Sinner
08-25-2004, 01:17
I found a useful editor called Vedit, that gives you the readability of Notepad, while still keeping the all important non-text characters unaltered. The bad news is that you have to pay for it ~:( , although you can use a 30-day trial version. ~:)
It makes editing far easier than standard hex editors, although like the old MTW prod and startpos files, you do have to make sure you don't break the format rules for the RTW data file.
For those trying to add the Senate to Trebia, have a look at the Tutorial, which has the House of Julii, the Senate and the Gauls. It shows how to set up an ally (the Senate in this case) to gain access to units otherwise unavailable - for example the battlefield graphics for Roman heavy cavalry don't exist for the House of Julii, but obviously do for the Senate since they're used in the Tutorial battle.
I suspect that you have to have a general for every faction in a battle, playable or non-playable, so a chopped-down Senate army to enable you to have a unit of Roman heavy cavalry at Trebia probably has to look like this...
In the Factions Section for Trebia, immediately after the similar declaration for the other 2 factions,, add the following:
faction romans_senate
character Decius Brutus, general, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 20, , x 94, y 72
army
unit roman generals guard cavalry early soldiers 10 exp 5 armour 1 weapon_lvl 1
unit roman heavy cavalry soldiers 40 exp 5 armour 1 weapon_lvl 1
The second set of stats for the Trebia units can be ignored as far as I can tell. Not 100% sure why it's there, but I guess it's a fragment left over from an early build of the battle.
In the Battle Section alter the Julii alliance to read:
alliance romans_julii, romans_senate, attacking
Followed by the addition of:
army romans_senate, 0, no_withdraw, supporting_armies 0, reform_point -1000, 0
deployment_area_point -840.872, 362.566
deployment_area_point 183.633, 381.557
deployment_area_point 161.842, -54.581
deployment_area_point -669.800, -73.861
unit 0, -649.121, 164.287, 93, formation_type square, formation_width 16.493
unit 1, -649.121, 134.287, 93, formation_type square, formation_width 15.762
In the Army Scripting Section, after the similar declaration for the other 2 factions, add:
label_unit 1 1 0 senate_general
label_unit 1 1 1 senate_heavy_cav
I haven't checked, but I believe that the labels 'senate_general', 'ROMAN_velite1', etc just have to be unique identifiers for the battle so that you can identify the specific unit, you could have labels of Sleepy, Bashful, Grumpy, etc and it won't matter, just as long as they're unique. The link between this labels and the actual unit is the unit ID column - the 3rd number after 'label_unit' - which matches against the unit declarations in the Faction Section, with the first unit being ID 0 for that faction, the second ID 1, etc.
You technically don't have to add any scripting records for a unit, in which case it will just stand there unless attacked I guess, or until you actually order it to do something. The scripting allows formation of groups, attacks on specfic targets by selected units, setting of skirmish mode on or off, setting morale, setting monitors on casualties or ammo level when to rout or perform some other action, setting monitors on enemy proximity to trigger an action, etc. Time delays can also be added and various bits of junk to do with cinematic effects & camera changes.
A couple of extra notes: I don't think you can have more than 4 of any one unit type in the demo - every time I try to swap the hastati for 4 more princeps for example, it locks up or CTDs - and you can have archers as the House of Julii. It might be possible to add the merc units to the House of Julii, but I haven't tried yet.
It makes editing far easier than standard hex editors, although like the old MTW prod and startpos files, you do have to make sure you don't break the format rules for the RTW data file.
For those trying to add the Senate to Trebia, have a look at the Tutorial, which has the House of Julii, the Senate and the Gauls. It shows how to set up an ally (the Senate in this case) to gain access to units otherwise unavailable - for example the battlefield graphics for Roman heavy cavalry don't exist for the House of Julii, but obviously do for the Senate since they're used in the Tutorial battle.
I suspect that you have to have a general for every faction in a battle, playable or non-playable, so a chopped-down Senate army to enable you to have a unit of Roman heavy cavalry at Trebia probably has to look like this...
In the Factions Section for Trebia, immediately after the similar declaration for the other 2 factions,, add the following:
faction romans_senate
character Decius Brutus, general, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 20, , x 94, y 72
army
unit roman generals guard cavalry early soldiers 10 exp 5 armour 1 weapon_lvl 1
unit roman heavy cavalry soldiers 40 exp 5 armour 1 weapon_lvl 1
The second set of stats for the Trebia units can be ignored as far as I can tell. Not 100% sure why it's there, but I guess it's a fragment left over from an early build of the battle.
In the Battle Section alter the Julii alliance to read:
alliance romans_julii, romans_senate, attacking
Followed by the addition of:
army romans_senate, 0, no_withdraw, supporting_armies 0, reform_point -1000, 0
deployment_area_point -840.872, 362.566
deployment_area_point 183.633, 381.557
deployment_area_point 161.842, -54.581
deployment_area_point -669.800, -73.861
unit 0, -649.121, 164.287, 93, formation_type square, formation_width 16.493
unit 1, -649.121, 134.287, 93, formation_type square, formation_width 15.762
In the Army Scripting Section, after the similar declaration for the other 2 factions, add:
label_unit 1 1 0 senate_general
label_unit 1 1 1 senate_heavy_cav
I haven't checked, but I believe that the labels 'senate_general', 'ROMAN_velite1', etc just have to be unique identifiers for the battle so that you can identify the specific unit, you could have labels of Sleepy, Bashful, Grumpy, etc and it won't matter, just as long as they're unique. The link between this labels and the actual unit is the unit ID column - the 3rd number after 'label_unit' - which matches against the unit declarations in the Faction Section, with the first unit being ID 0 for that faction, the second ID 1, etc.
You technically don't have to add any scripting records for a unit, in which case it will just stand there unless attacked I guess, or until you actually order it to do something. The scripting allows formation of groups, attacks on specfic targets by selected units, setting of skirmish mode on or off, setting morale, setting monitors on casualties or ammo level when to rout or perform some other action, setting monitors on enemy proximity to trigger an action, etc. Time delays can also be added and various bits of junk to do with cinematic effects & camera changes.
A couple of extra notes: I don't think you can have more than 4 of any one unit type in the demo - every time I try to swap the hastati for 4 more princeps for example, it locks up or CTDs - and you can have archers as the House of Julii. It might be possible to add the merc units to the House of Julii, but I haven't tried yet.