don't change the label FN_FREE then you should be ok. If you have any specific question on using those extra factions then I'll try to answer them. The only problem I can see is not being able to set their colour, or maybe their faction shield?

So if he says it could be done I think I beleive him after all he works at the company that makes the game.Edit: the entire post can be seen in the Dungeons Faq thread.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

You know where it says place leader and there are some co-ordinates,what does this mean? I thought it was where your king starts. Therefore how are we supposed to know the starting co-ordinates for say,Bohemia or Wallachia?
How can i make a faction without knowing these?

[Lord Krazy]

Adding the factions was possible it's just the flags
and silly little coded stuff like that stoped it from
working.
Seen as all the factions needed a flag
and only x amount of flags existed then
only the equal amount of factions could be given a flag.
so that was that. Now the faction colours are RGB
numbers up to 256 colours then it won't be an issue
anymore it seems
LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (The Blind King of Bohemia @ May 11 2003,09:44)]You know where it says place leader and there are some co-ordinates,what does this mean? I thought it was where your king starts. Therefore how are we supposed to know the starting co-ordinates for say,Bohemia or Wallachia?
How can i make a faction without knowing these?
In the Early, High, late text files the placeleader line remains as it was in the original MTW PlaceLeader:: ID_ALGERIA FN_ALMOHAD , in the Vikings text file this has changed to PlaceLeader:: ID_LANDREG_41 FN_01 The LANDREG # points to the landregion assigned for this number in DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_41" // LAIGIN the FN # corresponds to the Faction Name assigned in DeclareFaction:: "FN_01" // Irish . So it depends which file you are trying to edit. I am still trying to figure this out so sharing our finds is important. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[NagatsukaShumi]

After looking at the Loc/Eng files ALOT recently I've descovoered that fact that only 11 other factyions can be implmemented properly, or it seems that way as most files only contain Free01-11, however I may be wrong so don't think thats definate.

[Lord Of Storms]

Well my first attempt at adding a new faction to VI , failed, I used the VIKINGS txt file and I followed the file structure, seemed pretty straight forward based on numbers in seqeunce existing factions FN_00-08 so mine was 09 added everything following the file structure in the startpos, unit prod 11 and you even have to add a finish bif in Campmap/Gameend and all I got was the game would not even boot http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif back to the drawing board. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[eat cold steel]

If the game crashed while loading into stratgy map, it is most likely a problem with shields. To add a new faction, you have to do DeclareFaction, SetActiveFaction and SetShieldImage. Give it a region to begin with, SetStartLeader, PlaceLeader.
That's the bare minimum you have to do to get a new faction in the game.

[Lord Of Storms]

I am sure I covered all the bases as far Declare Faction,etc. I followed the existing file structure and for the shield I used the Rebels default I think this is acceptable ? I am going over my entries for typos and anything I might have missed I saved the vikings txt file with the changes for reference and will start over any more thoughts on entries I might have missed please let me know. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Lord Krazy]

Textures campmap has flags in it now
so untill I know where everything is
and why, I won't confuse the issue. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[eat cold steel]

Try giving only one region to your new faction and remove all units assigned to that region apart from one Peasants. There could have been a mismatch on unit culture and faction cilture. Make sure your place leader in that region.

[edit] SetStartLeader has a tie in with the hero name files. Try SetStartLeader:: FN_NEW 0 0 to begin with.

[Lord Of Storms]

Thanks ECS I will give that a try I had originally assigned them 3 Land Regions and kept the units and placeleader on just one. ECS Please check my last post in the Changes to Startpos in VI thread. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

In SetStartLeader I just copied an existing line and added my FN # which is 9 I got it to boot now , then I remembered I did not make an entry for the leader unit in the prod 11 files , now I get an unknown faction error ? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif back to the drawing board.

[Lord Of Storms]

Well I did it I was able to add a brand new faction to VI, it still needs some tweaking as far as leader name and buildings (still having some issues with the build 13 and unit prod 11 files) but my faction was on the select screen I was able to choose it. I took Eat Cold Steels suggestion and kept things simple with the units just peasants for know and King's unit. Funny thing was on the period select screen the High era was replaced by another Vikings era and that is where my new faction was.Well back to the drawing board,more work to iron out the kinks but it is progress this morning the game would not boot now my new faction shows up and is playable http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Lord Krazy]

LOS,

Send me a list of the files you have modded
so far please.

(in relation to adding factions)

Thanks

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I tried to get the Scots into the main game (Early) but like LOS the game wouldn't load up. For setstartleader I copied the Scots data from the Viking startpos. Is this acceptable or would I be better off just copying one already in Early, or leaving it as '0 0',etc?

[Emp. Conralius]

Is anyone adding a Frankish unit?

[Lord Krazy]

The community units mod will be updated for
vi so the 70 odd units from that will be added
plus others.

Frankish units will be among them.

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[eat cold steel]

Alright, simple guide to adding a new faction:
Make a copy of viking.txt in your campmap\startpos directory
Open up the copy with a text editor
Lets go through the file from top to bottom.
Change cn_title to some thing different like "new faction mod" so you can tell which is your mod
Declare your new faction with DeclareFaction:: "FN_new"
Activate your faction with SetActiveFaction:: FN_new FT_MAJOR
Set your culture with SetCulture:: FN_new CATHOLIC_CULTURE
Give yourself some shield by SetShieldImage:: FN_new "Welsh_lge" "Welsh_sml" "Welsh" "Welsh" "Welsh"
Give yourself an island with SetRegionOwner:: ID_LANDREG_44 FN_new
Now you need a king SetStartLeader:: FN_new 0 0
and PlaceLeader:: ID_LANDREG_44 FN_new

That should be all you have to do to get a new faction to play with.
Other things you'll have to do to get it to be more playable.
SetTreasury:: FN_new to give yourself more starting cash
Change you starting religion to something else, it defaults to catholic
Give the AI a script to control the faction with SetBehaviour
Change the colour with SetFactionCol
Give an office or two with AddOffice
Give some heir with AddHeir:: FN_new m/f age

More advance stuff to make it look good
Change the prod file to give your new faction some troops and building
Change the translation files to get rid of all the no translation Mostly in faction_specific and changes
SetFactionMusic:: FN_new X - X can be 0 - 5, see playlist
GGConquestReward:: FN_new 1.0 plus changing regowner_table to list some homeland for GA goals
Make some heroes and kings with a copy of the hero files, and SetNameData::
Then you can update SetStartLeader with extra stuff.

[Lord Of Storms]

Thnaks ECS, I already managed to get my new faction to show up and be playable, One problem I have not figured out yet ,when I make an entry to build prod 13 or prod 11 files I get an unknown faction error "Unknown faction FN_09" any ideas? ( I used FN_09 as file suggests to use numerical sequence, exisiting provs. FN_0-FN_08)

[eat cold steel]

Did you make a copy of the production files? The problem is that the original vikings startpos also refere to those production files, which does not include your new faction declaration, and hence you get the Unknown faction FN_09 error.

[komninos]

I will get the VI this weekend but can someone send me the Unit and one of the startpos files of the VI to have a look at them. I think I can rebuilt my tools quite fast so it will be a lot easier for all.

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (eat cold steel @ May 13 2003,06:03)]Did you make a copy of the production files? The problem is that the original vikings startpos also refere to those production files, which does not include your new faction declaration, and hence you get the Unknown faction FN_09 error.
No I made the changes in the original, so I copy the prod file then make the necessary changes, then save it? could you explain this in little more detail ( http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif )sorry I have never added a new faction to MTW and just want to be clear, when I make the copy where do I save it ?thanks for your help and patience ECS http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[eat cold steel]

Ok, make sure you are not changing the original files, put it back to how it was before if you've made any changes. Now make a copy of viking.txt, in campmap\startpos, edit "Copy of viking.txt" and fine the line
Prodfiles:: UNITPROD "vikings_unit_prod.txt" BUILDINGPROD "vikings_build_prod.txt"

And change it to

Prodfiles:: UNITPROD "copy of vikings_unit_prod.txt" BUILDINGPROD "copy of vikings_build_prod.txt"

Then go to the root and make copies of vikings_unit_prod.txt and vikings_build_prod.txt. Now make the mods you want with the new files without changing the original ones.

[Lord Of Storms]

Thanks for this ECS, You have made this modder and others I am sure very happy, It will take some getting used to but the file structure for vikings is very user friendly http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif I just love this GAME http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif P.S. I am not at my home computer so I will try these tips as soon as I get home. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (The Blind King of Bohemia @ May 12 2003,15:02)]I tried to get the Scots into the main game (Early) but like LOS the game wouldn't load up. For setstartleader I copied the Scots data from the Viking startpos. Is this acceptable or would I be better off just copying one already in Early, or leaving it as '0 0',etc?
BKB, I would copy the existing leader stats over , with 00 you will get name translation errors. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Emp. Conralius]

Is there gonna be a Frankish faction? I meant to ask that in the first place.

Throwing Axemen? Carolingian Cav?

[Lord Krazy]

I managed to add Munster as a faction to vi.
It all seems to be working ok.
I just made some basic changes as suggested above,
hence some flags , names and so on don't show.
But that's not a problem.

I figured I was too tired when I could not figure out
why my king was a highland clansman, so I'll get back to that tomorrow.

Apart from me it all works ok it seems.

btw
Total War\Medieval - Total War\Textures\campmap\Vikings\PrebatShields

add SHL09.BIF if you want to fight a battle
in the campaign.

good night

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[komninos]

Lord Krazy, the problem with the Leader unit is in your Unit_prod-... file. If you have a new faction you must insert the leader unit in this file or it get the first unit type it finds hens the highland clansman.

[eat cold steel]

Before you start moding it's best if you read thru viking.txt first, it has the most up to date comment, also the other startpos leave a lot of command out as they use the default value where as viking make use of the full range of keyword. There is no different in format between viking and the others, so if you see a keyword in one you can use it in the other. SetStartLeader ties in with the hero name file so take a look at that too.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Damn Took me hours to do all this and now what do I find here http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Oh well. Not the greatest of modders and some things above which make things much clearer thanks ECS.

L_K you must have been tired even I knew that http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

OK i have my new faction showing up on the select screen, I can choose it the leader,names are all right , I can build anything but as soon as I build a warrior hold it crashes to desktop, also none of the buildings are showing up even though they are under makebuilding in startpos this is the one sticking point I got everything else to work whats up ECS P.S. Problem seems to be editing the unit build prod 13 file ? I am using Land Reg 37 as my province if that helps.

[eat cold steel]

I am think it may be the flag on the castle, try using the same flags as another faction. Also what culture have you set your faction? That normally explains why building doesn't appear.

[Lord Of Storms]

I have chosen Catholic Culture but I did nothing with the castle flags. What file for those ? If I can get past this point that should solve things hopefully,Would that give me probs with the build prod file? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif Thanks ECS http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[eat cold steel]

Can you show me what your SetShieldImage line reads? Those should be large shield, small shield, castle flag, army piece shield and army banner.

[Lord Of Storms]

If you mean the setshield image line in startpos I copied the line for the rebel shields, default shieldlge, default shield small. "Rebel" "Rebel" I am not on my home pc at the moment but thats what I entered.

[eat cold steel]

Yep, that's your problem, rebels' castle doesn't have a flag. Either make a copy of the flag or change the SetShieldImage line. That doesn't explain why your building does appear though.

[Lord Of Storms]

Thanks ECS now I know why I get the CTD and now I will probably be able to build warrior hold but like you said why wont they appear if thet are assigned in MakeBuilding line of startpos? well one problem solved so were that much closer. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Lord Krazy]

You can add a set of flags and call them fn_09

or whatever.


LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Lord Krazy]

Quote[/b] (komninos @ May 14 2003,01:19)]Lord Krazy, the problem with the Leader unit is in your Unit_prod-... file. If you have a new faction you must insert the leader unit in this file or it get the first unit type it finds hens the highland clansman.
Thanks but it's not the theory that
stops me usualy. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif


btw it works fine now.

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Ok this is only for a test; but so far I have:

A new faction named "Ith Raiders" in Reget, Scotland (landreg_11) Pagan Culture(removing the Abbey here)
I edited names.txt (in loc) and VIKING_HEROES.txt (campmap\names) so my faction uses a mixture of Danish and Viking names (ie creating a new surnames/forenames list.) Also set new Heroes and Kings in this file.

These are all quite easy to do as ECS has helped lots and there are a lot of helpful tips in the files... which is why a noob mod like myself has got this far.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Ithaskar Fëarindel @ May 14 2003,12:30)]Ok this is only for a test; but so far I have:

A new faction named "Ith Raiders" in Reget, Scotland (landreg_11) Pagan Culture(removing the Abbey here)
I edited names.txt (in loc) and VIKING_HEROES.txt (campmap\names) so my faction uses a mixture of Danish and Viking names (ie creating a new surnames/forenames list.) Also set new Heroes and Kings in this file.

These are all quite easy to do as ECS has helped lots and there are a lot of helpful tips in the files... which is why a noob mod like myself has got this far.
Making the changes are easy. Getting the changes to actually work is not. Does the faction units and buildings appear? Does this work in strategic and battle mode?
Does it work without crashing?

If the answer to this is yes, then upload your files

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Yes - and done.

Orgs Uploads Recent Files (http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Mtw_Uploads/MTWupload/)

Added a SHL09.bif though you can make this yourself. It's only a copy of the Vikings SHL07.bif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Dammit Heroes names are not working. Will look at that in a minute.

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Ithaskar Fëarindel @ May 14 2003,14:37)]Dammit Heroes names are not working. Will look at that in a minute.
I would ask if you have any problems with the buildings for your faction do they show up ? I noticed you did not make any entries to the unit or build prod files? I looked at the structure of your set up and I have been following this from the start my faction shows up, names, leader is fine, I have royal units for my King, the farmland and abbey show, but the other buildings in MakeBuilding: do not show and it has me puzzled I can build anything but I would rather they were placed at the start like the others, how many turns have you played any battles? give us a progress report if you please. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif back to the drawing board http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

This is annoying me. I now have the Scots, Welsh and Irish in early. The shields are there, the crusader_prod files recognise them, the names are there and they work in custom battles. However, when I try to play as one on the campaign mode it loads up and crashes. I don't know what the hell the problem is I copied the castleflag.bifs from the Viking folder, so I don't see why there would be a problem.

ECS, what do you mean by army piece shield? If I knew that might be the missing link, but I doubt it. Is that just for the Viking startpos or Early, High and Late also?

[Lord Krazy]

Quote[/b] (The Blind King of Bohemia @ May 14 2003,15:15)]ECS, what do you mean by army piece shield? If I knew that might be the missing link, but I doubt it. Is that just for the Viking startpos or Early, High and Late also?
Total War\Medieval - Total War\campmap\pieces\Units\Christian\Shields\

I believe this is what ECS means.
This is for both vi and mtw.



I have just added stuff to vi
so far and have had little problem.

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Lord Krazy,you are on my dude list. It works a treat. No problem building or training units. Irish,scots and Welsh are in early and i am chuffed to bits

[Lord Of Storms]

Hallelujah I did it building problem solved http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif I have my faction, I can do everything with it It was simple I left out 1 building in the structure of the MakeBuilding line and thats is why they would not show. I just copied and pasted an existing capital structure put my faction number and capital name and it worked I do not know how I left the 1 building out and I looked at it a few times, I honestly did not think it would make a difference but I was wrong. Well that said and done adding a new province to VI is no longer a mystery to me, Now I have not played more than a few turns and had 1 battle but so far so good http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Things coming together this is good news you guys http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

I don't like editing the Unit and Build prod files. I've looked at them - but there still some things I don't know/like about them. I've tried changing them in the past but never got anywhere.

The Heroes files I dunno I still can't get them to work properly. Before one hero would show but with bad name (ie "Christoffer vi_Masson### Could not....". But now I can't get any of them to show at all http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

This aint a big problem though I only wanted to add a new faction and I can get that done. Units are next. I will forget heroes (for now.)

Building all ok BTW. But like I said I haven't changed anything in Build_Prod. Maybe I'll have a look at that now.

I've done no more than about 20 turns with no problems, except that my heroes don't show up. I've played battles - I killed the Scots by turn 2 once...and already I realise from starting in Reget expansion needs to be quick...and preferably south towards income http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif


Good news you guys are working ok now. My main goal is to get Vikings in Early/High/Late eras with all their units for MP. I'm only testing the water with Ith Raiders.

[Lord Krazy]

http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Mtw_Uploads/MTWbeta/

A new faction mod for Vi has been posted
here for testing.

It adds Munster to the Vi campaign.

Let me know if it you have any probs.

It should cover all the basics of adding
a faction to Vi.





Quote[/b] ]My main goal is to get Vikings in Early/High/Late eras with all their units for MP.

Ithaskar,
could you give me a better idea
of what you are doing.
I'm not sure I understand.

Thanks

regards

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

It's pretty simple L_K. I just want to be able to play Vikings online in the Early/High/Late eras. Don't care about accuracy... I just want to add them. I've sorted almost all names out for them; my only problem is the Unit_Prod file - as ever.

Can't look at it right now since I'm not at home but for some reason I keep getting a message when I load the game:
"FN_VIKINGS" faction not defined in column 5 row 67
or something of the like. I think the problems in the names.txt I'll take a look later when I get back but like you I was a little tired so I turned in.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

BTW I had the Vikings working in the campaign but I had not edited Unit_Prod and they had just 5 units.

Grrr I h8 editing Unit_Prod it screws everything up.

[Lord Of Storms]

I.F. Are you using GnomeUnitBuildProd editorv2.0 to edit the prod files ? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Mmmm. When purchasing certain units as mercenaries (Hobilars and Horse Archers) the game CTD. Has anyone else noticed this?

Also, I've recently tried to add the Portuguese. I've changed the colours of the shields and castle flags, but in the game their are white spots in the shield. I keep fixing it but this still keeps happening. Any ideas?

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I'm having problems. I've made Highland Clansmen exclusive to the Scots but whenever I try and play a battle with them the game CTD. It happens with other factions and other units also. I did the same with Kerns and they crash with the Irish. Even units like Urban Militia crash with the new factions. I know it's something to do with the UNIT_PROD files but I'm not exactly sure what. If anyone has had the same problem and knows how to rectify it, could you please tell me? Thanks.

[scsscsfanfan]

I really admire all you "Lords" here. good work.

Now, I would really wants to ask that any chance to post kind of a "step by step" guide of Adding new faction here? I just has no time (and patience) to work it out myself with a crying new baby - just hope I still can have enough time to play. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
many thinks

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

scsscsfscf .... hmmm. ECS has posted a pretty easy to follow guide on one of the previous pages in this thread. That's pretty easy to follow and there are lots of tips in the files themselves.
-----------------------

Guys - at the moment I'm pretty stuck. If I put back the original Unit_Prod file the game works fine (there is one _minor_ problem that the King comes up as King SweynRoman_Numerals##Label not found but I ignore that for now)
Like I said, it works fine or atleast so far it has done, I've got up to about turn 25 with no problems. I even get my Vikings units since I'm in Norway region. But the units are not Faction Specific only Region Specific so I can't get them in custom games. As soon as I change the Unit_Prod I come up with faction not defined error.

This maybe a stupid question, but when I define the unit as Faction Specific, but I should be putting the same thing here as I declared in startpos right? So I declared as FN_VIKINGS I should put that in the faction specific column for the unit?

If so then I need to find out why my faction isn't being declared http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif


p.s. LOS - Yes using Gnome's editor - but only since you posted that above http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
It did good to check I had entered things right thanks http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

p.p.s. BKB could you upload the files where you have Irish/Scots/Welsh working. I could probably find something I have missed knowing me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Thanks http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

p.p.p.s. BKB is that map supposed to be viewable for us? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Cheers all http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Ithaskar Fëarindel @ May 15 2003,19:02)]scsscsfscf .... hmmm. ECS has posted a pretty easy to follow guide on one of the previous pages in this thread. That's pretty easy to follow and there are lots of tips in the files themselves.
-----------------------

Guys - at the moment I'm pretty stuck. If I put back the original Unit_Prod file the game works fine (there is one _minor_ problem that the King comes up as King SweynRoman_Numerals##Label not found but I ignore that for now)
Like I said, it works fine or atleast so far it has done, I've got up to about turn 25 with no problems. I even get my Vikings units since I'm in Norway region. But the units are not Faction Specific only Region Specific so I can't get them in custom games. As soon as I change the Unit_Prod I come up with faction not defined error.

This maybe a stupid question, but when I define the unit as Faction Specific, but I should be putting the same thing here as I declared in startpos right? So I declared as FN_VIKINGS I should put that in the faction specific column for the unit?

If so then I need to find out why my faction isn't being declared http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif


p.s. LOS - Yes using Gnome's editor - but only since you posted that above http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
It did good to check I had entered things right thanks http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

p.p.s. BKB could you upload the files where you have Irish/Scots/Welsh working. I could probably find something I have missed knowing me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Thanks http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

p.p.p.s. BKB is that map supposed to be viewable for us? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Cheers all http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
I. F. Did you SETFORENAMES/SURNAMES in the default heroes file, if so you should not get the trtanslation error on your King I got that at first but for my faction name it turned out I had the name in to many places usuallly those errors stem from the Loc files dbl check for typos and spacing those files are touchy also, as far as the unit prod yes you would enter the name you declared in your case FN_VIKINGS what unit or units are you editing sometimes changing the column to read ALL_FACTIONS might work you also need to check for culture specifications if there is any being that Vikings are pagan this can sometimes cause problems. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Grell]

I have posted a working version of a mod "Final Crusade_Alpha.zip" It contains 9 completely new working and playable major factions (without any old ones being over-written). Glory points can be earned for conquest, but not homelands for these new factions, also with (mostly) correct histroical Kings names and graphics. New factions are:

Navarre
Bohemia
Flanders
Friesland
Genoa
Kingdom of Jerusalem
Scots (adapted from Vikings)
Irish " "
Welsh " "
Cuman Tribes (replaced Novg) Have Cuman Royal Cavalry as their leader unit
Danishmendid Turks (replaced Burgundy) Use Turk Leaders

I have edited the Heroes.txt file so that Godfrey King of Jerusalem gets his brother Baldwin, and Roger I the Norman Sicilian King has his brother Robert, Bohemond and his nephew Tancred (these are missing and one goes to the Italian faction in the official campaign)

Adding new factions is not too difficult (just use FN_FREE21, FN_FREE22, etc). The problem is that the crusaderunitprod11.txt file will not recognise these new factions. Leaders are assigned to the default unit in the first row, i.e. Scottish Clansmen, so to get around this I swapped this position with Royal Early Knights. With futher editing of the unitprod.txt file I will assign units building reqs to Regions and Cultures so these new factions arent too disadvantaged. The unitprod needs massive work to get the rebellions at a dent level and other changes as made by other mods such as MedMod, I am in the process of doing this and entering in units and buildings for the startpos.txt file. I really dont like they way CA has only 1 or 2 units per region and bugger all buildings, e.g. historically there were churches, monastaries, royal palaces etc, all throughout Europe and much bigger armies than 100 or so, so I will be adding much more units and buildings than there are in the offical campaigns, this should be done and tested within the next few days for a final release of my mod The Eve of the First Crusade. I have tinkered with the Heroes.txt file but do not yet fully understand how the Kings Roman numerals and naming works, through trial and error I have it sorted for this mod.

All of the files need to be copied for the new factions to work (although I suppose you can stick with the official inaccurate Danes and Sicily). This is probably the best way to see how to add a new faction rather than me trying (and probably failing) to explain it in a tutorial. Which is why I am releasing this preliminary working version now. I can be emailed at thomas_norrish@yahoo.com..au or for a modding emergency, phoned (in Australia) on 0404 240 228

Grell aka Thomas Norrish 16 May 2003 Australia.

[eat cold steel]

Remember, if you use you newly declared Faction in the prod files, then ALL other startpos that reference the same prod file have to include the new faction declarations too. For example, if startposA.txt has faction FN_01, FN_02, FN_new and startposB.txt has faction FN_01 and FN_02 only then they can't share the same prod files unless the prod files does not mention FN_new at all.

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (eat cold steel @ May 16 2003,04:11)]Remember, if you use you newly declared Faction in the prod files, then ALL other startpos that reference the same prod file have to include the new faction declarations too. For example, if startposA.txt has faction FN_01, FN_02, FN_new and startposB.txt has faction FN_01 and FN_02 only then they can't share the same prod files unless the prod files does not mention FN_new at all.
So then as you told us before we make copies of the prod files then enter them in the copy of the txt files so they will be recognized yes? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ May 15 2003,07:20)]I.F. Are you using GnomeUnitBuildProd editorv2.0 to edit the prod files ? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
LOS,

Can you use Gnome 2.0 for VI? I noticed that there is an extra collumn that Gnome apends to its last column entry. I noticed some errors when I tried to use Gnome, but who knows....

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Turbo @ May 16 2003,09:09)]
Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ May 15 2003,07:20)]I.F. Are you using GnomeUnitBuildProd editorv2.0 to edit the prod files ? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
LOS,

Can you use Gnome 2.0 for VI? I noticed that there is an extra collumn that Gnome apends to its last column entry. I noticed some errors when I tried to use Gnome, but who knows....
Well I contacted Lord Gnome (see the pinned thread on his editor) and he is seeing about a updated version or if one is needed, I myself have used it in VI and it works fine as have others. So try it for yourself just make sure you make your changes in a copy of the file and then declare that file in your mod txt file. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

ECS, in the Names/VIKING HEROES file , this line //name no. c d p a portrait vnv, I get the name no. portrait and vnv what do the letters c,d,p and a represent? Also if I am doing a mod with the Vikings txt file can I also have one for one of the MTW eras at the same time, If the Vikings txt is different as far as the startpos set up would both mod txt files work or would it conflict?

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ May 16 2003,09:43)]
Quote[/b] (Turbo @ May 16 2003,09:09)]
Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ May 15 2003,07:20)]I.F. Are you using GnomeUnitBuildProd editorv2.0 to edit the prod files ? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
LOS,

Can you use Gnome 2.0 for VI? I noticed that there is an extra collumn that Gnome apends to its last column entry. I noticed some errors when I tried to use Gnome, but who knows....
Well I contacted Lord Gnome (see the pinned thread on his editor) and he is seeing about a updated version or if one is needed, I myself have used it in VI and it works fine as have others. So try it for yourself just make sure you make your changes in a copy of the file and then declare that file in your mod txt file. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
LOS,

As the official 'pioneer' of adding new factions, would you consider putting together a user guide? Yours is the only new faction that operates flawlessly.

I am still trying to figure out what you did differently from mine and this would help me and others as well.

[eat cold steel]

Man you are gonna kick yourself with this one - those are his stats: command, dread, piety and acumen. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Grell @ May 16 2003,02:02)]I have posted a working version of a mod "Final Crusade_Alpha.zip" It contains 9 completely new working and playable major factions (without any old ones being over-written). Glory points can be earned for conquest, but not homelands for these new factions, also with (mostly) correct histroical Kings names and graphics. New factions are:

Navarre
Bohemia
Flanders
Friesland
Genoa
Kingdom of Jerusalem
Scots (adapted from Vikings)
Irish " "
Welsh " "
Cuman Tribes (replaced Novg) Have Cuman Royal Cavalry as their leader unit
Danishmendid Turks (replaced Burgundy) Use Turk Leaders

I have edited the Heroes.txt file so that Godfrey King of Jerusalem gets his brother Baldwin, and Roger I the Norman Sicilian King has his brother Robert, Bohemond and his nephew Tancred (these are missing and one goes to the Italian faction in the official campaign)

Adding new factions is not too difficult (just use FN_FREE21, FN_FREE22, etc). The problem is that the crusaderunitprod11.txt file will not recognise these new factions. Leaders are assigned to the default unit in the first row, i.e. Scottish Clansmen, so to get around this I swapped this position with Royal Early Knights. With futher editing of the unitprod.txt file I will assign units building reqs to Regions and Cultures so these new factions arent too disadvantaged. The unitprod needs massive work to get the rebellions at a dent level and other changes as made by other mods such as MedMod, I am in the process of doing this and entering in units and buildings for the startpos.txt file. I really dont like they way CA has only 1 or 2 units per region and bugger all buildings, e.g. historically there were churches, monastaries, royal palaces etc, all throughout Europe and much bigger armies than 100 or so, so I will be adding much more units and buildings than there are in the offical campaigns, this should be done and tested within the next few days for a final release of my mod The Eve of the First Crusade. I have tinkered with the Heroes.txt file but do not yet fully understand how the Kings Roman numerals and naming works, through trial and error I have it sorted for this mod.

All of the files need to be copied for the new factions to work (although I suppose you can stick with the official inaccurate Danes and Sicily). This is probably the best way to see how to add a new faction rather than me trying (and probably failing) to explain it in a tutorial. Which is why I am releasing this preliminary working version now. I can be emailed at thomas_norrish@yahoo.com..au or for a modding emergency, phoned (in Australia) on 0404 240 228

Grell aka Thomas Norrish 16 May 2003 Australia.
Grell,

Your mod works fine for a while then crashes to desktop. It is usually during unit building. I completely reinstalled Viking + MTW then added your mod, and am still getting the same issue.

Is it possible that you didn't include a file or something?

[Lord Of Storms]

OK I am done kicking myself, for some reason I did not even think of that I overlooked the obvious I thought new file new structure that cant be it thanks ECS http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif Turbo, I would consider it once I get all my bearings and go over more files as you see it is easy to miss some of the more obvious things
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif , I would not call myself a pioneer , I just want to learn what I can and share it so we can all Mod the game we love so much http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif I am not to proud to ask if I dont know something especially when we have fellows like ECS to help,if we can pick his brain and learn more and faster then I say lets do it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif Lord Krazy has posted a working faction "Munster" and I think he covers the bases more thorughly than I do, he has the knowledge where the flags,shields etc need to be, so I think between all of us especially those that have been following this thread can compile the info for all to see. Thanks to all fellow modders and game lovers I think we will be seeing alot of new Mods real soon, and thanks to ECS for pointing us in the right direction you the man ECS http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif P.S. Turbo, what exactly are you having trouble with?

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Turbo @ May 16 2003,10:02)][

Adding new factions is not too difficult (just use FN_FREE21, FN_FREE22, etc). The problem is that the crusaderunitprod11.txt file will not recognise these new factions. Leaders are assigned to the default unit in the first row, i.e. Scottish Clansmen, so to get around this I swapped this position with Royal Early Knights. With futher editing of the unitprod.txt file I will assign units building reqs to Regions and Cultures so these new factions arent too disadvantaged. The unitprod needs massive work to get the rebellions at a dent level and other changes as made by other mods such as MedMod, I am in the process of doing this and entering in units and buildings for the startpos.txt file. I really dont like they way CA has only 1 or 2 units per region and bugger all buildings, e.g. historically there were churches, monastaries, royal palaces etc, all throughout Europe and much bigger armies than 100 or so, so I will be adding much more units and buildings than there are in the offical campaigns, this should be done and tested within the next few days for a final release of my mod The Eve of the First Crusade. I have tinkered with the Heroes.txt file but do not yet fully understand how the Kings Roman numerals and naming works, through trial and error I have it sorted for this mod.

All of the files need to be copied for the new factions to work (although I suppose you can stick with the official inaccurate Danes and Sicily). This is probably the best way to see how to add a new faction rather than me trying (and probably failing) to explain it in a tutorial. Which is why I am releasing this preliminary working version now. I can be emailed at thomas_norrish@yahoo.com..au or for a modding emergency, phoned (in Australia) on 0404 240 228

Grell aka Thomas Norrish 16 May 2003 Australia.
Grell,

Your mod works fine for a while then crashes to desktop. It is usually during unit building. I completely reinstalled Viking + MTW then added your mod, and am still getting the same issue.

Is it possible that you didn't include a file or something?[/quote]
Turbo, If you look closely at the post Grell states he did nothing to edit the unit prod files so most likely the cause of the problems,is he did not add his factions to the prod files. You should make copies of the prod 11 and 13 files to work in, then you must declare them(For Viking only) in your mod txt file for them to work properly. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ May 16 2003,10:17)]
Quote[/b] (Turbo @ May 16 2003,10:02)][

Adding new factions is not too difficult (just use FN_FREE21, FN_FREE22, etc). The problem is that the crusaderunitprod11.txt file will not recognise these new factions. Leaders are assigned to the default unit in the first row, i.e. Scottish Clansmen, so to get around this I swapped this position with Royal Early Knights. With futher editing of the unitprod.txt file I will assign units building reqs to Regions and Cultures so these new factions arent too disadvantaged. The unitprod needs massive work to get the rebellions at a dent level and other changes as made by other mods such as MedMod, I am in the process of doing this and entering in units and buildings for the startpos.txt file. I really dont like they way CA has only 1 or 2 units per region and bugger all buildings, e.g. historically there were churches, monastaries, royal palaces etc, all throughout Europe and much bigger armies than 100 or so, so I will be adding much more units and buildings than there are in the offical campaigns, this should be done and tested within the next few days for a final release of my mod The Eve of the First Crusade. I have tinkered with the Heroes.txt file but do not yet fully understand how the Kings Roman numerals and naming works, through trial and error I have it sorted for this mod.

All of the files need to be copied for the new factions to work (although I suppose you can stick with the official inaccurate Danes and Sicily). This is probably the best way to see how to add a new faction rather than me trying (and probably failing) to explain it in a tutorial. Which is why I am releasing this preliminary working version now. I can be emailed at thomas_norrish@yahoo.com..au or for a modding emergency, phoned (in Australia) on 0404 240 228

Grell aka Thomas Norrish 16 May 2003 Australia.
Grell,

Your mod works fine for a while then crashes to desktop. It is usually during unit building. I completely reinstalled Viking + MTW then added your mod, and am still getting the same issue.

Is it possible that you didn't include a file or something?
Turbo, If you look closely at the post Grell states he did nothing to edit the unit prod files so that is most likely the cause of the problems, You should make copies of the prod 11 and 13 files to work in then you must declare them in your mod txt file for them to work properly. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif[/QUOTE]
Ah, yes you are right. Thanks.

[Grell]

THanks for pointing this out I had no idea that all other campaigns in the startpos folder must also contain the same FN refernce entries for the unit prod file.

Also please hold off on installing my mod, it still needs a lot of work, but feel free to use my new graphics files in the .zip file, or are they corrupted as well?

OK hit a major obstacle to adding new factions:

Battles with new faction slots crash 80% of the time

Is this a problem with the Musnter new faction?? Will try it now.

I added in the Prebat shield files, which works fine (just copied and renamed existing ones of similar colours to get it going). The pre-battle screen comes up fine for all the new factions. But when the battle is loaded it crashed. So I reswapped Highland clansmen and early royal knights, so far so good the red bar loading battle screen comes up, but then it "usually" crashes for the new factions. I have no idea why sometimes it works but mostly it doesnt. For all of the new factions I added in battle/flags/FN_x.TGA files (again just copying and renaming existing ones) and "factionname_lge.bif" files in campmap/shields/colours. The ones I used from Vikings, ie. Welsh and Scottish work fine, I even assigned the brown and white Picts FLag and colors to Bohemia and about 20% of the time the game loaded up the battle fine (versus Hung, HRE). I have had the Scots (New faction FN_FERE26) fight the Welsh fine, then the follwing turn when the Scots went to fight a battle with the English the game crashed?? battle/FacShield files arent the issue as somethimes a battle will work with exactly the same troops then crash when I reloaded and tried it again. Maybe there is some sort of hardcoded battle settings somewhere that make adding completely new faction entires unstable? Or maybe I was a bit too ambitious by adding 9 new factions, might try getting 1 100% then look at adding more.

[Lord Krazy]

Quote[/b] (Grell @ May 17 2003,00:05)]OK hit a major obstacle to adding new factions:

Battles with new faction slots crash 80% of the time

Is this a problem with the Musnter new faction?? Will try it now.
I think I might have noticed.
I t only crashed once on me.
(before I finished it) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

I will post another with 3 factions added
It is a bit more sorted.

Munster, Connacht and Ulster have been added as factions

I have added some names as an example also.

It work's fine for me so it should work for you.

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Lord Krazy]

http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Mtw_Uploads/MTWbeta/Test_LK_4%20Kings_vi.zip

You can get the 4 kings mod here
if you want to test it.

I only added one name as i could have spent all week end
adding all the names I wanted to.
"Animnua" is the new name.
It means new name in Irish http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

It is the second name in the Irish list.
The first Irish King should have this name.


Quote[/b] ]LOS,

As the official 'pioneer' of adding new factions, would you consider putting together a user guide? Yours is the only new faction that operates flawlessly.


Are you saying mine don't http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

Anyway LOS in between all the other work you do
surly you could fit in the several hours
needed to write a easy to read comprehensive
guide.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

In the mean time read the comments in the
text file you are editing and follow the instructions step by step and you won't need a guide with a bit of luck.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Thanks

Regards

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

Lord Krazy,Anyway LOS in between all the other work you do
surely you could fit in the several hours
needed to write a easy to read comprehensive
guide.
In the mean time read the comments in the
text file you are editing and follow the instructions step by step and you won't need a guide with a bit of luck. Sound advice LK, I think it is to early for any type of guide, as all of us are still "pioneering" the VI file structure and we have enough here courtesy of ECS and those who have posted here in this thread and have gone through trial and error to get a faction started. The important thing is that we can and do share all our findings with each other http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif these are not secrets that only a select few can use this is modding information that we share with fellow modders and for people who are trying modding for the first time, and our goal should be to make it accessible to all who wish to use it. You wont hear me say "only for those who know how" because this forum is for information gathering and sharing and it should be made for all to understand and use. So lets continue to post our trials and erors here, I am not to proud to ask something if I dont know it and I know someone else does hey I am asking http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif Regards to all http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Lord Krazy @ May 17 2003,09:34)]http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Mtw_Uploads/MTWbeta/Test_LK_4%20Kings_vi.zip

You can get the 4 kings mod here
if you want to test it.

I only added one name as i could have spent all week end
adding all the names I wanted to.
"Animnua" is the new name.
It means new name in Irish http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

It is the second name in the Irish list.
The first Irish King should have this name.


Quote[/b] ]LOS,

As the official 'pioneer' of adding new factions, would you consider putting together a user guide? Yours is the only new faction that operates flawlessly.


Are you saying mine don't http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

Anyway LOS in between all the other work you do
surly you could fit in the several hours
needed to write a easy to read comprehensive
guide.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

In the mean time read the comments in the
text file you are editing and follow the instructions step by step and you won't need a guide with a bit of luck.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Thanks

Regards

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif
Have you had any success adding a faction to the Medieval game? I successfully added a faction to the Viking game, but the Medieval part is majorly more difficult. Initially I thought this would be a breeze, but with the different file locations it is a nightmare. Also, in the Medieval game some units (feudal sergents, etc) have individual shields for battle.

After 5 hours today, and every error and lockup imaginable, I have thrown in the towel. I am a casual modder, and the complexity of modding the Medieval game is beyond me.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I have put 6 factions into early. Irish,welsh,scots,croatians,Portuguese and Wallachians. They come up fine and training the units are fine but with certain units when it comes time for a battle,it crashes to desktop.
I have been through the crusader unit files and assigned units to various factions. This seems quite irratic though as gallowglasses work in battle for the irish but kerns don't. Can anyone help me out?

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Perhaps adding a faction (bug free) to the main game is harder than adding one to VI? However, I tried to put the Danes in 'Vikings', and although I did, it crashes while the main game loads up. I had a similar problem with the factions I put in early but really can't see what I've done wrong with this time. But I assigned the Viking units to them and they ALL work fine in custom battles. If I could just get it to work I feel there would be no problems with it at all.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Turbo that ia much like me only I haven't given up yet - I just hven't changed my mod much since I last posted. In fact I am still down with the same problem it is only I haven't had proper time to get into it - I know I need atleast a 2 hour break and probably lots more... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Bohemia that is all I would like to do - get a faction to work in MP (custom battles.) Hmmm. Will have a look soon if I get chance.

[Emp. Conralius]

Quick question:

Where do need to go to change the actual weapons that units use on the 3-d battlefield?

for example:

Instead being equipped with a broadsword, I'de want the FMAA to have a axe.


could someone take me through the process

I know this is a little OT.

[Lord Krazy]

Quote[/b] (Emp. Conralius @ May 18 2003,15:36)]Quick question:

Where do need to go to change the actual weapons that units use on the 3-d battlefield?

for example:

Instead being equipped with a broadsword, I'de want the FMAA to have a axe.


could someone take me through the process

I know this is a little OT.
That is covered in Wellington's animation guide.

The files you are looking for are in

The Textures\men\ folder.


Now FMAA are sprites in the ChainHlm.bif (..._H.bif)
the weapon they use must be present on the same bif file.
The only axe on the ChainHlm.bif is the one the
Ottoman Heavy Inafantry use.
So if that won't do you will need to add one.


Read Welly's guide , once or twice.
If you have any probs after that let me know.


BTW it's a different topic. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

LK

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

I just spent 1 hour looking at how to do that and writing a reply to this. And then I lose my post 'cos of some stoopid server problems

Anyhow. I DID spend 1 hour finding and explaining that an axe would be difficult to add because it is not in the .lbm file, and explained how you might go about adding one. Plus that part is not in the guide I don't think.

However, I don't think I can do it all again. Maybe tommorrow. Sorry...


Well guys, back "on" topic. I managed to sort my Vik's out succesfully thanks for the help. I managed to find something I had missed (declaring the faction in High era) which took long enough to find

Also, I think I now understand all the numbers following the SetFactionLeader:: with the exception of the first number. Until now I didn't understand any of them which is why I kept getting errors on my King name I think.

But - if ECS is here - can he tell me what the first number represents? It is usually a 0 for all factions in Early, except the Burgundians have a 1 - not sre what the effect of this is though?

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Could you please tell me what the numbers represent for setfactionleader?

[Grell]

That first number (i.e. 0 for all other but 1 for Burg) corresponds with each factions list of kings in the Heroes.txt file in cmapmap/names. Not entirly sure what the other numbers are but I noticed that the second number is the number of remaining numbers in the sequence, e.g. 0 1 1 or 0 4 1111, or 0 2 11, or 0 8 33333333,. etc Also the third number will give the roman numeral for the starting King but this is cross referenced with th Heroes file in a manner I havent beaing able to work out.

[Grell]

OK to get the thread back on track:

Why is it that in battles only some units for new factions will cause a crash??

I reistalled VIkings and just added in one new faction in the Early campaign in slot FN_FREE21 the Scots. Everything works fine and decalring the new factions in the other High.txt and Late.txt startpos campaigns allows untiprod.txt to recognise the new FN_FREE21 entries. BUT when there is any other unit of this new faction involved in a battle besides Royal Knights the game crashes after the red bar on the battle load screen gets to about 20%. At first I thought maybe it was a facshield problem, so I tried a battle with only 1 other unit which doesnt use a facshield and it crashed, then I thought it could be a problem with banners besides the leaders or Kings square one, but it worked OK with a battle involving 2 units of Royal Knights, but having a battle with only 1 unit of peasants causes the game to crash?? I even re-tried it with FN_FREE21s leader as Highland clansmen thinking that maybe non-leader units caused the crash, but this also caused it to crash. Maybe one of the games programmers has an answer to why this is the case, I am stumped and at this stage have a campaign with 9 new factions working perfectly fine but have to use the autocalc to resolve battles against the new factions and it also means that I cannot play the new factions myslef and have battles (without using the auto resolve every time).

If a prgorammer from CA can tell me why this is the case I would be very grateful.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Grell the numbers after it represent how many Kings of a name have been previously. The number ties into the King names. Usually there are 8 Kings so you would get 8 numbers, except that 0's are left blank.

The third number gives the Roman numeral for the starting King because all factions use their first King name as their starting King.

*edit* Will add example to explain better.

Papal States(Early) have
FN_PAPIST 0 8 2 1 8 20 2 1 2 7

2nd number represents the number of names that the Papists use for Popes. This is also in the default_heroes.txt
3rd-10th numbers represent each of these 8 names by showing how many Popes of this name have ruled previously. So the next Pope Gregory (last Pope name) is assigned Roman Numeral 8 IIX.

When a faction just has 0 0 the factions is said to have had no previous Kings - the 0's for each name are left out.

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Grell @ May 18 2003,21:07)]OK to get the thread back on track:

Why is it that in battles only some units for new factions will cause a crash??

I reistalled VIkings and just added in one new faction in the Early campaign in slot FN_FREE21 the Scots. Everything works fine and decalring the new factions in the other High.txt and Late.txt startpos campaigns allows untiprod.txt to recognise the new FN_FREE21 entries. BUT when there is any other unit of this new faction involved in a battle besides Royal Knights the game crashes after the red bar on the battle load screen gets to about 20%. At first I thought maybe it was a facshield problem, so I tried a battle with only 1 other unit which doesnt use a facshield and it crashed, then I thought it could be a problem with banners besides the leaders or Kings square one, but it worked OK with a battle involving 2 units of Royal Knights, but having a battle with only 1 unit of peasants causes the game to crash?? I even re-tried it with FN_FREE21s leader as Highland clansmen thinking that maybe non-leader units caused the crash, but this also caused it to crash. Maybe one of the games programmers has an answer to why this is the case, I am stumped and at this stage have a campaign with 9 new factions working perfectly fine but have to use the autocalc to resolve battles against the new factions and it also means that I cannot play the new factions myslef and have battles (without using the auto resolve every time).

If a prgorammer from CA can tell me why this is the case I would be very grateful.
Grell, did you make any changes to any of the unit stats in the Prod 11 files? I am curious because in the VIKINGS txt file you can declare (point to) the prod files that startpos will use.But in the early,high,late txts you do not have that option so if you make changes to the units in the original prod 11 files you might need to do it in the vikikngs prod 11 file also if it reads both files (a guess on my part) and theres a diffrence in the units stats between the prod files that might cause the crash, now mind you this is just a speculation on my part, but it cant hurt to check into it. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I didn't make any changes to the unitprod LOS and I'm having EXACTLY the same problem as Grell. Some units will work, some won't. I made it so that the Irish could train Gallowglasses and Kerns. Gallowglasses work in battle but Kerns don't, and I didn't make any changes to the stats of either. It's the same story for various other units for other factions. BTW, I have since added 4 more factions: Armenians, Serbians, Bohemians and Lithuanians. Thanks for the flags Grell, very helpful.

Also, has anyone tried adding a Pagan faction to either the Viking or main game? I can't get it to work. That was the reason why the Danes weren't working in the Vikings game. I changed it to Catholic and it worked like a charm. The same happened with the Lithuanians, so I had to change them to Orthodox. Has anyone else noticed this, and could you tell me where I'm going wrong?

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

The Vik's I added to Early are Pagan. I have no problems with them. Syntax aside, the main thing to look out for are the units/buildings you place in their provinces. Make sure you don't have a Catholic/Orthodox unit/building in their province(s).

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Grell @ May 18 2003,21:07)]OK to get the thread back on track:

Why is it that in battles only some units for new factions will cause a crash??

I reistalled VIkings and just added in one new faction in the Early campaign in slot FN_FREE21 the Scots. Everything works fine and decalring the new factions in the other High.txt and Late.txt startpos campaigns allows untiprod.txt to recognise the new FN_FREE21 entries. BUT when there is any other unit of this new faction involved in a battle besides Royal Knights the game crashes after the red bar on the battle load screen gets to about 20%. At first I thought maybe it was a facshield problem, so I tried a battle with only 1 other unit which doesnt use a facshield and it crashed, then I thought it could be a problem with banners besides the leaders or Kings square one, but it worked OK with a battle involving 2 units of Royal Knights, but having a battle with only 1 unit of peasants causes the game to crash?? I even re-tried it with FN_FREE21s leader as Highland clansmen thinking that maybe non-leader units caused the crash, but this also caused it to crash. Maybe one of the games programmers has an answer to why this is the case, I am stumped and at this stage have a campaign with 9 new factions working perfectly fine but have to use the autocalc to resolve battles against the new factions and it also means that I cannot play the new factions myslef and have battles (without using the auto resolve every time).

If a prgorammer from CA can tell me why this is the case I would be very grateful.
Grell,

Did you change the unit shields in the Facshields directory off of the battle directory? Some units in there have unit shields.

Also, in the MTW game there are 2 text files in the LOC, the default text and the individual campaign default text files.

Thanks by the way for making the effort. I enjoyed Vikings but the "real" game for me remains the Medieval campaign.

[Gregoshi]

Stavka in the Entrance Hall responds to this topic:

-----

Quote[/b] ]Grell, did you make any changes to any of the unit stats in the Prod 11 files? I am curious because in the VIKINGS txt file you can declare (point to) the prod files that startpos will use.But in the early,high,late txts you do not have that option so if you make changes to the units in the original prod 11 files you might need to do it in the vikikngs prod 11 file also if it reads both files (a guess on my part) and theres a diffrence in the units stats between the prod files that might cause the crash, now mind you this is just a speculation on my part, but it cant hurt to check into it.



The unit and building prod-files are declarable also in the early, high and late files. And location of map-textures and such. It's just that the original files don't include the comments... I think that all the startpos-files are treated the same way (it wouldn't make sense otherwise), so what's declarable in one of them is also declarable in all.

The Early, High, and Late campaigns are actually completely separate, but they all point to the same unit and prod files and maps and so on. So there's no need to edit all of them for for an Early-based campaign.

This way it's much easier to use mods and still have the original files untouched. All relevant files can have different names from the originals. Except for the files in loc\Eng, it seems.

Also, I have been able to do custom battles with all units from new factions. It was after editing the file d.txt in battle\FacShield\Hires. I noticed that all the included units already worked fine, so I just added new ones and after that they worked too. But still it doesn't seem to work in campaign mode.
-----

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

IIRC there was a list posted by one of the CA team that included all the possible commands/comments that could be add... is that list still around? It may have been for MTW though and might need changing/updating...

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Link to FAQ thread (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=3160;st=25)

This may be useful. If ECS can add anymore new commands that were put in for VI (please) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I admit I haven't assigned Hires and Lores shields for my new factions but why would that make a difference to someone like Kerns, for example? They don't come under that bracket, do they?

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] (Gregoshi @ May 19 2003,21:32)]Stavka in the Entrance Hall responds to this topic:

-----

Quote[/b] ]Grell, did you make any changes to any of the unit stats in the Prod 11 files? I am curious because in the VIKINGS txt file you can declare (point to) the prod files that startpos will use.But in the early,high,late txts you do not have that option so if you make changes to the units in the original prod 11 files you might need to do it in the vikikngs prod 11 file also if it reads both files (a guess on my part) and theres a diffrence in the units stats between the prod files that might cause the crash, now mind you this is just a speculation on my part, but it cant hurt to check into it.



The unit and building prod-files are declarable also in the early, high and late files. And location of map-textures and such. It's just that the original files don't include the comments... I think that all the startpos-files are treated the same way (it wouldn't make sense otherwise), so what's declarable in one of them is also declarable in all.

The Early, High, and Late campaigns are actually completely separate, but they all point to the same unit and prod files and maps and so on. So there's no need to edit all of them for for an Early-based campaign.

This way it's much easier to use mods and still have the original files untouched. All relevant files can have different names from the originals. Except for the files in loc\Eng, it seems.

Also, I have been able to do custom battles with all units from new factions. It was after editing the file d.txt in battle\FacShield\Hires. I noticed that all the included units already worked fine, so I just added new ones and after that they worked too. But still it doesn't seem to work in campaign mode.
-----
This heading appears in the Vikings startpos file.../production files to be used for this
//startpos
//=======================================
//NOTES
// ProdFile - allows you to specify the production files for this startpos
// usage: Prodfile::
// where = UNITPROD or BUILDINGPROD
// = name of prod file, including file extension.
// example:
// Prodfiles:: UNITPROD "TargetsUnits.txt" BUILDINGPROD "TargetsBuildings.txt"
//
//all Prodfiles must be stored in the Medieval root folder

Prodfiles:: UNITPROD "vikings_unit_prod.txt" BUILDINGPROD "vikings_build_prod.txt"........ and is self explanatory, it allows you to declare the unit prod and build prod files to be used with the startpos, if you are making a mod you would copy both unit and build prod and declare them here and that is what you make your changes in leaving the originals intact. Now Vikings has its own unit and build prod that are seprerate from the early, high, late , and if you can use the declare prodfile function remains to be seen, If you could it does not make sense that the heading would be left out entirely, in fact if you look at the structure of all the era files early,high, late they all seem to be structured diffrently, why I do not know. The point I was trying to make is that you might want to edit the VIKINGS prod file to match the changes you make in the MTW prod file when adding a new faction this was entirely speculative and just an experiment it is something modders do when confronted with a dilemma you try things you think might work and if that dont work you try something else until it does work, how many modders have just experimented to see if something works most likely all of us, its trial and error thats how alot of the things we are able to do today came about Now this issue with changing all the era files to match the modded one is new to me but if it works then do it just back up the original files its a basic modding rule As to why you all are experiencing crashes in campaign mode is something we will figure out eventually , with info from guys like ECS and others and also the trial and error if we dont try it we dont know if it will work or not we dont have a modding manual to go by just the info we share with each other, so telling us something will or wont work if you dont have the solution for the problem doesnt really help.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ May 20 2003,09:54)]
Quote[/b] (Gregoshi @ May 19 2003,21:32)]Stavka in the Entrance Hall responds to this topic:

-----

Quote[/b] ]Grell, did you make any changes to any of the unit stats in the Prod 11 files? I am curious because in the VIKINGS txt file you can declare (point to) the prod files that startpos will use.But in the early,high,late txts you do not have that option so if you make changes to the units in the original prod 11 files you might need to do it in the vikikngs prod 11 file also if it reads both files (a guess on my part) and theres a diffrence in the units stats between the prod files that might cause the crash, now mind you this is just a speculation on my part, but it cant hurt to check into it.



The unit and building prod-files are declarable also in the early, high and late files. And location of map-textures and such. It's just that the original files don't include the comments... I think that all the startpos-files are treated the same way (it wouldn't make sense otherwise), so what's declarable in one of them is also declarable in all.

The Early, High, and Late campaigns are actually completely separate, but they all point to the same unit and prod files and maps and so on. So there's no need to edit all of them for for an Early-based campaign.

This way it's much easier to use mods and still have the original files untouched. All relevant files can have different names from the originals. Except for the files in loc\Eng, it seems.

Also, I have been able to do custom battles with all units from new factions. It was after editing the file d.txt in battle\FacShield\Hires. I noticed that all the included units already worked fine, so I just added new ones and after that they worked too. But still it doesn't seem to work in campaign mode.
-----
This heading appears in the Vikings startpos file.../production files to be used for this
//startpos
//=======================================
//NOTES
// ProdFile - allows you to specify the production files for this startpos
// usage: Prodfile::
// where = UNITPROD or BUILDINGPROD
// = name of prod file, including file extension.
// example:
// Prodfiles:: UNITPROD "TargetsUnits.txt" BUILDINGPROD "TargetsBuildings.txt"
//
//all Prodfiles must be stored in the Medieval root folder

Prodfiles:: UNITPROD "vikings_unit_prod.txt" BUILDINGPROD "vikings_build_prod.txt"........ and is self explanatory, it allows you to declare the unit prod and build prod files to be used with the startpos, if you are making a mod you would copy both unit and build prod and declare them here and that is what you make your changes in leaving the originals intact. Now Vikings has its own unit and build prod that are seprerate from the early, high, late , and if you can use the declare prodfile function remains to be seen, If you could it does not make sense that the heading would be left out entirely, in fact if you look at the structure of all the era files early,high, late they all seem to be structured diffrently, why I do not know. The point I was trying to make is that you might want to edit the VIKINGS prod file to match the changes you make in the MTW prod file when adding a new faction this was entirely speculative and just an experiment it is something modders do when confronted with a dilemma you try things you think might work and if that dont work you try something else until it does work, how many modders have just experimented to see if something works most likely all of us, its trial and error thats how alot of the things we are able to do today came about Now this issue with changing all the era files to match the modded one is new to me but if it works then do it just back up the original files its a basic modding rule As to why you all are experiencing crashes in campaign mode is something we will figure out eventually , with info from guys like ECS and others and also the trial and error if we dont try it we dont know if it will work or not we dont have a modding manual to go by just the info we share with each other, so telling us something will or wont work if you dont have the solution for the problem doesnt really help.
LOS,

I was able like you to create a new faction that runs fine on Viking. Viking however uses new units and disabled the build on many traditional units and buildings. I suspect that the bugs that prevented the creation of a new faction in MTW were carried over to this version.

There was plenty of loose talk months ago about a "should be able to" talk about adding factions. Theory is a world of difference from reality. Personally, I have may doubts that it is possible. I hope someone proves me wrong, but no one has yet..

[Gregoshi]

Another reply from Stavka in the Entrance Hall:

-----

Quote[/b] ]I admit I haven't assigned Hires and Lores shields for my new factions but why would that make a difference to someone like Kerns, for example? They don't come under that bracket, do they?

I don't bother with the shields themselves, I just edited the d.txt file in the Hires direcotry. The file's just a list of unit names. And for whatever reason, units that I added to that list worked fine for me in custom battles with new factions. I have no clue whatsoever why this works. Tried and tested it a few times now. Unit not in list does not work until added. Really strange, I know...
-----

[Grell]

The FacShield entires are not the problem as I have added in new faccheilds (both hi res and low res for the new faction I was testing) and as The Blind King of Bohemia pointed out Kerns dont even use facshields and crash.

Also to answer the Pagan question, in the Early campaign you can do what I did set the CULTURE to Orthodox (or Cath) and the RELIGION to Paga and it works fine, they dont have to be the same. PAGAN culture in the normal campaigns is the Mongols. I have also had catholic culture faction with heretic religion (I was doing an Algibesian crusdae mod but abadoned it).

Still no answer/fix to the weird unit Battle crash??

I am playing the new factions but resorting to selecting auto calculate battle when they are involced in a battle with me (I will release a final version of my mod when (if?) this problemn is sortred)

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Thanks for the tip on religions. I can do Bohemians properly now in late as Heretics.

Still no joy with thr units, BTW.

[Lord Of Storms]

Quote[/b] ]Hi all,

I finally got the VI and spent most of the weekend with the unit production files from CA. (For some reason they don’t work for me at all so some modifications are needed for the quotes and to incorporate all the new features I have created over the past 3 months that I deal with them like boat power calculation, new weapons … etc.)

Some things that I found.
1. A unit appearing in both files should have the same stats in both of them Else that game crashes. So I have built both the Viking and the normal Crusaders files This was taken from a post here in the Dungeon by Komninosit seems he tried what I had speculated on( a few posts ago) about the prod files in VI if you make a chnage to a unit in the prod 11 files you must do it in both of the prod 11 files or else it crashes so double check the units entries in both files and see if they match up that MIGHT be where the problem lies. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I know I might be getting a bit carried away, but has anyone tried adding the eleventh and apparently final new faction into Medieval? I tried to add the Almoravids in Morocco and Southern Spain (want to get Sahara working also) but the game didn't come on. I looked for errors but there were none, and there was nothing I did wrong. Maybe 10 is in fact the limit, not 11. Can anyone expand more light on this?

Also, would it be possible to get the huge unplayable landmass Francaland working in the Viking game? I know someone got Sahara working so it mightn't be impossible. Maybe the Bretons could go there or even the Normans if you want to re-create the Norman COnquest.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Grell @ May 20 2003,21:12)]The FacShield entires are not the problem as I have added in new faccheilds (both hi res and low res for the new faction I was testing) and as The Blind King of Bohemia pointed out Kerns dont even use facshields and crash.

Also to answer the Pagan question, in the Early campaign you can do what I did set the CULTURE to Orthodox (or Cath) and the RELIGION to Paga and it works fine, they dont have to be the same. PAGAN culture in the normal campaigns is the Mongols. I have also had catholic culture faction with heretic religion (I was doing an Algibesian crusdae mod but abadoned it).

Still no answer/fix to the weird unit Battle crash??

I am playing the new factions but resorting to selecting auto calculate battle when they are involced in a battle with me (I will release a final version of my mod when (if?) this problemn is sortred)
Grell,

In another message, Giljay has kindly provided his email address to help debug what the problem is. If your MOD is bug free on the strategic map perhaps you could email your mod to him.

I still have desktop crashes (random) during the strategic game, so I think your MOD is further along than mine.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Gregoshi @ May 20 2003,21:08)]Another reply from Stavka in the Entrance Hall:

-----

Quote[/b] ]I admit I haven't assigned Hires and Lores shields for my new factions but why would that make a difference to someone like Kerns, for example? They don't come under that bracket, do they?

I don't bother with the shields themselves, I just edited the d.txt file in the Hires direcotry. The file's just a list of unit names. And for whatever reason, units that I added to that list worked fine for me in custom battles with new factions. I have no clue whatsoever why this works. Tried and tested it a few times now. Unit not in list does not work until added. Really strange, I know...
-----
In another post, Giljay informed me that the Hires and lowres directory and the d.txt were debug files and are not used in the game.

[GreasePaintMonkeyBrains]

Ok well i added the welsh to the high period and it all
works fine in till the battle goes to load up and it getsto about
20% and it crashes to the desktop. i know im gonna repeat
someones post with this problem but i could really use some help. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

regards
Monkey

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Welcome to the club, GPMB. Unfortunately, that's the problem everyone seems to be having. If you come up with a solution, please let us know

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (GreasePaintMonkeyBrains @ May 22 2003,11:51)]Ok well i added the welsh to the high period and it all
works fine in till the battle goes to load up and it getsto about
20% and it crashes to the desktop. i know im gonna repeat
someones post with this problem but i could really use some help. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

regards
Monkey
There is a new post I started that I got a reply from Giljay on regarding new faction creation problems. You shoudl read the posts on it as well.

[GilJaysmith]

Yep. Someone please mail giljaysmith@hotmail.com with the new/changed files which are causing the crash, and we'll run them through the debug build to see what the problem is.

NB it's a bank holiday this Monday in the UK so we won't be in to try it until Tuesday.

[Gregoshi]

Stavka in the Entrance Hall says:

-----

Quote[/b] ]The FacShield entires are not the problem as I have added in new faccheilds (both hi res and low res for the new faction I was testing) and as The Blind King of Bohemia pointed out Kerns dont even use facshields and crash.

Also to answer the Pagan question, in the Early campaign you can do what I did set the CULTURE to Orthodox (or Cath) and the RELIGION to Paga and it works fine, they dont have to be the same. PAGAN culture in the normal campaigns is the Mongols. I have also had catholic culture faction with heretic religion (I was doing an Algibesian crusdae mod but abadoned it).

Still no answer/fix to the weird unit Battle crash??

I am playing the new factions but resorting to selecting auto calculate battle when they are involced in a battle with me (I will release a final version of my mod when (if?) this problemn is sortred)

Just tried adding 12 factions to the Viking startpos file, bringing the total number of factions to 20 (all MAJOR, don't know if it matters). Everything worked fine, campaign battles perfectly... no problems.
So, I added another one, a 21st faction... start up the campaign with them, attack random province, battle starts loading... but crashes, just like when adding a 21st faction to the medieval campaigns.

The game does not simply seem to be able to handle a 21st faction in battles.


About the d.txt: I'm fully aware that most units don't have these shields, and that this file shouldn't matter at all. Don't know if your custom battles work with new factions already, but for me it did not work with units not added to the d.txt. Of this I'm 100% sure. Or perhaps it's completely random and they happened to work after adding them. Not very likely, but I'll test it some more.

And I must repeat: I did not add shields or anything else, I ONLY added unit names in that file. Nothing else.
-----

[Grell]

I can confirm that only 10 new factions will work adding the 11th will always cause a crash.

OK a breakthrough of sorts I have been runing my new mod for quite a while, NEVER ever had a campaign map crash. I have even added/unocked the pagan shrines, added in 3 new agents (Jews, Heretics and Christian Zealots) and heaps more units. I have been playing through as Aragon 3 times (got killed the first 2). Navarre the new faction (in FN_FREE24 slot) I added crashed when it attacked me and the battle map tried to load, later NAvarre conquered Castile and with my allies the Spanish I fought a battle against Navarre, I thought what the hell I will see if it loads and it did?? The battle worked fine but although Navarre had its proper colour as assigned in the Early.txt startpos fiel it had all Spanish flags (a bit confusing but at least the battle worked OK). Later Navarre and ALmhos kicked me out of the game. Turned off the computer and started a new game as Aragon, 10 turns later Navarre attacked me and it had the SPanish battle FLags and shields but still worked fine?? Sweet.

My guess is that somewhere is a temp/or whatever file with the battle graphics data and when you fight a battle with 3 factions (including yourself) somehow the new faction is assigned the missing battle flags/shields of onr of the other factions involved in the battle. So I suppose at this stage I have to start games have a 3 way battles with each of the new factions and everything will be fine (but some battle flags will be mixed up - but I can live with that if it means a crash free game with 10 new factions). Current new factions have:

Baltic Pagans
Cuman Tribes
Navaree
Bohemia
Danishmendid Turks
Kingdom of Jerusalem
Scotland
Wales
Sweden
Flanders

I want to fully test this with all factions some more and then will release my mod in the next week or so.

[Grell]

Oh what I did with Cuman Tribes and Baltic Pagans was replace the Pagan Goden Horde campaign pieces (ie. army leader_moving, etc) with the new Vikigns ones and the new Vikings portrait files, which I must say looks pretty sweet. THe Cumans where after all blonde. Could be a prob when the Horde emerges as blonde Scandanavians (but oh well think of them as Tartars). Having active Pagans, with the viking Pagan Shrines in the main campaign adds a new dynamic to games, Sweden (an added faction) can now crusade against against Finland , whoooh

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Another breakthrough of sorts You can add more than 10 factions, but only in certain periods.

In early for example, it still contains defunct factions like the Russians, Burgundians, Swiss and Golden Horde. Create separate crusader prod files for this and also a faction specific file. You might also want to do a new campmap names file for it. But make sure it is a back up of early and not the proper one.

Next, make sure you get rid of ALL traces of these defunct factions from the relevant files. Get rid of every reference to them in your startpos, crusader prod, campmap names and faction specific files. If you do this correctly, your startpos won't acknowledge them anymore. Now you have the space for new factions in their place, and it doesn't affect the normal startpos as you have used separate files Due to this in early I know have:

Welsh
Irish
Scots
Portuguese
Croatians
Serbians
Wallachians
Armenians
Lithuanians (might get rid of and put in late + high only)
Bohemians
Almoravids
Swedes
Norse

That's 13 new ones, 29 in my 'Super Early' startpos altogether. Once I get rid of the Russians I can put in another one also. This trick probably won't work as well for other startpos as there are more working factions in those periods. But it also means that you can get rid of ones you don't want and also that you can have different ones for different periods. Unfortunately, I'm still having trouble getting the battles to work.

Good news Grell. Are you planning on uploading your mod as I need more shields, and I'm terrible at making them myself. Your previous ones (Bohemia, Danishmed, Jeruslem,etc) were very helpful.

I thought I might add that the names aren't working for my campaign. I am working on this though.

[Turbo]

Grell, Bohemia:

Guys what we need here is for either or both of you to upload your files here even if they are buggy as test type files. We can make much more progress as a group than we can through individual effort.

Has either of you sent Giljay your files? He is another resource that we as a 'group' should be using. I passed on his offer to look at my 'mod' under the assumption that one or both of you were further along than I was and would avail yourselves of his help.

Personally, this is less about the kudos for me than seeing the game evolve further. I hope that everyone else is viewing things the same way.

Thanks

[Invisible Wizard]

Hey guys ,

This thread is great I have learned a lot from it.

Questions for you all and excuse me if this has been covered before somewhere. I have added about five new factions, and edited all their kings and names through the Heroes files. All of my kings have names but some (three of the five) say King Sanchoromannumeral## etc etc. while the other two are fine. I have tried to find what the difference is between the Kings with correct Roman numerals and those without but I have no Idea. Do any of you have a similar problem? Does anyone have a solution? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Also if any of you are interested I have made some bif files for the flags and shields of Portugal, Domains of Pisa, and Venice. If anyone is interested in using them let me know and I will upload them.

IW

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I know your problem. In the startpos file go to 'setstartleader'. FOr the Kings it says 'romanumerals' for, the third number along should say '0'. Now change it to a 1 or 2, depending on what number you want your king to be.

Could you upload those files BTW? I'm always on the lookout for new shields and flags. Thanks.

[Grell]

I have heaps sitting on my hard drive that I havent used yet (i.e. mods I began then abandoned) give me your email and I will send you some).

[Invisible Wizard]

Grell, If you have shields please upload them to the Org. I'd love to see them. I will be uploading my sets for Portugal, Pisa, and Venice Late Tonight. (After Work http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif )

IW

PS. Thanks for the Help Blind King http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

[Grell]

GilJaysmith do you think you could have a look at my mod and come up with any reasons why some battles will crash and others wont. At first I thought it was a facshiled problem (as the new factions i.e. FN_FREE21, etc) lack a hardcoded shield entry, but even units requiring facshields work OK, e.g. feudal men at arms are assigned the dark grey defailt one.

I have just uploaded a file VariousShieldGraphics.jpg, the .jpg format does weird things to tp it so if you want a clear version or .bifs just email me (I have full castleflags, unitshields and menu shields for all of these)

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Grell @ May 28 2003,23:33)]GilJaysmith do you think you could have a look at my mod and come up with any reasons why some battles will crash and others wont. At first I thought it was a facshiled problem (as the new factions i.e. FN_FREE21, etc) lack a hardcoded shield entry, but even units requiring facshields work OK, e.g. feudal men at arms are assigned the dark grey defailt one.

I have just uploaded a file VariousShieldGraphics.jpg, the .jpg format does weird things to tp it so if you want a clear version or .bifs just email me (I have full castleflags, unitshields and menu shields for all of these)
Grell,

Giljay posted his email address on here already. He is expecting one of us to shoot over the mod. Logically, since you are the furthest along, you should do it.

[GilJaysmith]

I went to sleep waiting for the files :) Hurry up and send them to me at giljaysmith@hotmail.com before I die from lack of bamboo...

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Thanks Grell. My e-mail is shagrat60@hotmail.com. The shields/flags/castleflags/prebattlemenu and units will be very helpful.

P.S. If you get a response from GilJay, please tell me where about I'm going wrong

Also, where did you get the reviewpanel pics for the JoanofArc and Heretic agents? I've never seen them before

[Grell]

Giljaysmith, I cant email you them (neither yahoo or hotmail will let me send an attachment that size) could you download it at my site:

http://hstrial-tnorris.homestead.com/first_crusade.html

[GilJaysmith]

I've downloaded it but Sarah and I are decorating at the moment so my home servers are out of action for a while... so I'll look at it at work next week.

[Invisible Wizard]

Hey Grell, downloaded your Mod, and I must say I am very impressed so far, the flags are very professional in quality, much better than my attempts. Do you use a special program to edit them? I just use the Shogun Biff Reader. I tried extracting frames as bmp to work in Photoshop but when I try to import the bmp frame it won't let me save.... hrmmmm.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

I did make one change to your mod. I changed the Prod file names to firstcrusade_unit_prod11 and firstcrusade_build_prod13 and added the line

Prodfiles:: UNITPROD "firstcrusade_unit_prod11.txt" BUILDINGPROD "firstcrusade_build_prod13.txt"

to the Startpos file. That way you don't have to overwrite the original Prod files or change any of the other Startpos files.


http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Thanks for the great Mod

IW

[V'ger]

Hi,

Now that I've beaten my head until it's soft and squishy, would someone please tell me where to find out how to add Glorious Achievements for factions? I've searched and searched these boards and read everything I can find, searched and searched the directories and not found ANYTHING that SETS the goals.

I found the homelands and the text for the special ones, but nothing tieing a faction to a non-homeland goal. I'm very frustrated. Seems like that information should be in this thread or in the FAQ thread and I just missed it somehow. Thanks very much.

[Grell]

V'ger the Glory Goal stuff is hardcoded, but at tleast after the expansion pack when you make Swiss, Novg and the Golden Horde into Major factions they are now given Homeland GGs. Just remember to add a shield into campamp/parchments/glory

Invis_Wiz - Yes good advice about renaming the utinprod file and adding that line into the campaign.txt I am doing this for my next mod.

I make the .bifs by extracting as .bmp and editing/making them in Photoshop (save and loading palettes is a big help). That problem you had with not being able to save bifs with Shogun also suddenly happened to me for no explicable reason. I tried to find any other editor on the net (but with no luck). I found using the older version (rather that 2.2) allowed me to save properly once again - very odd.

[Turbo]

I tried an interesting experiment using the Viking units and adding the medieval regions of europe instead of britain. The result was interesting. You can add factions without any apparent battle crashing. I tried just adding the Templar knights to the viking mix and boom, the game went unstable. Removing the unit, the game runs fine. I noticed some medieval units have faction shields on them, others have the crusader order. I am wondering whether this is perhaps hardcoded and is in by faction? I thought, I was on to something and tried just adding the woodsmen. Doing it brought back the battle crashing. I tried coping the woodsmen file and created a forester unit, adding it toward the end of the data file. This unit works fine. Moving it right after the Highlander unit entry caused the game to start crashing again. WTF?

Very strange...

[Portuguese Rebel]

Quote[/b] (eat cold steel @ May 13 2003,03:50)]GGConquestReward:: FN_new 1.0 plus changing regowner_table to list some homeland for GA goals
Exactly how do we change regowner_table? Im transforming the Araogonese into the portuguese and i would like to set id_portugal as the faction homeland instead of aragon. Does anyone know a way to work with this regowner_table file? It is located in the MTW main directory. It seems pretty confusing. Uptil now i haven't had any luck on this. Can someone help? It is the only thing missing so that i can play the campaing in GA mode.

I can still play GA but i have to atack the spanish or almos to get to aragon for the homeland bonus and its starting to bug me... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[V'ger]

Hi,

Man, I hear you. I ran away screaming after looking at the regowner file for too long.

I'm sure it's occurred to others, since I see someone else trying VI units/factions on the big map, but can we add levels? I was staring at the VI tech chart and, if we could add levels and do a couple of other things, we could have an interesting campaign running from 793 to the current end date in Europe.

IS there anything preventing us from declaring more castles? I.e. past castle 16 (I think it is?) Or reorder the weapon shops so that we have level 1 as the first VI building and then the master shops would be level 5 or 6 buildings?

Unfortunately, I expect that we're stuck with three ages, since the VI campaign only has three (and the first one is 400+ years ... geez.

Anyway, just throwing stuff out there for consideration.

BTW, copying a Russian (or Novgorod) shield over for the GG did the trick. If PSP did Bifs I'd do up a Burgundian shield, but since GGs are broken for them, I suppose it doesn't much matter. Does anyone know of a Bif converter that I could use to translate back and forth into something PSP could use? Thanks, everyone.

[Portuguese Rebel]

Dam regowner file just seems a mess of faction labels and numbers that i don't know what they mean. And the campaing doesn't seem to use the file at all. If you add the line: RegOwnersFile::"regowner_table"

The campaing will bog down and won't start. I believe this is a conflit between the positions stated in regowner_table file and the ones stated in the startpos file.

I have no idea how to edit that mess. The way ECS said it, one would think it was no big deal, i.e. "easy", like adding a new faction...

[eat cold steel]

It's a list of faction_id and points for keeping a region, ordered by era check points then region id. There are 16 check points and the date are hard coded. The first 16 pairs is for region 0, the next 16 pairs are for region 1 and so on. Get a good editor and chop the lot into lines of 16 pairs and you should see what is going on.

[Portuguese Rebel]

Thanks ECS, do you have a sugestion on a good editor? I understood the works but editing as it is... you now, its a real bitch... you have to count a lot to get things done...

[eat cold steel]

Try MS word, first do a search for ',' and replace with ',^t' then change the tab size to something big like 5 cm and mess with page width and you should be able to get the thing to line up a couple of entry per line. That should at least make counting easier.

[Portuguese Rebel]

Hmmm i've done some experimenting, and it seems that everytime i add the regownersfile::"whatever" command the campaing won't start. And this even with the original regowner_table file. Any idea of whats wrong?

[Portuguese Rebel]

The regownersfile:: command is NOT required and, to the best of my knowlage, not working. The game will use the regowner_table file for information for homelands. Thanks to ECS help i've done it. I can play the portuguese WITH GA... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Once you know the way around that file things get pretty easy. I would post my mod here at the org, but i'm afraid that my artwork in the shields and flags isn't good enough http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif for other people, generally speaking. But if some portuguese (or otherwise) dude out there wants it really bad and doesn't mind to look at some near ugly flags and shields in the campaing map you can send mail to nuno_pedro@yahoo.com and ask me for it. Just dont tell me i didn't warn you though. By the way, im using D.Henrique's côte D'arms in my mod (its a mod for early and this was the simbol at the time).

[Grell]

Whoa this is brilliant, thanks ECS. I used WordPar and as ECS suggested did a replace all "," (commas) with 10 spaces and then windowed wordpad narrowing in the horizontal window frame until there was one entry per line. Easy enough to see who owns what by cross-referencing it with the "DeclareLandRegion" in the startpos files, I have them both on screen at once windowed. This is going to make modding so much better. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Ah - I have a problem with the RSW .bif reader.... well two problems actually.

The first is the mot annoying. I can't save anything with it. Everytime I click to save, or save as, it does nothing. I spent 1hr+ working on an image and then saved, quit the program, then noticed the save hadn't worked. Tried to save again and save as new file but no luck...

The other problem is the palettes. I've not been editing the pictures in the reader, but importing bitmaps. Maybe that is why they don't save? Anyhow, when I import the bmp the palette is all wrong and I have to take ages manually putting the palette accross.

Is this a simple case of a bad download? Are others having these problems?

Tell me there's an easier way

[MR EGG]

I had this problem with biff reader 2.2 so i went back to 2.1 and it imports bmp's and saves as biff's fine. what graphics prog are you using,Adobe photoshop etc?

[Grell]

I also had this probelm with 2.2 and went back to 2.1.

When importing bmp files I have found it worls much better if you find an exisiting bif file with similar colours, extract it and in Paint Shop save its colour palette, then load that colour palette into your own bmp BEFORE importing your own bmp. Creating new bifs and you own colour palettes does strange things - using exisiting ones can sometimes be limiting but I have always found one close enough. Hope this makes sense http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

It does thanks guys.

I'm using PSP as the editor, but the images are imported from various sites and most are very different in colours.

Actually, this I hope is part of a mod I'm doing which will override all the factions - when/if I have the patience/time/effort to do it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Plus some recent events might effect this mod in a bad way.

[flip]

Saving bifs with 2.2 Bif Reader:

the file you save goes, dont know why, inside the bmp that you imported.save with whatever name.go to the bmp in question and change the extension bmp to bif. Bizarre, but it works.It may be important to create a copy of the same bmp before saving.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Ah ha

That also explains why my bmp's no longer work Thank you Flip

Wow that is very good to know http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Remind me to buy you a beer (or other drink) next I see you http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Ah and better still I hit another stroke of luck http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

If you creat a new bif the right dimensions/frames for what you want, when you import the bmp it imports the palette too. Before, I was importing them into the same bif template, which kept its palette.

Damn all that trouble for nothing http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

*stumbles along making foolish mod*

[Grell]

Are you sure it imports the palette, I just tried it and when I tested the bif it screwed up the colours and went greeny/bluey as it has always done when not using an exisitng template (i.e. official bif which came with the game).

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

(from memory - not at home)

What I did was edit the SHLD files. First opened up the reader then went into new file. IIRC the dimensions for them are 34*57? Plus also needs 3 frames.
All I did next was to import the bmp and the palette loaded also. Then save this and (thanks to Flip) change the bmp file you imported to bif. After you save, if you want to edit another you have to create a new bif again and do the same over again.

One thing to note, for all 3 frames I've only used 1 bmp. If I used more they would all be using the same palette and I'd be running out of colours in some cases.

Also, remember that the First and Last colours in the palette CANNOT be changed because these are required by the game. The first should be green, the last is required to represent the other colours (explained in the 2.1 readme.)

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

One thing I'd love to be able to do is make flags, shields, castleflags and uniticons bifs. I have PSP5 but haven't used it. When people talk about importing and extracting I've no idea. I want to be able to take the template of a shield (the shape) and draw something new inside it. People like Grell have made fantastic shields but I want to make some new ones also. I've seen two bif readers. One seems to have more options (file is on this one) but the palette seems difficult to work with. The other one (which I use when editing colours) seems very basic but it's easier to change the colours for each square. Could someone give me a guide on how to make new bifs and make them look like the ones in the game, i.e. have the same shield/flag/icon template? It only has to be short so long as I get the jist of it. Thanks in advance.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (GilJaysmith @ June 01 2003,04:21)]I've downloaded it but Sarah and I are decorating at the moment so my home servers are out of action for a while... so I'll look at it at work next week.
Gil,

It will be interesting to see what you come with. Concensus here is that the problem resides with the shields and hardcoding.

[MiniKiller]

Couldn't go through all 7 pages, to tires, so have you been able to get more factions? Would be cool to see all land owned by a faction however small

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

MiniKiller: simple answer is yes http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif


To all: Looks like that problem with the palette's still exists. I managed to get all the bmp's done for 14 new factions... but it took me hours of work to manually input the palettes for each bmp/bif conversion http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

I've noticed a couple of things, the Red value is always correct, it is only the Blue and Green ones that don't seem to be read properly - and this isn't always the case. Sometimes the colour is loaded fine, other times Blue, Green or both these two have the wrong values. There seems to be a trend to the wrong values but I don't see it - perhaps writing them down... but hell that'd take too long.

Other than that, all is going well - just FacShields to do which aren't bif thank god http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[MiniKiller]

Sweet Could someone post some pics? maybe of..the map, a battle the kings etc? thanks

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Download some of the mods around here. Not sure exactly which ones though... I think most add new factions.

The Kekvit mod doesn't though, this add's new units - but you still should check it out... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[MiniKiller]

What I'm looking for is real factions of the time with their own units, or own versions u know? But nothing else, no changes to the game itself you know?

[pyhhricvictory]

Has the CTD problem in battles been fixed yet? I am stuck on my own mod with getting the battles with created factions woprking in SP. MP I get fine battles, but not the SP. Any help at all will be appreciated.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

I think that was a problem with the faction colours, the game seems to ind it difficult if you try using new colours schemes (definded in the startpos line SetFactionColour.) Try using colours that are already in the game but mix them up a little bit.

[Grell]

No its nothing to do with the fation colours (at least not in the SP campaign). I am positive it is a facshield problem. My new Carolingian Mod has 10 new factions working fine with no battle CTD as the new factions use untis which either dont require facshields or for some bizarre reason have units which do but remain stable. i.e. experimenting has shown High Royal Knights cause a CTD but Late Royal Knights are OK. Anyway my mod is all done but i am working on a few balancing issues to stop the development of super factions which after 100 years dominate too much. For now its Egypt and GHRE. I will be releasing this for testing once i have fully tested it myself

[pyhhricvictory]

Thanks Everyone. Grell, I am looking forward to seeing your mod. Sounds Great

[Gregoshi]

New patron Lysander provided the following (new?) information on this issue in the Entrance Hall:

-----

ok, I have been having a lot of trouble adding a new faction (e.g., FN_FREE21 //Welsh )without a game crash; however, I have figured out the secret to this miserable little task...

Now, the problem was that game crashes occured as the newly defined faction left the campaign map for the battle map--oddly this crash would only occur with certain units (e.g., peasants, highland clansmen, kerns, etc.). I discovered that only those units which were culled from texture folders associated with face-shields caused the crash. Units drawn from texture folders which are not associated with face-shields (e.g., archers--which use the texture folder "Pestunic")do not cause a battle crash. Therefore newly defined factions, such as FN_FREE21 //WELSH, cannot utilize units which are drawn from the following bif texture folders, as they are associated with face-shields:
"Peasant"
"ChainHlm"
"HlPlArSH"
"LArmWCav"
"MKnight"
"MSHelm"
"PlateS"
Since Mtw/Vi can utilize 10 new customizable bif folders, the above texture folders can be copied and renamed "Custom0" through "Custom6" respectively--just make sure the bif images inside the folders are also renamed (e.g., Custom0_H.bif to replace Peasant_H.bif, etc.). After this, one only needs to open the CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11 file and change the texture body type (e.g., from "Peasant" to "Custom0") for each unit that used the troublesome textures. Now new factions can use all available units without experiencing a crash-to-desktop on the battle map--although face-shields will not be used in the game.
Yet, if one wishes to retain face-shields in the game then only those units which specificaly use face-shields should be drawn from the old texture folders and used only by the original factions. New factions must be denied access to those specific units. This is easily done if new factions are muslim or pagan, however loyalist revolts might unexpectedly add such units as feudal-men-at-arms or feudal sergeants to newly added catholic factions--therefore care must be taken if face-shields are included in a game with new factions.

Well, this system has worked well for me and as of this moment I have built a grand Welsh kingdom stretching across much of Europe. I have fought all the battles myself, and, although not all have been victories, I have yet to experiance a game crash.
I hope this information can be of help to those intrested.

-----

[komninos]

I am posting this here just in case anyone of you has seen this behavior and has an answer to it. It is also posted at ODD game crush … but I did not have much response.

I have started a HTW mod and used the English map as test bed. The units are new and redistributed among the factions many of which have the new Hellenic units while two have a mixture of Celtic / Irish units. Though I have no problem in single battles not in loading the campaign there is a CDT when in campaign map the cursor reaches the edge of the screen … instead of scrolling the game crushes.

Factions, flags, colors, and building production used same as VI.
You can start to build units, buildings, attack or defend provinces as long as you don’t move your pointer to the edge of the map.

The strange thing is that while in the “end turn” the map scrolls fine showing the other factions moving????????????

If any one can help on this one please do cause I am in despair with this. You can download the files for the test bed from the beta section of the orgs downloads (links are in the thread of Hellenic Total War)

Thanks

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I think Lysander should be promoted to legend status. It works. Alright the factions don't have the prebattle shields but it doesn't matter, they're just plain grey. I now have a fully working Super High with 10 new factions (Welsh, Irish, Scots, Portuguese, Bohemians, Lithuanians, Teutonic Knights, Crusader States, Serbians and Croatians), plus the Swiss, Novgorod, papacy, mongols and Burgundians added.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Grell, I didn't believe what I typed exactly either, since I've added my own new factions colours with no crashes. I just remember others saying it was the colours.

Lysander's solution is great Maybe this will solve/stop a lot of CTD's

[Grell]

Lysander you are an absolute legend, I have tested this and it works?? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

It is now possible to add new factions without getting the battle CTD.

Not a bad effort for a first post Your single post is worth more than some who have 1,000+ posts but as Welly says talk "bullshit". My full admiration to you who managed to work this out AND offer a solution, when myself and others have been flailing around for months, and even the bloody programmers of the game were not able to even offer an explanation as to what was casuign the crash (or couldnt be bothered http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif ). This is excellent news for all modders. I will re-work my Carolinger mod to adapt to this, which will require more testing, work , etc so probably another week or so before I will release it. However my mod The First Crusade with the Kigdom of Jerusalem, etc will now be playable without the battle CTD. If i was a chick i would offer t have your babies you bloody champion

[Grell]

Actually i think this excellent news deserves a thread of its own http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I was wondering if someone could tell me how to put up a mod for people to download. Also,i have added the korean units from Mongol invasion to VI with the warrior monks as persian fanatics just for the hell of it. So i was wondering if there is a way to do the same thing with the Mongol music and speech. Any ideas?

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

This what you mean BKB? (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=6670)

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

God bless ya,ithasker.

[starkhorn]

Greetings,

I'm starting to get interested in performing some modding on this great game to personalise it somewhat. I think it's a good time to begin modding as it looks like from this thread that people have solved most of the problems already. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

My goal is a fairly simple one for my first attempt. I wish to add a new faction in the main european campaign. The new faction will be a Celtic one based on the regions where Celtic languages still exist, i.e. Ireland, Wales and Scotland (and possibly Brittany ). Note that I have VI installed but I want to do this campaign on the main european map and not the VI one.

I've read ECS's simple guide to adding a new faction and I've downloaded several campaigns done by other people as examples to follow. The Crusader mod in particular was really useful.

I just had a few basic questions to help me get started.

(a)In the declarefactions section. I've noticed from other mods that people declare their new factions as FN_FREE21. Does it absolutely need to be 21 or call I leave it 01 ? I notice that in ECS's guide that he called it FN_new which suggestions you can call it anything you want.

(b)In the DEFAULT_FACTION_SPECIFIC.TXT, I noticed several sections like @["faction_leaders_xzy"] and ["factions_posessive_xzy"]which obviously I need to update in order for my new faction. However I noticed the same two sections in names.txt as well. Do I need to update both files or is the default one sufficient ?

c) Hmmm. I really don't understand the SetFactionCol section all. Can anyone help explain what the below means ?

SetFactionCol:: FN_ALMOHAD 255 138 0 32 32 32

(d)I want to keep this mod simple until I get more experienced, thus I just intend to use the VI irish shield for my new faction. So I'm assuming that I can just use the SetShieldImage line for the Irish faction from thevikings.txt file ? i.e. in my txt file (assuming my I declare my faction as FN_FREE21, can I use the below line ?

SetShieldImage:: FN_FREE21 "Irish_lge" "Irish_sml" "Irish" "Irish" "Irish"

Thats it. Hope I haven't asked too much too soon. I've tried to find the above answers from this thread but some of the answers have been a little too advanced for myself hence my request for clarification.

Many, many thanks in advance to any person that can help. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Cheers
EX__Starkhorn

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Hi Stark ... actually for modding that is exactly what I did except my first mod was for VI.

Anyhow...

a) You can call it whatever you want, so long as you change all mention of the new faction label to the same. That includes a couple instances in changes.txt too. But if you keep it to FN_Free01 there is no need to edit most of them, since those labels are already there for Free01.
I find it easier to leave it as it is though, so there is no need to keep changing the labels.


b) You really don't need to change the names.txt at all to add new factions. Only if you add new items to the game do you need change this file (I mean completely new made up, whereas 32 factions are already accommodated for.) Hmmm, you might need to change this if you made changes to the labels (ie changed FN_Free01 to FN_Free21)

c) RGB values. The first 3 numbers represent the clans FOREGROUND colour (Red/Green/Blue), the second 3 represent the BACKGROUND.

Easiest way to edit these is to go into PSP and get the colour you want, then copy the RGB values accross to the line here.

Changing these will change lots of things in the game, like the colours on the pieces in the campmap and the colours the units wear in battle.

d) Yes you can use that line, and it is best that you do http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif But you still need to go into campmap\pieces\units\christian\shields\vikings and copy the Irish.bif to the parent folder campmap\pieces\units\christian\shields

Do the same for campmap\pieces\units\muslim\shields\vikings

Then go to textures\campmap\vikings\castleflags and copy the irish.bif here to the folder textures\campmap\castleflags

Laslty, to fight battles you need to go into textures\campmap\vikings\prebatshields and make a copy of SHL01, then rename it to SHL21 and put it in textures\campmap\prebatshields

[WesW]

Has anyone started looking into what it is about face-shields that would be causing the crashes? I mean, we apparently have a work-around, but it would be better if we knew the cause of the problem, wouldn't it?

Also, I am not very experienced in this area, so would someone kindly explain what the face-shield is? I know what the armour piece is, but I would not think that Peasants would use one.

Just a thought: about the only factors I know of that would come together in this area are the unit height settings in the units text. Perhaps these have to be a special setting to work with face shields? On second thought, that's probably not right, but it may be something for one you guys to check out if you are inclined.

Just trying to help.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Faceshields = Facshields, nothing to do with Faces but actually FacTions http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

A while back I thought these were causing the CTD but someone brushed it aside so I thought nothing of it. The problem is if you look in the facshields there are only files for the current 20 factions in the game, none for any of the other 12 or so that can be added. Which makes the game crash tyring to load shields for the extra factions.

I suspect that if you tried making new files in the facshields folder then they woulcd work too, so long as you call them the name you defined the faction as it might work too, ie FN_Free21 or FN_Free01 if you didn't change this.


I THINK the reason peasants crash is because they share their textures folder with a unit that uses a facshield (FeudalSergeants) but I don't know for sure why this would happen. To check if this was the case try a game with another of the units in there eg Vikings (Housecarles), Pikemen, Arty Crews, UrbanMils etc.

[starkhorn]

Quote[/b] (Ithaskar Fëarindel @ July 05 2003,00:41)]
Hi MajesticIthasker,

Thank you ever so much for that post....it was a huge help. Remind me to let you win the next time we meet online. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

So my progress has gone well today thanks to this thread, your previous post.

I had problems where the game crashed when loading the camp map but that was due to the shields not being in the main MTW folder and your post solved that for me.
So now I've
(a)gotten 3 regions belonging to the Celts,

(b)gotten the leader unit changed from clansmen to knights (great program gnome)

©gave my new faction the turkish green and gave the turks the colour of the picts. Sorry ithaskar but what is PSP ?

(d)updated the prod and unit files to allow the Celts to build most catholic units and buildings.

(e)My final problem was that the game was crashing when I entered a battle but I saw Lysanders post which solved that one. Legend status for Lysander....how on earth did you manage to find that workaround ?

So things are going well and I'm close to actually finishing.....but I still have a few things that I'm not happy with.

(1) In custom battles I can't use many units at all. Now I've changed the unit prod file and I can build those buildings and train those units no problem. So I don't know what I've forgotten to make it work in custom battles. I saw that you had the same problem ithaskar but I didn't really understand the solution.

(2) How can I set the attribues of my starting king. I saw tha famous kings section in the hereos files but I can't seem to change much. I can easily change the command, acumen etc but for example how can I change the age or how can I add several vices...it always picks the first one.

(3) I want to add a specific Gaelic name list for my faction but I can't seem to get it to work. I want to add completely new names like Cuchulian or Owen Roe O'Neill etc but it never recognises them in the campaign map. I add the names in the hereos file and also the names.txt but it never recognises it and all the names of my generals are blank. Anyone done this successfully ? Did you do this in your mod Ithaskar and if so can I still download it to check your files ?

Anyway, thanks to all who contributed in this thread as it helped enormously. I couldn't have gotten so far. Also thanks to Grell for his Crusader mod. I downloaded it and been using it as an example to follow...really helpful.

Cheers
EX__Starkhorn

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Not a problem Stark. Don't worry about letting me win, 'cos even then I'd find some way to lose.

Glad to know I've helped at least one person hehe. PSP by the way is Paint Shop Pro, you can use any paint package though to gain RGB values.

Anyway http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

1) This catches almost everyone out when they use Gnome's editor, did me and will many more. Specifying units to a faction for the campaign is completely different to specifying them for custom games, there's another column you need to edit for this, but first you need to find it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Not that the column is hidden mind, but the text is. Go to the last column, 71, titled "Mercenary Units ..."
Click in the box to edit the entry for Clansmen, and suddenly you notice some more text appears:

YES ALL_PERIODS "FN_ENGLISH,FN_FRENCH"

Quite simple from now on, if you want your faction to have Clansmen, add it to the list of factions:

YES ALL_PERIODS "FN_ENGLISH,FN_FRENCH,FN_FREE01"
-or whatever name you have used-

The other two parts, the YES and ALL_PERIODS. I think you can guess ALL_PERIODS, so just set which periods you want the unit in, you probably don't need to change this though. If you do, remember that one entry here doesn't need speach marks: ALL_PERIODS but multiple entries do "HIGH, EARLY"

They YES has nothing to do with the other two, this tells the game whether the unit is usable for Mercenary Armies in the campaign. Can leave this blank and game will assume not.


2) Things to remember about famous kings/heroes. The date you put in is the birthdate, so if you put a famous King with date 1054 he should be 33 years old at the start.

Not sure about why it only accepts the first VnV, but if you look at all the other Kings/Heroes they have just one VnV too. If you can add more than one, just make sure you put them in speach marks like so: "Attack3, Pious2"


3) Now you're talking complicated http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Every name in Heroes.txt must have a label and in the names.txt each must be repeated exactly the same and given an identifier.

In heroes.txt you have to have a list like so:


// 18: Celts
ADD_SURNAMES::
"Cuchulian"
"Owen"
"Roe"
"O'Neill"


So long as these are entirely new names (and not names used by other factions) you then need to define them in names.txt

Just below where the other names are defined, write something like:

//New Celtic names

[starkhorn]

Thanks again ithaskar.

(1) Ok thanks for showing that solution....finding that column was a real pain.

(2) Hmmm but in the famous kings section there is no date. See below:-

FAMOUS_KINGS:: FN_SWISS 1
//name no. c d p a portrait vnv
2, 1, 4, 3, 3, 4, -1, defender3

So where can I set the date for starting king ?

(3) Thanks again. Got that sorted and added some new names for some specific Celtic hereos.

Cheers
Brendan

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

You're right - my mistake... you can set dates for Heroes not Kings sorry.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure how the order the Famous Kings come in is sorted.

[starkhorn]

I was wondering if anyone has the time or patience to help me with another issue that I seem be having.

I've created the Celtic faction and played about 100 years fighting several battles with no problems whatsoever.

I then decided to invade Leon which was an Almohads province. When we go to the battle screen, it fails with a message "Hard-Sprites failed to load Unknown error (0)(00000000)"

It then brings me back to the campaign map....i.e. there is no crash to the desktop.

I've done a search for the above message on the org but came up with nothing....so I was wondering if anyone knew the above.

Note this is the first time that my new faction has attempted a battle with the almos so I theorizing that there is something wrong with my new faction fighting against almos.

Note as well that I've implemented Lysanders solution about battles crashing.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
EX__Starkhorn

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (starkhorn @ July 08 2003,12:15)]I was wondering if anyone has the time or patience to help me with another issue that I seem be having.

I've created the Celtic faction and played about 100 years fighting several battles with no problems whatsoever.

I then decided to invade Leon which was an Almohads province. When we go to the battle screen, it fails with a message "Hard-Sprites failed to load Unknown error (0)(00000000)"

It then brings me back to the campaign map....i.e. there is no crash to the desktop.

I've done a search for the above message on the org but came up with nothing....so I was wondering if anyone knew the above.

Note this is the first time that my new faction has attempted a battle with the almos so I theorizing that there is something wrong with my new faction fighting against almos.

Note as well that I've implemented Lysanders solution about battles crashing.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
EX__Starkhorn
The error message seems to be pointing to the _H image file in the bif folders. Did you check to make sure of all the file names?

[starkhorn]

Quote[/b] (Turbo @ July 08 2003,20:02)]
Quote[/b] (starkhorn @ July 08 2003,12:15)]I was wondering if anyone has the time or patience to help me with another issue that I seem be having.

I've created the Celtic faction and played about 100 years fighting several battles with no problems whatsoever.

I then decided to invade Leon which was an Almohads province. When we go to the battle screen, it fails with a message "Hard-Sprites failed to load Unknown error (0)(00000000)"

It then brings me back to the campaign map....i.e. there is no crash to the desktop.

I've done a search for the above message on the org but came up with nothing....so I was wondering if anyone knew the above.

Note this is the first time that my new faction has attempted a battle with the almos so I theorizing that there is something wrong with my new faction fighting against almos.

Note as well that I've implemented Lysanders solution about battles crashing.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
EX__Starkhorn
The error message seems to be pointing to the _H image file in the bif folders. Did you check to make sure of all the file names?
Hi Turbo,

Thank you for that message and yes you were 100% correct. I didn't change the .bif correctly in one of the custom directories. Corrected now and it works fine.

Cheers
EX__Starkhorn

[barocca]

Quote[/b] (Ithaskar Fëarindel @ July 05 2003,10:08)]Faceshields = Facshields, nothing to do with Faces but actually FacTions :)

A while back I thought these were causing the CTD but someone brushed it aside so I thought nothing of it. The problem is if you look in the facshields there are only files for the current 20 factions in the game, none for any of the other 12 or so that can be added. Which makes the game crash tyring to load shields for the extra factions.

I suspect that if you tried making new files in the facshields folder then they woulcd work too, so long as you call them the name you defined the faction as it might work too, ie FN_Free21 or FN_Free01 if you didn't change this.


I THINK the reason peasants crash is because they share their textures folder with a unit that uses a facshield (FeudalSergeants) but I don't know for sure why this would happen. To check if this was the case try a game with another of the units in there eg Vikings (Housecarles), Pikemen, Arty Crews, UrbanMils etc.
has anyone tested this theory yet?

[Duke John]

A very plausible theory If someone could prove it's correct I might even buy VI.

"I THINK the reason peasants crash is because they share their textures folder with a unit that uses a facshield (FeudalSergeants) but I don't know for sure why this would happen."
I think it's hardcoded. FeudalSergeants don't use the shields included in the BIF. As far as I know there is no text file which says which units us factionshields (there is a file called d.txt but that one isn't used).
Still the program knows that factionshields should be used for FeudalSergeants.
I've made new units by copying existing unit entries and adjusted these. These new units have all new entries are not related to factionshields using units in any way except for the fact that they use the same BIF.
When I test them ingame there are small pieces of factionshields shown onto the model. How the hell is that possible? They have a different name and don't use the same shield number.

Somehow it's decided which units use factionshields and copies of that unit do that too although they are give completely different names and shields. This might be a tough nut to crack... Unless our in-house genius Lysanders saves us again http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

Cheers, Duke John

[barocca]

Quote[/b] (Duke John @ July 18 2003,08:28)]I've made new units by copying existing unit entries and adjusted these. These new units have all new entries are not related to factionshields using units in any way except for the fact that they use the same BIF.
When I test them ingame there are small pieces of factionshields shown onto the model. How the hell is that possible? They have a different name and don't use the same shield number.

Somehow it's decided which units use factionshields and copies of that unit do that too although they are give completely different names and shields. This might be a tough nut to crack... Unless our in-house genius Lysanders saves us again :pat:

Cheers, Duke John...
could you be ever so kind and upload such a unit,
it will take me 3 minutes to determine if the game is indeed trying to use the facshield,
cheers,
B.

[Lord Krazy]

Quote[/b] ]Posted: July 10 2003,00:29

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote (Ithaskar Fëarindel @ July 07 2003,23:43)
(how does the game realise that a unit wears a facshield?)

If it's of any use , I have noticed that as have many
others that the nap units added to any of the facshield
bifs , would end up with shields showing up here and there.
It only happens to units that have floresent colours
on the sprite . Even if it's just one pixel you will
get the shield . So just to make another point before I forget , If I rename the bif to let's say custom1
and make the entries for the new bif
(remember this is the same pallet )
The problem is still there .
Now this is with a bif with a different name
not known to the game previously so it can't be coded
but the pallet is still the same .
To me this implies that the faction colours
are coded in some way for the floresents
to become the faction colours and in turn this his
how the facshields find the victim.

If you have no colours in the pallet that cause this
it does not happen.


I don't know if that's the score really but
it is something you should think about IMHO .

regards

LK


I just tought I'd remind you of this . http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[barocca]

something is not adding up in all this,
not all the units that use a bif will have facshields,
how can the fluorescents be calling/assigning a facshield?
the fluro colours are used to tell the program where to place the factions colours on the unit, they work in the unit info pic files too - you can make custom info pics and battle card images display the faction colours

i'd like you to refer to this post Lysander's post - forwarded by Gregoshi (page 7 this thread) (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=6671;st=150;p=117792)
if you follow the instructions from Lysander then you will have identical bif files, but NO facshields, without editing out the fluro colours

I suspect that creating the facshields for the custom factions in the appropriate folders will enable them, and may stop crashes when attempting to use those units.

As for the random shields in the Nap mod units - stumped
and how does the game know WHICH units have facshields? again stumped

Is there any instance where 2 units from the same bif file use the SAME shield, but one(unit1) has a facshield and the other(unit2) does not?
IF such a case exists has anyone tested wether duplicating the facshield folder for unit1 and renaming the folder to unit2 adds a facshield to unit2 ?
(maybe the shield choice determines facshield?, providing a facshield for that unit exists in the fachsield folder)

[Lord Krazy]

Quote[/b] ]I suspect that creating the facshields for the custom factions in the appropriate folders will enable them, and may stop crashes when attempting to use those units.

It may do but what about unit's that don't have shields,
are not in the facshield list ,showing up with facshields?


Quote[/b] ]something is not adding up in all this,
not all the units that use a bif will have facshields,
how can the fluorescents be calling/assigning a facshield?

That's the bit I can't get my head around .
I'm not saying that the fluorescent colours
do this so to speak but something to do with the
pallet of the bif must be causing this as far as I can see.

Now if you consider that one of our cavalry bifs
in particular has four different sets of sprites
for four different units.

The bif they were imported to was an original
pallet of one of the facshield unit bifs.

Obviously non of these units have a shield
nor a listing for a facshield.
Out of the four units only one unit
has any fluro colours on the sprite .

Now working on the assumtion that the fluros
and bif pallet can not cause the activation
of a facshield and giving it four different names
just incase the folder name has something to do with it,
you would think all the units would not have a fac shield
or thay all would.
Yet only the unit with fluros gets one .
If you get the same sprite add it to a different
pallet apart from facshield ones it's not a problem .
I understand just because something happens consistantly
does not mean the answere lies there . However I do fell
there is a connection to the pallet in some way.

Another thing is that I added the wrong black shade
to the shadow on some of the infantry sprites .
when i say wrong I mean I used a different shade
to the rest . These units are the ones with
the shields on their shadows. So it does not have to be
fluro . I don't have time at present to test this
further but I will . http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

I'm not so bothered as in we seem to have ways around it.
I'd just love to know why ?

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[barocca]

ok,
without having the time to test fully, my theory is this,

certain RGB values in the pallette determine wether or not the game should check the facshield folder for a facshield for that unit,

IF the FOLDER for that unit type exists, but no facshiled for the FACTION trying to use the unit THEN the game may CTD,

IF the FOLDER for the unit type does NOT exist the game may continue without crashing

did i miss anything?

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

L_K is right I believe.

What if this is nothing to do with facshields as such, but any unit that shows some form of clan representation?

That'd be the fluoro parts, any unit that has a fluoro part is deemed to be a unit that "carries the colours of its faction" and with those colours the game automatically associates the facshield.


There is also the other problem, which DukeJohn said, I think this is what he may mean:

http://mysite.freeserve.com/IthaskarsTavern/clansmod/lrossa.jpg
The background turns out transparent here but
http://mysite.freeserve.com/IthaskarsTavern/clansmod/fear.jpg
Here the background shows up though?

The same thing happens for some other clans.
The LRossa background should be black, but somehow, the black has become transparent. I'm thinking possibly because like the first colour in a bif the first colour in the LBM is set to be transparent, but with the image being 16million colours I can't edit/check the palette order to see if I'm right.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Heh Bar I didn't see your post. Yep that sounds right.


Grrr I thought possibly it would be fluoro colours but most units have these and don't all have facshields.

So what colour denote which units will have a facshield and which don't?

[Lord Krazy]

Quote[/b] (barocca @ July 19 2003,02:52)]ok,
without having the time to test fully, my theory is this,

certain RGB values in the pallette determine wether or not the game should check the facshield folder for a facshield for that unit,

IF the FOLDER for that unit type exists, but no facshiled for the FACTION trying to use the unit THEN the game may CTD,

IF the FOLDER for the unit type does NOT exist the game may continue without crashing

did i miss anything?
That's the point I'm tying to make.
Weather fluro or not is not the point
the point I'm tring to make is that it's in the pallet
somewhere .
It could be the CYM pecentages for all I know.
It could be rgb , it could be one of the black shades
and that shade is the colour that's always used
for the outline of the shields used by ths Facshields.
That's not a theory just one of the many stupid ideas I'v
had regarding this topic. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif



btw if it's of any use The facshield shows on
the shadow of the sprites that use
R 0 G 0 B 8 (after edit sorry)

Where as the shadows that have
R 0 G 4 B 0
do not display a facshield

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

L_K the sprite for the Peasants (FeudalSergs) is
0 4 0
And for ChainHlm (FeudalFoot, FMAA)
0 0 8

And there are no Cav shadows? Not sure exactly what you mean?

[Lord Krazy]

I'm not sure what I mean neither if I did
I'd be happier. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

I'm just pointing out the only difference
between the sprites that display a facshield
and ones that don't on the unit in question
is that one shadow is 008 and shows a facshield
on the shadow and the sprites that have 040
for the shadow do not display the facshield.

If I change 008 to 040 the facshield goes away
If I put 008 back in comes back.
This must mean something .
As for the cav not having shadows ,that does not mean
a 008 or whatever is not present and being used on the pallet.
Am I making sence ?

regards
LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Duke John]

I'm trying to clear some possibilities:
- Used colours may have a word on which BIF has units that uses FactionShields but that's not everything since some BIFs are shared with units that do not use FactionShields.
- I noticed that all FactionShields have a grey shield, when I painted brown over them the FactionShields remained. The colour of the shield on the BIF has no effect.
- I changed the changed the shield number of a unit from for 4 to 6 and added a 6th line in the shields.txt. Still the FactionShield was displayed. The number of the used shield has no effect.

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Check the bif for High Royal Knights though, the facshield template in there is plain white?

[MiniKiller]

any screen shots oft he new factions in action and or on the battle map.