Stripped-Down Mod Folder

[alpaca]

Update II 04/29/07

Version 1.1 also contains stripped names and banners

Version 1.1: Download (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=1256)

Update 04/29/07

This is now the stripped-down mod folder, or if you want the stripped-down map 2.0

The stripped down mod folder is a small side project that I made to have a clean base for total conversion mods.
I annihilated a lot of stuff from the vanilla game so you can easily start adding your own factions, etc.
What I stripped was:
- Cultures
- Factions
- Units
- Map (including script, events)
- Buildings (including guilds)
- Rebel Factions
- Faction standing
- Ancillaries
- Traits
- Advice
- Missions

Well, I made a stripped-down map for testing purposes (to eliminate as much bad stuff as possible) and thought it might be useful for some of you.

It disables all factions except for England, and has only one province (North_America) plus a lot of water. You can also use it to create new maps from scratch, so have fun ;)

Here's a screeny of the regions map so you know what to expect (notice the wee island on the lower left):
https://img474.imageshack.us/img474/6651/mapregionstp0.th.png (https://img474.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mapregionstp0.png)

You can find it here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=1256

[adembroski]

thank you, sir

[Myrddraal]

Brocken link?

[nikolai1962]

Cool.

[alpaca]

Brocken link?
Works for me, but maybe you have to log in on the TWC?

[Harve]

Brocken link?
I think so- ok maybe not

[adembroski]

Having some issues...

Put all this in a mod folder, worked fine... edited files to reflect my map, simply be adding land mass and editing the size of the files (510x337)... all I did was add the land, of the same color as the original piece of land (212-198-206)... changed nothing else (save making all of the .tga's match up) in size and land masses)...

Now when I attempt to start campaign, it does nothing but go back to the single player menu... then I can't even go into the campaign screen unless I back out to the main menu and try again... get the same error. What could cause this?

[alpaca]

Having some issues...

Put all this in a mod folder, worked fine... edited files to reflect my map, simply be adding land mass and editing the size of the files (510x337)... all I did was add the land, of the same color as the original piece of land (212-198-206)... changed nothing else (save making all of the .tga's match up) in size and land masses)...

Now when I attempt to start campaign, it does nothing but go back to the single player menu... then I can't even go into the campaign screen unless I back out to the main menu and try again... get the same error. What could cause this?
Heh you're lucky, at least you get an error that has a proper error message.
Enable error logging and see what it throws up.

[adembroski]

Heh you're lucky, at least you get an error that has a proper error message.
Enable error logging and see what it throws up.

Seems it doesn't like the location of the settlement... which is odd, I didn't move it.

EDIT: okay, moved the settlement and characters away from the edge of the map, and now I'm getting a lockup once it gets past the loading screen.

I enter campaign, it holds for a while (presumably building the map), then goes to the England intro. After that I hit the normal loading screen, which loads normally, then a black screen with just the hourglass cursor on it and it locks there... I can't even ctrl-alt-delete out, I have to shut down my system with the power button to get out... similar to the time-stamp issue after unpacking. Error log is blank.

PS- 100th post, hurrah!

EDIT: Finally waited it out and got an error report... yay... unspecified.

13:23:31.015 [system.rpt] [always] CPU: SSE
13:23:31.015 [system.rpt] [always] ==== system log start, build date: Dec 5 2006 version development ===
13:23:31.140 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_0.pack
13:23:31.218 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_1.pack
13:23:31.328 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_2.pack
13:23:31.765 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_3.pack
13:23:32.203 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_4.pack
13:23:32.312 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/localized.pack
13:28:03.250 [system.rpt] [error] Medieval 2: Total War encountered an unspecified error and will now exit.

[adembroski]

By the way... have you noticed that the outline of the original map is still present on yours? Almost like the continent is underwater?

[adembroski]

Is there any reason 0x0 is valid on the stripped down map, but invalid for mine?

[alpaca]

The outline comes from water_surface.tga which I didn't edit to bother. If you don't like it, you can replace it with a single color or something ;)

Anyways, did you think of changing descr_terrain.txt to reflect the new map size?
There could also be a discrepancy between some of the files. They need all to have the correct size, otherwise all you have to change is map_regions, map_heights and map_groundtypes (the rest can just be resized, staying mono-color for testing purposes)

You could try only adding small bodies of land at a time instead of the whole thing.

[adembroski]

The outline comes from water_surface.tga which I didn't edit to bother. If you don't like it, you can replace it with a single color or something ;)

Anyways, did you think of changing descr_terrain.txt to reflect the new map size?
There could also be a discrepancy between some of the files. They need all to have the correct size, otherwise all you have to change is map_regions, map_heights and map_groundtypes (the rest can just be resized, staying mono-color for testing purposes)

You could try only adding small bodies of land at a time instead of the whole thing.


Yes, I changed descr_terraint.txt, adjusted all the map sizes, and added land masses to the appropriate ones.

[adembroski]

This is getting a tish old... grr... anyways, i keep getting the same error over and over...

05:09:24.125 [script.err] [error] Script Error in mymod/data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign/descr_strat.txt, at line 329, column 1
You have chosen an invalid tile(0, 0) for the settlement of Miccosukee

The problem is, Miccosukee is a.) no longer at 0x0, and b.) worked fine in your stripped down map.

If I move a settlement (ie the black pixel), do I need to change any of the text files to reflect that?

PS- Yes, I'm deleting map.rwm

[alpaca]

Well, all I can say is tell you again to try and add the land mass part by part to see what's afoot (start by expanding the small island).
How did you crop your images by the way? You need to cut stuff from the top and right if you want to preserve the existing land.

[adembroski]

Argh... well, I figured it out... it's always the simplest crap.

Somehow when I adjusted the map, I apparently changed the color of the dang settlement square. Changed to 0-0-0, works fine.

Really appreciate your help, alpaca, you've been awesome.

[Tominokar]

Hi,
Thanks very much for the map Alpaca. I've built something onto it (and cropped it down a bit) but can't seem to get it working, crashes when I click start campaign (without creating a log file). I'm sure I've edited all the necassary text files without mistake.

I was wondering if you could take a look and see what's wrong?

Link in my next post.

[Tominokar]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=1272

[alpaca]

Sorry mate, I usually make it a principle to not fix other people's stuff for them directly.
I can try to help you if you give me a detailed description of what you did, but the first thing you should do is to undo everything and apply the changes one at a time. This will most likely deliver you with the solution.

[Tominokar]

Sorry mate, I usually make it a principle to not fix other people's stuff for them directly.
I can try to help you if you give me a detailed description of what you did, but the first thing you should do is to undo everything and apply the changes one at a time. This will most likely deliver you with the solution.

By no means did I expect you to fix it for me, I just thought it would be easier and quicker if I showed you what I had done rather than explaining it. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression :embarassed:

Basically I've added most of the North American continent, the terrain map comes to 1001x851. I'm positive all the other map sizes are correct.

Firstly I was getting a CTD once the loading bar had gone all the way across, and I pinned this down to there being one giant province. Once I removed a lot of the terrain (leaving Central America) it loaded fine. So I added 19 more random provinces named one, two, three etc. I've added these to descr_sound_music_types, descr_regions, imperial_campaign_regions_and_settlement_names, descr_regions_and_settlement_name_lookup and descr strat. With this last one I just copy and pasted all the stuff from your City, like buildings and stuff, to the new provinces.

[alpaca]

You sure you don't get an error? Each settlement needs the settlement keyword before the actual tag in descr_strat



settlement
{
...
}
settlement
{
...
}

What you have is:


settlement
{
...
}

{
...
}

[Tominokar]

Thanks for pointing that out, I still get the crashes though :dizzy2: As a matter of fact I do get a series of errors, just a log file isn't created.

https://img168.imageshack.us/img168/764/error1fi5.jpg

https://img120.imageshack.us/img120/9551/error2nq1.jpg

https://img168.imageshack.us/img168/8800/error3nb3.jpg

[alpaca]

Thanks for pointing that out, I still get the crashes though :dizzy2: As a matter of fact I do get a series of errors, just a log file isn't created.
Well try using the backup from before you added the provinces (always make backups of working versions by the way) and add them one by one.

[Tominokar]

Well try using the backup from before you added the provinces (always make backups of working versions by the way) and add them one by one.

Problem is that didn't work either 'cos of the size of the province, how many more do you think I'll need to add before it will?

[alpaca]

Problem is that didn't work either 'cos of the size of the province, how many more do you think I'll need to add before it will?
You might want to try to make these islands one province each, but I'm not really an experienced mapper, I'm sure wilddog could tell you more about that.

[Tominokar]

Thanks for the advice Alpaca, after many hours I got the whole landmass working :2thumbsup: I did what you said and started again, adding piece at a time then trying out a province. I learnt a lot in the process, and could probably do it all again in 10 minutes now. I'll post some pics when I get it looking pretty.

[Makanyane]

Hi Alpaca, I've installed the stripped down map in the hope that I could work from that forwards to answer why variations of new maps /campaigns we have been trying have been giving random "M2:TW encountered an unspecified error and will now exit". Unfortunately the un-modified stripped down map does it for me as well, random crash normally occurs at end of first or second turn but once past that point seems OK. Crash occurs roughly one in every three loads.

That is running with M2 unpacked, with map in mod-folder, using .bat to launch, -io in .cfg file. M2 is using the unofficial 1.02 patch - but we were having same problem with other new maps under 1.01 so I don't think it is just related to that.

Wilddog was wondering about missions causing problems but I am confused as no-one else seems to be reporting similar difficulty. Any ideas?

[alpaca]

Well I have the same problem. For me the map usually crashes on the rebel turn (I expanded the map a bit and added more provinces). I don't have any theories yet as to what causes it (and in fact there are probably multiple reasons).
I noticed that it sometimes gets worse if you use different ai settings so one of the problems could be pathfinding. I really don't know.

[wilddog]

Alpaca
True it might be a size thing causing the error through pathing but as the remainder was sea I'm not so sure. I don't know whether there is something tied to missions or one of the random 'comparison' events (ie you're the biggest, richest etc type things) that may cause it as there's only one province one faction to compare. However I've had similar random crashes where I have a big map and several factions so not sure.

Spent some time this afternoon trying to work out where it was happening and all I could get to is that it seemed to occur regularly between the top and bottom of these log issues. The last definite line to appear was the top one and the only guaranteed line if it didn't crash was the last one - the others being tied to events etc).

19:04:46.671 [system.io] [info] open: found data/ui/northern_european/eventpics/end_of_turn.tga (from: I:\Medieval II Total War unofficial 1.2)
[19:04:46.671 [game.script.trigger] [trace] Trigger <0578_Unexplored_Army_Fleet_Idle_Trigger> fired
19:04:46.671 [system.io] [trace] file open,,data/ui/southern_european/portraits/portraits/old/generals/000.tga,26540
19:04:46.671 [system.io] [info] open: found data/ui/southern_european/portraits/portraits/old/generals/000.tga (from: I:\Medieval II Total War unofficial 1.2)
19:04:46.671 [game.script.trigger] [trace] Trigger <0006_UI_Panel_Settlement_Icons_Trigger> fired
19:04:46.671 [game.script.trigger] [trace] Trigger <0046_P_Normalise> fired

We're now trying to set up some scenario's to test on a smaller map which may point to either pathing or memory. Although even in Vanilla I used to get odd crashes early on so I don't know whether there's still a bit of a bug problem... I'm pretty much out of ideas on this one.

[nikolai1962]

I noticed that it sometimes gets worse if you use different ai settings so one of the problems could be pathfinding. I really don't know.

I think it is pathing somehow. In my version i've added a chunk of land but not much and it crashes now and then. Used to crash on the first end turn every time when i had one particularly huge region. Maybe pirates trying to find land on the other side of the map or something silly like that.

[Makanyane]

It is starting to look more like it could be pathing or something else related to size - spent most of yesterday working up a smaller map, reduced Alpaca's base map to about 200 pixels square map_regions, and added land mass, regions etc., but without changing any non-map files or set up. That one hasn't crashed at all yet. (touch wood)

The earlier versions we were having trouble with were 510 pix square like the stripped down map, though with lots of land and regions, they would still have failed under the old landmass problem, so there could be some vestige of that still around ?

[nikolai1962]

The thing about the pathing algorithm is it needs to store information on all the tiles it has checked while it is executing. It has an array of all the tiles it has checked and rejected and an "open" array of possible paths that it gradually goes through till it finds its goal. On a large map this can apparently lead to a huge demand on memory. On land, they can get around this by region-hopping but i don't know how they'd deal with it with a really huge sea. That's why i was thinking it might be pirates. Could be a red herring.

[alpaca]

Yeah you may be right. I also believe now it's got something to do with missions because after removing them it seemed to run more stable.
I'll remove pirates next to see what happens.

[nikolai1962]

yeah, missions could make sense in this context too.

[wilddog]

I've always had a random crash issue on my big map and thought it was somehow mission or possibly event related (partly because I hadn't really edited the missions) and because it seemed to be delayed if I got some sort of event early on (eg candidate for adoption, marriage etc). Makanyane then tried with a smaller map but didn't seem to get the crash so could still be pathing.

I tried running the game automatically using the AI's setup but this used to show the map on the whole screen and then just crash so I didn't know what turn anything had happened on.

[alpaca]

Well missions aren't all there's to it. I removed all missions and all events, but I still get crashes (I think less frequently, mind).
I also made the map smaller to a size of 50 pixels in regions, it has 9 rectangular regions 8 of which belong to england and 1 to France.
I still can't figure out what crashes it but it always happens in the Rebel turn. It doesn't happen in vanilla, does it? I'll try an auto-pilot test.

[wilddog]

alpaca
How do you set up auto turn so you can see the turn you are on? I tried an autoturn set up but the lower part of the screen with the turns etc on it gets covered by the map as soon as I switch my faction to the AI.

[alpaca]

Copy this into your campaign script:


declare_counter turncounter
monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType england
log always New Turn:
log_counter always turncounter
inc_counter turncounter 1
end_monitor
This will log each turn in your logfile and you can easily see which turn the game went out.

[wilddog]

@alpaca - Thanks.

[alpaca]

Ok after remembering about the no_brigands and no_pirates hidden resources and putting them on the map, the reason for the crashes on the stripped down map are brigands or pirate spawns.
It ran perfectly fine for 150 turns (after which I cancelled) with the hidden resources, whereas without it it'd usually crash within 30 turns.
The question is now why exactly this happens.
On the map I have only English_Rebels, and they are described properly in descr_rebel_factions. Both faction creator and faction in descr_regions are england
The only thing that could screw it up is pirates or brigands spawning on invalid tiles, however I have no idea what could make a tile invalid. You know the stripped map only has a tiny island with uniform height, and the crashes occured on a much smaller testmap than the 510*510 one, too.
I'm not sure if I'll put any more time into this right now as there's more productive stuff to do than wondering about why brigands crash my game.

Edit: By the way, I'll release an update for the stripped map that'll not only have a stripped map but everything stripped (factions, units, cultures, etc.) as a base for TC-style mods

[wilddog]

@alpaca - Interesting to know that an issue may be the spawning of brigands/pirates.

I'll try that out on a simple map as Makanyane and I have been struggling as to why we are getting no crashes with a map with one faction and a fairly consistent crash on go 12 or 15 when we have 2 factions. We used England and Scotland. Crash existed when both were in but if either was taken out the crash disappeared again! The map we are using isn't that big 189*189 on regions.

The release of the base map will at least allow us to baseline against it to try and resolve the other problems we are having.

Back to your Italian Mod then eh?

[alpaca]

@alpaca - Interesting to know that an issue may be the spawning of brigands/pirates.

I'll try that out on a simple map as Makanyane and I have been struggling as to why we are getting no crashes with a map with one faction and a fairly consistent crash on go 12 or 15 when we have 2 factions. We used England and Scotland. Crash existed when both were in but if either was taken out the crash disappeared again! The map we are using isn't that big 189*189 on regions.

The release of the base map will at least allow us to baseline against it to try and resolve the other problems we are having.

Back to your Italian Mod then eh?
Yeah actually that new thing will serve as a base where we can add our stuff.

Edit: And I obviously still have to write that coast filter...

[wilddog]

@Alpaca - I think I understand why we were hitting a problem with 2 (or more factions). Its the pope again. Doesn't seem to be an issue with the AI running as the disable papal elections is switched to off. However, for the normal single player it was still on and causing the crash as none of the actual factions was a papal faction.

In your new set of files you may want to include an amended SM factions with that attribute removed from the Papal_states and also remove it from the Strat file ( I did it to both to stop the error haven't tried if only one of them would stop it).

[alpaca]

@Alpaca - I think I understand why we were hitting a problem with 2 (or more factions). Its the pope again. Doesn't seem to be an issue with the AI running as the disable papal elections is switched to off. However, for the normal single player it was still on and causing the crash as none of the actual factions was a papal faction.

In your new set of files you may want to include an amended SM factions with that attribute removed from the Papal_states and also remove it from the Strat file ( I did it to both to stop the error haven't tried if only one of them would stop it).
His hatness is gone for good, only England and the Rebels are left :smash:
Thanks for the tip though.

And by the way, you don't need to remove it in descr_strat. That only sets the AI label you can find in descr_campaign_ai_db.xml

[wilddog]

Alpaca
Thanks - yes I cross checked afterwards that you didn't need the AI label. I just couldn't remember for sure at the time.

[General_Sun]

Hi Alpaca, is this 100% stripped down? It seems as if the minimap doesn't start all the way to the left edge of the map and the left is cut off in fact.

[alpaca]

Hi Alpaca, is this 100% stripped down? It seems as if the minimap doesn't start all the way to the left edge of the map and the left is cut off in fact.
The left hand side of the minimap is cut off because the game has that bar over it which in vanilla hides America. You can amend it by using a script command (unhide_radar or something, I forgot) or by supplying another radar map which is smaller.

[General_Sun]

Thank you for that answer, I knew it had something to do with America but was uncertain how to get rid of it. I even tried to use several events but no avail. Anyway, thank you.

Edit: I just think that that should be included in the stripped down version, as counter-intuitive as that sounds.

[alpaca]

Thank you for that answer, I knew it had something to do with America but was uncertain how to get rid of it. I even tried to use several events but no avail. Anyway, thank you.

Edit: I just think that that should be included in the stripped down version, as counter-intuitive as that sounds.
Well I don't know, I was thinking about including a radar map but right now I'm too lazy to work on a new version.