Guide To Adding New Cultures - Discussion

[Dol Guldur]

I already had this thought but the problem with adding the file - if you read back - was not with a file containing old references to R:TW slots :(

Again, I'm willing to be proved wrong ;)

[nikolai1962]

Great guide, very clear.

I followed it to add a 7th culture to 1.5. No problems so far.

[Dol Guldur]

Thank you.

Glad to be of help.

[nikolai1962]

Odd problem adding a 7th culture in 1.5

Normally, when you double-click on an ai faction city you get the scroll with a lot of question-marks. It always displays defenses and ports though, if they are present.

If i start a campaign as one of the factions that i assigned to my new "steppe" culture and look in a city with a wall or port then it is fine, the building graphic and text open no problem. However if i double-click on a steppe-culture city that belongs to the ai, and that city has either a wall or a port, then the game crashs. If i remove the wall/port from the descr_strat and start up again i can double-click the city no problem.

Just wondering if anyone had come across and soved this problem?

[alpaca]

Sounds as if the game can't find a tooltip, a file or something to me...
Might be something completely different, though ;)

[Dol Guldur]

Might need to see some screenshots of the former display problem - no, I've not come across it. You get display problems when something has not been coded in for a new culture - like the diplomacy messages etc.

As for the CTD, sounds like the culture change has caused some problems with the old culture-faction assignments as build requirements in EDB. Remember that although the cultural terms may still make sense culturally the factions may not if they have been specified as a faction rather than the culture.

If you post which faction has been reassigned the new culture and post the edb section showing the problem building tree I might be able to see the problem.

[nikolai1962]

The display bit is fine, just the normal thing of getting question-marks instead of the buildings when you double-click an ai city when you don't have a spy close.

The code is below. As you can see i am using all cultures.

wooden_pallisade requires factions { barbarian, steppe, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian, greek, roman, } and building_present_min_level government_types govtype4 or building_present_min_level barbgovs barbgov4 or building_present_min_level nomadsett smallstlmnt
        {
            capability
            {
                wall_level 0
                tower_level 1
            }
            construction  2
            cost  800
            settlement_min town
            upgrades
            {
                wooden_wall
            }
        }

I'd normally expect an instant ctd when the game tries to display an info scroll to be related to a text error somewhere but doesn't seem to be. Plus that would normally (i think) show up the same way when you right-clicked a building in one of your own cities. If I start as one of the steppe culture factions and look at a port/wall in one of my starting cities it is fine but not if i start as another faction and then double-click the same city. Strange.

Just wondered if anyone had seen it. I'll try making copies of the port/wall graphics and renaming them steppe instead of the barb ones the culture file is pointing at.

Ty both for comments.

[Dol Guldur]

I've not seen a distinction between the AI and Local faction during play; what can the AI do that the player cannot in this regard?

Have you tried using the faction name(s) instead of the new culture?

[nikolai1962]

I've not seen a distinction between the AI and Local faction during play; what can the AI do that the player cannot in this regard?

Have you tried using the faction name(s) instead of the new culture?

The only distinction is the AI doesn't randomly double-click on enemy cities whereas I do sometimes when i'm thinking (thereby discovering the ctd) :)

I'll try that idea. Ty again

[PROMETHEUS]

is possible to add completely new walls to this culture that do not use any model by the others and is not a retexture ?

[cyaneopubescens]

That's a great guide, however I still bump into problems...

For a long time I've wanted to make a LOTR mod but knowing that that would be total suicide I've come to the conclusion that simply adding an Orcish culture to BI would already be fun enough.

I have two choices for doing that, modingfying an old culture, or doing what you did so nicely - adding a new one and then modding it.

My first try at following your guide ended in failure however. After step 11 the game wouldn't start anymore, it crashed after the first copyright screen. So obviously something is wrong and I have to spend time figuring that out.

However, I have a few questions if you don't mind me asking:

- When following step 6 in your guide one will end up with "barbarian, chinese, chinese, ..." in three places in the BI data\export_descr_buildings.txt. is that intentional or accident? I figured only one mention would be nessessary and removed the extras. I don't know if that possibly was a mistake.

- In step 11 you say "We need to change *all* of these in the same manner as with the cities", does that mean editing them in export_descr_buildings.txt too, because I don't see where the buildings are mentioned bound to culture in that file. Or do you mean that if one changes the name from for example cesspit to goopit that one has to edit THAT in the txt?

- Are steps 12 through 15 "Must do's" or just guidelines for further modding that don't nessessarily have to be implemented?

- One of the most important questions: Should the game be able to run between each of the steps in your guide? Because that would be a great debugging tool if I knew that, or after what steps the game can be started or not.

Thanks!

[Dol Guldur]

Thanks for the post - I will address your questions as soon as I can, but the next few days are very hectic and critical here at the Fourth Age.

Suffice to say for now, a number of people have it working without any problems so please check that you have followed the instructions correctly. Some of your comments suggest you have not. I'll make a proper post as soon as I can.

[cyaneopubescens]

Yeah I'm sure I missed something since several people, including you have it all working. I've made a clean install now (though 1.6!) and backup and will have another go at it from scratch.

BTW, there is another question I wanted to adress:
You state the following: "This Guide requires that you have unpacked the PAK files in the manner prescribed in the readme for that software."
I did not find the readme very helpful in regard to telling me what paks to unpack, so I only used xpak on "ui_1.pak" as suggested here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=49498
I got the feeling that was all I needed, correct?

Thanks for your support! :)

[cyaneopubescens]

Ok, I've done it this time and I've done it right. It must have been the step 6 problem, there was no double mention of the cultures this time.

Now I wonder about two more things:
- In the settlement details the religious symbols for the breakdown of religious belief are missing. Any idea about that problem? (Remember, I modded 1.6, maybe that's the problem)
- The culture still stands as the Lombardi in most instances: in the chose culture screen, in-game on the map... can that be changed?

Sorry about the load of questions. I'll be trying to get at those issues myself, so I'm only asking to cut time in case you or someone else already knows the answers.

[reahad]

You didn't mention anything about the generals, lesser_generals. Do they appear as the Barbarian generals or do you have to model new ones?

[Dol Guldur]

Reahad,

That question is not relevant to culture but to faction, generals are assigned to the faction or factions you are using in the new culture in exactly the same way regardless of whether or not you have an extra culture.

See descr_character.txt

[reahad]

Reahad,

That question is not relevant to culture but to faction, generals are assigned to the faction or factions you are using in the new culture in exactly the same way regardless of whether or not you have an extra culture.

See descr_character.txt

Thats not what I meant. I was talking about the generals on the campaign map, NOT on the battle map. I guess my question wasn't that clear.

[Lusted]

Same thing. It's assinged in descr_characters.txt.

[reahad]

Dol Guldur: Can you please post samples of the files that you edited (especially the ones dealing with the music,voices,sounds)?
I tried adding an Indian culture as a copy of the Eastern one and it didn't work. When I tested it in a custom battle, I had the captain saying the correct lines, but in the Roman voice.

[Dol Guldur]

Have you added the "Indian" entry (a copy of the Eastern one I presume) in export_descr_sounds_prebattle.txt?

Roman is what the game will default to if you've not coded such things in. See Step 13 in the Guide.

[Neon twilight]

I'm trying to give egyptian culture eastern buildings so It's just a matter of using the same building models for both culture

I've red the tutorial and only made changes regarding settlement plans in descr_settlement_plan and I still got egyptian buildings on the battle map, what's wrong ? did I missed something ?

plans
{
    plan    Egyptian_Fort		       eastern_fort.txt
	plan	Egyptian_Village		eastern_village.txt
	plan	Egyptian_Town		      eastern_town.txt
	plan	Egyptian_Large_Town        eastern_large_town.txt
	plan	Egyptian_City			eastern_city.txt
	plan	Egyptian_Large_City	     eastern_large_city.txt
	plan	Egyptian_Huge_City	    eastern_huge_city.txt

plans_by_level
{

plan_levels		Egyptian_plan_levels
	{
		village	 Eastern_Village
		town		 Eastern_Town
		large_town     Eastern_Large_Town
		city		  Eastern_City
		large_city	Eastern_Large_City
		huge_city	Eastern_Huge_City

plan_set default_set
	{
		locale any
		;default		test_levels

		roman			Roman_plan_levels
		greek			 Greek_plan_levels
		carthaginian	       Carthaginian_plan_levels
		egyptian		Eastern_plan_levels
		eastern			Eastern_plan_levels
		barbarian		Barbarian_plan_levels

[Dol Guldur]

Neon,

I've added a link to Step 14 that is related. I wanted to have it for reference anyway. I think it may help you:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55841

[Neon twilight]

Thanks It has solved my problem.

[Squid]

I know this is an old thread, but I found something that is missing from the guide (or at least I didn't spot after reading it through a couple of times):

In step 6, you add the new culture to EDB, but no note is given that you also have to edit export_buildings.txt because there are no entries there for your new culture, so any buildings that is culturally (and not factionally) specified in export_buildings will not have an ingame description.

[Dol Guldur]

Thx Squid - I've added in a bit of text to highlight this. All text files that reference culture may of course ge affected.

[Squid]

Interesting bug I've come across. I had completed all steps except for step 14 and changing all the text entries in the data/text folder that aren't listed in the guide. The game loaded and everything seemed to be working correctly, except I noticed I was missing building descriptions. I added in all the missing building descriptions, changed the rest of files in data/text that needed changing, and did step 14 by adding nomad to all culture blocks that had barbarian listed as a culture.

			cultures
			{	
				barbarian
				nomad  <--- this was added to all barbarian culture blocks
			}

The problem is that now when I load RTW, the game loads, but there is no menu options on the main screen. If I click on the single player option (by choosing the top option where the mouse cursor changes) then choose any option on the next menu (again no text), the game instantly CTDs.

Any ideas of what is causing the problem?

[Dol Guldur]

None at all. As other mods have a seventh culture working (in BI and RTW) I can only suggest you backtrack and see if you can narrow down the cause.

[Monkwarrior]

I can only say that I added the nomad culture to ITW mod for RTW following the tutorial without problems. And the file descr_settlement_plans was modified in the same way, including the nomad culture in all the barbarian slots.

My advice is the same as Dol Guldur.

[Squid]

That's what I ended up having to do, I undid all the work and redid it and had no problem the second time. I figure I messed up something in one of the files in data/text. An interesting thing I did note, I tried to add an entry {SMT_CULTURE_NOMAD} to strat.txt, right after the barbarian entry at the top, and all the in game entries from below that were off by one. It appears that the order of the entries in strat.txt matters.

[Monkwarrior]

That's what I ended up having to do, I undid all the work and redid it and had no problem the second time. I figure I messed up something in one of the files in data/text. An interesting thing I did note, I tried to add an entry {SMT_CULTURE_NOMAD} to strat.txt, right after the barbarian entry at the top, and all the in game entries from below that were off by one. It appears that the order of the entries in strat.txt matters.

Yes, not only in that file. I found a similar result, but I cannot remember in which file. It was something related to a victory text for a non-playable faction, and everything below this new line was moved.