Adding new factions in VI

**Grell** · 05-24-2003, 06:32

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** · 05-24-2003, 22:56

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** · 05-27-2003, 13:23

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** · 05-28-2003, 00:28

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?

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** · 05-28-2003, 10:26

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** · 05-28-2003, 11:21

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** · 05-28-2003, 19:16

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

)

IW

PS. Thanks for the Help Blind King

**Grell** · 05-29-2003, 05:33

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)

**Turbo** · 05-29-2003, 16:23

Originally Posted by [b

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** · 05-29-2003, 17:23

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** · 05-29-2003, 20:51

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** · 05-30-2003, 02:50

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** · 06-01-2003, 10:21

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.

**Invisible Wizard** · 06-03-2003, 20:14

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.

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.

Thanks for the great Mod

IW

**V'ger** · 06-03-2003, 23:30

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** · 06-04-2003, 03:25

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** · 06-05-2003, 21:19

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** · 06-05-2003, 23:57

Originally Posted by [b

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...

**V'ger** · 06-06-2003, 09:36

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** · 06-06-2003, 11:46

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** · 06-06-2003, 12:24

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** · 06-06-2003, 13:22

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** · 06-06-2003, 13:35

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** · 06-06-2003, 13:43

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** · 06-08-2003, 01:29

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...

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

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** · 06-08-2003, 12:35

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.

**Ithaskar Fëarindel** · 06-08-2003, 12:58

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** · 06-09-2003, 02:34

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** · 06-09-2003, 03:26

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

**Ithaskar Fëarindel** · 06-09-2003, 14:10

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

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

Thread: Adding new factions in VI

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