MTWED 1.0

[MonkeyMan]

MTWED Post

Just a little something I have been working on. My intention is to make a complete MTW editor that allows you to mod in a traditional way but removing the ability to make syntax or structural errors and also provides a few preset operations to save time and enable ‘cheats’ for the novice user who doesn’t like to get their hands dirty.

I’m aware that conceptually I was beaten by a few days by lord gnome *shakes fist* http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif I assure you I have been lightly working in this for a month or so when I had a free minuate but a little competition never hurt and his program is currently much more useful to existing modders. Anyhow I feel it is different enough in target audience and concept that I am yet to be discouraged from continuing.

Anyway, the current functionality is basically there as a test of the main part of the program and that is the loading into an array and saving of the crusader_unit_prod.txt without breaking anything to the extent that MTW won't run.

Anyway the current functionality is to:

enable/disable footknights
enable a faction to build all their religions units (& reset back to their defaults)
disable the period limitations of the units/re-enable

The file without any documentation is avaliable here:

MTWED Download (www.geocities.com/richhenderson10/MTWED_1.0.zip)

(please note this file download will claim it doesn't work because it is linked to from another site stupid geocities.

try typing www.geocities.com/richhenderson10/MTWED_1.0.zip in manually or copy and past from here http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif )

If you want to download it and see what I'm doing I would appreciate it you would give me any feedback on it either here or to

rich@richhenderson10.fsnet.co.uk

So any suggestions for functionality you would like to see, errors you have found (attatch the crusaders_unit.prod11.txt file produced and the crash.txt) or just to tell me I'm wasting my time http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

If you do go so far as using it, be aware of the following:

1. Make sure you back up your (C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War\crusaders_unit_prod11.txt) this program will change it and may well break it The program currently only uses this file.

2. It will create the files crusader_unit_prod11.txt and crusaders_unit_MTWED.txt in the directory you place the .exe in, so if you put it in the MTW directory it will overwrite the existing file.

3. MTW must be installed in the default directory for the program to find the files it needs.

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What I'm doing next -

I intend to make a unit by unit editor section with the 50 relevant entries (per unit) and drop down dialogues, radio buttons, text edit boxes. any descriptions and documentation, such that you can happily edit the file without the problem of making an illegal entry or sytax mistake.

Add in a similar section for projectiles/build/startpos.

A section that links each of these together. For example if you wanted to edit a particular unit you would select it and recieve a window that shows their provinces, units and buildings they can build (with links to edit them).

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Anyhow needless to say this is at an early stage and could be in danger of expanding beyond my programing talent or patience but watch this space. I appriciate anyone who wants to give it a go, I havn't a won't for the time being upload it to the org, simply because it is subject to change in the near future and lacks functionality or proper documentation.

[Lord Gnome]

Hi Monkeyman http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif *shakes fist back* http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

just think if you had released yours a couple of weeks ago I might not have bothered http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

Still, sounds like MTWEd will have slightly different functionality and be a bit more idiot-proof than mine. The GnomeEditor just gets the format right, the data is left at the mercy of the user. I will have build/projectile functionality very soon though (just testing it now.). Competition is surely not a problem, I'm sure ppl would rather have a choice of tools than not.

good luck with startpos files, I'm not even 100% on the format and rules yet alone the complicated value checking you would need if your going to validate the data...
The more I think about it the more complex it is, for example: for every makeUnit: statement in startpos you need to check the specific unit's culture column in unit_prod11 against the culture of the region owner (in a setRegionOwner: statement) in startpos, and add a culture flag if they conflict. There's a lot of work in getting this one right.

btw - I d/loaded MTWEd but it can't find my MTW directory (which isn't in the default it's in C:\games\MTW.) is there any chance you can let the user specify the MTW directory if it fails to find it?

happy programming,

[MonkeyMan]

when i said the MTW directory I mean't C:\program files\total war\Medieval - Total War\ i.e. the same one with crusaders_unit_prod11.txt in, it will work in any dir but will always save the file it is working on to it's current directory.

I share your feelings about startpos files, making sure the few things I have implimented didn't break stuff was hard enough, but I think a non-idiot proof version would be the start point for a version that did clever stuff. Or even one that only allowed you to make a new file based on an existing one that allowed the editing of the simpler stuff and effectivly left the rest alone to be copied as is. Anyhow that's all for the future assuming the other bits can be done to my satisfation first.

Thanks for the response, I was expecting tumbleweed to start blowing across my screen in a minute http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

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