Post your "must-know" modding questions here!

[Psyco]

Thanks for the answer.
Another question. Is there any way to see where an error is (I've modded a bit, but it always ctd before loading the start movie, so I need some way to find where the error(s) is/are)

[khelvan]

Edit: Figured it out already, sorry.

[Soulflame]

Not really a modder myself (well, not yet at least ). But I had a few questions... albeit with a different flavor then the other ones asked here:

What was the weirdest thing (unit, behavior anything) you accidentally made for R;TW?
And secondly: what thing would you dare the mod community to mod? Something that you think is very challenging for the mod community, but very rewarding as well, or maybe something that you had great difficulty with, or simply something you wanted to try out, but didn't have the time/resources for?

Thanks for your time

[Spino]

Does the presence of an officer in a unit (i..e centurions & signifers in legionary cohorts) confer any morale/combat bonuses to the unit or are they just for show? If the former is true can these bonuses be modified for each type of officer?

[Basileios]

Is there any way to edit mercenaries, especially recruition location and availability?

As @itkotw said, but be careful! You will not be able to start a new campaign anymore when you mess-up here! The programm will returne to campaign menue when you start a new campaign. Only merc_* untits can be assigned
to the regions! Or units you gave the ability (attribute) in the export_descr_unit.txt to be a mercenary unit...

[Basileios]

Is there any way to add requirements to a building being built? Any help you can give us in editting the buildings would be most appreciated.

You can do so in the export_descr_buildings.txt. But if you do so, it might be necessary to add the changes to the update-buildings as well!

[komninos]

Hi,

Where are the building requirements hidden for the units?
And what files I have to edit to add a new one?

Sorry if this is an old one but I just got the thing and I am trying to build some tools to make the processes as easy as it can possibly be done.

[Basileios]

@komninos

In the export_descr_buildings.txt! You must go the other war round as in MTW - instead off giving a unit a building requirement, you must give a building the abillity to build a specific unit! But don´t forget to copy this entry to the following building upgrades!
When you open the export_descr_buildings.txt you can see very easy the structure.

[Arzt]

Will it be posible to have different unit models in a unit? That would make look them more realistic. For example a general rides a cataphract and his bodyguards ride on normal horses.
I fear it isn't possible.

[fenir]

moved to modding suggestions.

[komninos]

Hi,

Has anyone seen a way to landlock units? ie. make Spartans produce only in Sparta???

[Inuyasha12]

Hi

Can anyone tell me how to change the coloring of mercenaries, so that they take the color of the faction that bought it. It just annoys me to see my line's color messed up by tha one shade of green.

Thanks in advance-INU

[Encaitar]

My question:

What are the maximum dimensions for a campaign map?

[tombom]

You ahve to require a good in a province and then put that good in the province. This is how it currently works with spartans. Unfortunately you can't define new goods.

[Totalize1]

How do you edit the Tech Tree?

Thanks

[khelvan]

Unfortunately you can't define new goods.

Err, why not?

[JeromeGrasdyke]

I would like to make some modifications to tone down slightly the negative loyalty effect of distance and squalor. Is this possible to do something like that? Additionally, is it possible to alter the effect of garrison in the same way, toning up or down how much one unit improve the public order?

Unfortunately these factors are all hardcoded. We are fine-tuning the effect of squalor on order for the 1.2 patch, though.

Can we edit the battle AI difficulty levels and their effects? If the answer is no, could you please tell us exactly what boni the AI gets on Hard and V.Hard?

Again, these values are hard-coded. The combat bonusses are easy; they apply to attack only, while on Easy the human player gets a +4 bonus, on Hard the AI is given +4, and on Very Hard +7. The morale bonusses are much more complex, as they work on a series of sliding scales, detailing which is beyond the scope of this document.

Would CA be so kind and move as many as they can (all would be the best!) actually hardcoded values/constants from the RTW exe file into an editable text file, to allow us to modify them if we really need/want to?

There's over 500k of setup scripts open to modding and you want more?!? Well, we'll see what can be done. All constants would be a bit optimistic, as there are an awful lot of them, but we may be able to extern a few more things.

I'm not sure if this has been answered already, but will it be possible to allow a starting faction to be a protectorate of another faction, or, like in the sons of mars campaign at the beginning, have factions with no lands but simply having armies marching around to create an RPG element before they gain lands?

I believe these things are currently not possible, except in the case of the human player surviving with at least one named characters and no settlements. AI factions must have both characters and settlements to survive. It is worth noting that there is a set of pre-determined likes and dislikes which is baked into the faction setup, as well. Nothing so strong as actual alliances, but it changes the likelyhood that an AI faction will go to war with another faction quite substantially.

We want to know if CA and Activision will release the Unit Editor, Terrain Editor, Battle Editor and Strategic Editor in the upcoming patches/addons... or not!

The battle editor (which contains the terrain editor as well) will likely be released with the 1.2 patch. There is no such thing as a unit editor - the units were created by adding a new entry and all of its corresponding artwork to the various setup scripts, mostly by hand. A decision has not yet been made about the campaign map editor, which would probably be of limited use anyway as it's quite a basic tool.

What about the weird texture colour effects?

It depends what format the textures that you are feeding into the game are in. The DDS files are compressed and so you can lose a lot of quality; the end result depends quite a bit on the compressor you use. The NVidia one is reasonable, but the one included with the MS DirectX SDK gives better results although it takes a lot longer to run. The game engine freely substitutes DDS's for TGA's, so if you have a texture which you absolutely cannot get right as a DDS, you can feed it in as an uncompressed TGA. But be aware that doing this eats up more texture memory, and you will notice that other things may start to degrade and get blurry if many DDS's are replaced with TGA's, especially on machines with little video memory.

Is it possible to make units available to factions to which they were not originally allotted?

Yes, it is possible. In order to do this, you need to change the 'ownership' field in export_descr_unit.txt for the unit you wish to change, make sure that the soldier/officer/mount models referenced by that unit have texture assignments for that faction (these are in descr_model_battle.txt), and modify the buildings files so that the faction in question can actually build the unit from the tech tree. If you want to give the new unit a description and a picture you also have to change the text which is linked in via the 'dictionary' tag and the image pointed to by the image field. Be aware that the game always first searches the .paks for data, so whenever you refer to a new file, give it a new, unique name to avoid any problems.

In my Citadel mod, I want the papacy to have the same sort of relation with the catholics as the senate does with rome. Is this possible?

You could make the three Roman factions look like Catholics, and the Senate as the Pope, and then alter the mission texts and so on to fit. So, doable, although a fair amount of work. As to having more factions have this relationship with the 'Pope', I'm afraid not.

Is there a way to change the names of regions and cities?

Yes, there are text files which contain the names which are linked to the Provinces. If you do a search in data/text for 'Domus Dulcis Domus' I'm sure it will show up, although you will need to use a search tool which can handle Unicode text files.

Will it be possible mod structures which are separate from cities, eg a structure which appears in a province and grants bonuses, but has these bonuses taken away if it is 'blockaded'?

Nope.

Will it be possible to mod different city sizes? eg, can I mod a city which is smaller than a town (and, inventively, call it a Small Town)? Modding the whole tech tree would be necessary after this...

Nope.

Will it be possible to mod in flying units?

To a certain extent - you can make them look as if they fly by changing the animation files, but the collision detection happens mostly on 2D planes, and so something flying over the ground will end up pushing things underneath it out of the way. You can edit the collision radii, so you could have a flying dragon which only has a tiny collision radius, but that's as far as it goes.

Will it be possible to mod faction leader's 'death ages'? eg, if I want a faction leader who can only die in battle, can I set his 'death age' to something ridiculously high?

Nope.

Will it be possible to mod in female generals or faction leaders?

Possibly, but only for an entire faction at a time. The models and so on which are used by campaign-map objects are set up in the descr_sm_*** text files.

Will it be possible to mod in MTW-style 'glory goals', or at least (heavily) mod the victory conditions of Rome?

'Glory Goals' not, but you can change the victory conditions. They are in the descr_strat.txt file, near the top. There are a bunch of undocumented ones which do not involve becoming emperor, for campaigns where it is not appropriate. I'll look into digging out the exact syntax.

Is it possible to include a Senate-like faction, which cannot be assailed without popular support and which makes requests or demands of various factions?

The behaviour of the Senate is unique and cannot be assigned to other factions, and is linked to the senate faction id.

Does the presence of an officer in a unit (i..e centurions & signifers in legionary cohorts) confer any morale/combat bonuses to the unit or are they just for show? If the former is true can these bonuses be modified for each type of officer?

They do look cool, don't they... but they are mostly for show. However, they do get an extra two hit points, so they're worth more than a regular soldier on the battlefield. Interestingly being close to a unit marked with the 'command' attribute does confer a morale bonus - for example, the Legionary First Cohort.

what thing would you dare the mod community to mod?

The whole Rome team is really waiting to see what the community is going to come up with, and we do follow closely the work by people like Vercingetorix (quite clever, isn't he) on the technical side, and things like the realism mod on the gameplay side. If I had to pick one that I'd like to see people attempt, it's a Lord of the Rings complete conversion - the engine is fantastically well suited to it, and it's something we can't do due to licensing issues.

[tombom]

Thanks for the reply Jerome :)

Nice to know that another patch is in the works and you're hoping to release the abttle editor with it.

[l3th4l]

i have a question concerning custom effects.
a couple of guys over at the twcenter forums including me are trying to figure (sp?) out how the effects (particle) system works. we have been able to create some custom effect but we are clueless as to how the effects are triggered. in other words we can replace/edit existing effects like the effects that occur when projectile hit but not add new ones. it is our understanding that there must be hidden tags/triggers like flaming_man_effect which oviously triggers one effect in descr_burning_men_effect_final.txt. is there a chance you might tell us where to find these tags or could you tell us for example how to link en effect to.. lets say an animation?

oh, and please excuse my english.. not an native speaker ;)

[AstroCat]

I just got to ask this one, sorry... there is quite a thread over at twcenter of people trying to activate the "blood effects" in the game. Would you be willing to help them out in anyway with some information on how to do this?

Thanks for your time.

Jordan "AstroCat"

[hoggy]

Thanks for the answers to those question Jerome, you can't imagine how much it helps modders to have a point of reference in these early stages.

I've got a quick one for you : How do we mod the UI? Thoros and I tried editting the files in Data\UI\ROMAN\INTERFACE but they seemed to have no effect on the interface in game. Are these files triggered by some other text file?

Would be good to be able to mod the Interface textures accordingto the mod style ie. japanese for DJs mod.

many thanks - hoggy

[Duke John]

I am able to mod the UI, so I don't know how you are not able to. I can edit all the faction emblems, scrolls, infopics, buttons without problems. Except one: the parchment has a brown/yellow colour. If I change the parchment in the TGA it will still have the brown/yellow colour and gradiations in colours are also messed up. I posted this some pages ago. I tried with the M:TW scroll but will try it also with the S:TW scroll.

[Silver Rusher]

Something I need to find out- Where can I find and edit the banners used in the battle map by each faction?

[Dagoster]

Jerome please help us!

;bleeding_blood_set

effect bleeding_blood
{
type particle
{
texture battlefield/blood/bloodOil_1.tga
sprite_origin 0.15, 0.15
sprite_size 0.7, 0.7
size_range 2, 2.5
age_range 1.0, 1.5
grow_range1, 1 ;1, 2
vel_range 1,1
fade_time 1
die_size 4, 12
colour 186, 30, 69 ; R G B
alpha_max 100 ; 150 maximum alpha value
spin_rate 0, 0 ;0, 0 clockwise/counterclockwise
acceleration 0,2.0,0 ; 0,-6.0, 0
emitter cone
{
density 1; how many particles per second
emitter_falloff_dist 100 ; 400 distance in meters to reduce
emitter_falloff_bias .8 ;
angle 85 ;15 angle of cone in degrees
}
}
}




effect bleeding_blood_spray_1
{
type particle
{
texture battlefield/blood/blood_particle_2.tga

sprite_origin 0.15, 0.15
sprite_size 0.7, 0.7
size_range .5,2.5
age_range 0, .5
grow_range .2, 1.4
vel_range 0.5, 1.0
fade_time 1 ;
die_size 4, 6
colour 186,30,69
alpha_max 100 ; maximum alpha value
spin_rate 0, 0
acceleration 0,-3.0,0

emitter cone
{
density 12.5// ; how many particles per second
emitter_falloff_dist 50 ; distance in meters to reduce emission over
emitter_falloff_bias 0.5 ;

angle 15 ; angle of cone in degrees
}
}
}


effect bleeding_blood_spray_4
{
type particle
{
texture battlefield/blood/blood5.tga

sprite_origin 0.15, 0.15
sprite_size 0.7, 0.7
size_range .5,4
age_range 0,4
grow_range .2, 1.1
vel_range 0.5, 1.0
fade_time 1
die_size 4, 5
colour 186,30,69
alpha_max 80 ; maximum alpha value
spin_rate 0, 0
acceleration 0,.1,0


emitter cone
{
density 1.5// ; how many particles per second
emitter_falloff_dist 30 ; distance in meters to reduce emission over
emitter_falloff_bias 0.7 ;

angle 15 ; angle of cone in degrees
}
}
}

effect_set bleeding_blood_set
{
lod 1000
{
bleeding_blood
bleeding_blood_spray_1
bleeding_blood_spray_4

}
}

Here is the problem. This effect_set can only be called if I
1. Create a New projectile and add a line for end_effect.
2. Replace with and or add an end_effect to exsisting Projectiles.
3. Replace an Exsisting defined effect_set.

We can have all the blood we want only if it is a projectile or it replaces
and exsisting say flaming_man_effect.

I see a reference for a interaction_effect_edit_dialog. My assumption is that this is how the effect_set are linked to the particular exsisting effects.

If CA could help and possible shine some light on if there is a placeor file I can define these effects to take place during melee.. for Example

descr_damage.txt

damage piercing
effect my_custom_blood_hit_effect
end_effect my_custom_blood_death_hit_set

CA please

Dagoster

[SigniferOne]

Hi Jerome, could you please ask CA to externalize more of how the Senate works, how it assigns missions, etc. Suppose someone wanted to make a Mod to make the interaction between the three houses and the Senate tighter, to make it literally like history where the families are little more than pawns for the Senatorial Foreign policy, with not much authority to act themselves. Such Mods that add "meat" to the game will be very interesting; we can already alter the various texts with which Senate speaks, but that doesn't affect much else other than the surface of the game.

[Dagoster]

There is a new better version of TheBloodMod posted at
twcenter

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/index...c=10698&st=460

Dagoster

[Kagetora]

It seems that no one wants to try and answer this so I'll ask it here.

I ahve done some unit adding MODS to the Greeks and scythians (Companion Cav for Greeks, Chosen Swordsmen for scythia) and I have a problem with the unit card, when I build the buildings for construction of these units, I see another peasent unit card but with the descrition of the companion Cav and Chosen swordsmen, how can I edit the game so that I see Companion Cavalry cards instead of Peasent cards in the training queue for the Greeks, same thing for the Chosen Swordsmen and Scythia)?

[Spino]

Does the presence of an officer in a unit (i..e centurions & signifers in legionary cohorts) confer any morale/combat bonuses to the unit or are they just for show? If the former is true can these bonuses be modified for each type of officer?

They do look cool, don't they... but they are mostly for show. However, they do get an extra two hit points, so they're worth more than a regular soldier on the battlefield. Interestingly being close to a unit marked with the 'command' attribute does confer a morale bonus - for example, the Legionary First Cohort.

Excellent! Yes, they look very cool, so much so that every pre & post Marian reform legionary unit in the game deserves to have them. Now that I know they don't boost a unit's combat ratings I'll mod them in. And I did know about the command status of Legionary First Cohorts. Thanks for the response!

[Midnight]

Will it be possible to include custom wonders of the world?

[japinard]

Jerome - First of all I'd like to say thank you so much for answering so many questions. It's really appreciated. I have 2 basic question for you:

1. When you said, "It is worth noting that there is a set of pre-determined likes and dislikes which is baked into the faction setup, as well. Does that mean they're hardcoded? If it isn't, could you say what file it's in?

2. I'm trying to make a new campaign and am trying to understand the AI preferences such as Napoleon, Mao, Stalin, Smith, Henry, Balanced, etc. If I had even a basic understanding of what these are, I feel I could really get the factions to do what I'd like as far as balance is concerned. I'll list the options here, if you'd like to just post a super quick line after each to describe the tendancies it creates. If you can answer this, I will be thrilled beyond belief! Thank you! sincerely,
jpinard

* Trader
* Balanced
* Comfortable
* Bureaucrat
* Religion
* Fortified
* Sailor

* Napoleon
* Caesar
* Genghis
* Stalin
* Mao
* Henry
* Smith