not enough introduction; too many stickies

[MajorFreak]

okay, folks, sorry for raining on your parade but this forum is a mess. Not to mention i have a serious gripe with information about "total war: realism" having little to no easily gotten "features"

I've spent about 1/2hr and i still haven't any idea about realism modification. All you folks reaching for the "quick flame" button should realize that the vast majority of folks play 'vanilla' and are quite leary of what amounts to glorified hackers telling them to download and install something unknown, just to "try it out"

i'm not interested in "trying it out"...you might call me a troll, but i think i'm pretty brave just to say something completely honest: This forum is horribly user-unfriendly.

would somebody please clean up all the stickies and have some sort of coherent structure that's going to attract people like me to try out some of the hard work you folks have put into this stuff?

[Myrddraal]

Hey MajorFreak, I'm sorry about this...

I see what you mean about the number of stickies... How about this, we create a new subforum for research threads and dump them all in there. We can't get rid of them, they contain valuable info for the modders.

Let me try to explain, the Forge is where you'll find mods in development, along with the hosted mods section: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=74
Some of those are for MTW so be careful.

What mod were you interested in? Rome Total Realism... I'm sure someone can provide you with a link.

[Epistolary Richard]

We have a parade? I'm there! ~:joker:

Seriously though, in part he has a point and in part it's the nature of the beast. As these are modding forums they can properly expect a certain level of sophistication and discernment in their patrons and not have to lead people by the nose to the same extent as forums such as the Entrance Hall.

As for spreading the news of mods to other users: if a mod team wants to attract non-modders to use their mod then they should post an announcement in the single player or the multiplayer forums - as they are their target audience. Modders post on these forums to talk about mods in development, to ask and answer modding questions and to publicise anything that should be known to the modding community.

As to a dedicated research forum: the General forum _is_ essentially the research forum, it's where people go to ask questions and to post new discoveries. People who want to get into modding should be heading over to the Guides forum where the the tutorials provide a far better introduction to modding than could be provided here.

As a research forum, the general forum is necessarily a bit imposing. Modding RTW is a huge subject and there is far more important knowledge here than in other forums. That knowledge, because of the diversity of the subject, can be highly fragmented. Vital information for graphics, modelling, coding, scripting and editing can be quite complex and utterly irrelevant for people not working in those areas.

That all being said.... there are ways that the current set-up can be closer aligned to the forum's objectives:

1) The "General" forum, while all-encompassing is possibly not the most helpful title. If it was called the "Modding Questions" forum or "Modding Research" of "Modding Questions & Research" ~D then it might lead to fewer misdirected threads.

2) The "Welcome to the General Forum" thread looks like it was intended to be an initial hello thread when the forum was first started and it doesn't really contain any useful information that isn't linked more visibly elsewhere. The top post there should be rewritten to more use to first time visitors or preferably be unstuck and a new stickied thread take its place which would be clear of the reply trail.

Doesn't have to be anything big, just something like:
-------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to the General forum: this forum was created as a place to ask and answer questions about modifying the game of Rome: Total War and as somwhere you can post and read the latest discoveries and modding breakthroughs about how the game works.

If you've come here in search of information about a specific mod, you may like to check out our Forge (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=76) sub-forum for mods in development or the Hosted Mods (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=74) area for major modification projects by community members.

If you'd like to learn how to modify your game then check out the tutorials and walk-throughs in the Guides, Tutorials & Tools (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=77) sub-forum.

If you're looking for some specific modding information then you might find what you're after in one of our Important Modding Information threads. see below for more on this

etc. etc.
-------------------------------------------------------


3) There are quite a few stickies; some of these are active research topics and are rightfully there, others have fallen dormant because the information has been posted and questions have been answered. Ideally we'd go through the dormant ones and prune out the vital information to make it more obvious. However that wouldn't reduce the number of them as - because they cover such diverse areas - each one would probably need its own identifying thread, plus it's not always obvious what's the important info and what's not.

Instead, what we could do is have something similar to therother's Forum Index for the Colosseum. You have one thread called Important Modding Information Threads (or the Look Here First thread or, as therother suggested, Don't Look Here thread) and that would contain a link to the thread and a brief description of the important information contained in there (after all sometimes the title isn't that obvious). The dormant stickies can then be unstuck and allowed to drift down the forum.

So, if we say a dormant thread is one that hasn't been posted in the last month it might look something like this:

-------------------------------------------------------
Complex conditionals for recruiting and building (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=39925)
Contains detail on additional conditionals for specifying the recruitment capabilities of buildings in export_descr_buildings namely 'or' and 'not'.

A quick question from a modding newbie... (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=43442)
Contains detail on modifying bonuses provided by buildings in export_descr_buildings and why farms can't be made a recruitment conditional for units

Console commands & command line options for modders? (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=41775)
I can't claim to understand this but it looks really important.

Modding suggestions for the next patch (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37762)
Contains requests for additional modding support to be included in the next RTW patch. Which is out now.

Post your "must-know" modding questions here! (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37359)
This thread is now closed. It contains answers from CA staffer JeromeGrasdyke to modding questions posed by the community.

Uploader for RTW files. (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37799)
Contains an upload script for RTW files.
-------------------------------------------------------

BTW the link for Rome Total Realism is, unsurprisingly enough, www.rometotalrealism.com
It can be easily found by typing "Rome Total Realism" into a website called Google, which is a popular search engine.

[Myrddraal]

Thats pretty detailed ER, I might just sticky it :wink:

This is what it says in the synopsis of the guild forums:

RTW modification:
There are 3 forums that deal with modifying Rome: Total War. Each subforum has a specific purpose so please post in the right one.

For people who do not know what modifications, or in short mods, are; CA made it possible for people (modders) to replace/edit a whole lot of game files. There are mods that just tweak the game but there are also total conversions that give the game an entire new feel, look and gameplay. Mods are not hacks or illegal, CA even encourages the modding community by providing some tools. If you want to play safe then only use mods that are out of the beta phase.


General: (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=73) If you don't know where to post a thread about modding then post it here. It is meant for the following:
Asking questions. If you ask politely and with a post title that covers the questions then you have a much larger chance to get an answer.
Advertising. When you want to advertise your mod then you can do this here.
Informing fellow modders. Sometimes a new discovery has been made or a bug has been found that affect mods.

Forge: (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=76) This subforum is solely for developing mods. Each mod gets a single thread. These threads are primarily meant for development so do not spam or chat in there since it will only hinder the modders.
Guides, Tutorials and Tools: (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=77) The title says it all, but still it is occasionally misunderstood. You should only post a new thread here if you want to write a guide, tutorial or post your tool. You should only reply to a thread when it relates directly to something written in an existing thread. If you have a question only related to the subject then post it in the General forum.
This forum is meant for providing answers before a question was asked and not to answer questions. Requests for guides, tutorials or tools also belong in the General forum.
I guess we missed out the research bit. I'll ask to update it.

[Epistolary Richard]

This was just an example of what might go into an Important Modding Information index thread. Dormant threads could then be unstuck and allowed to bob up and down depending on interest without fear that the information in them would be lost. Ideally it would have to be maintained by a moderator because then you could unstick a thread as it became dormant and update the index thread at the same time. Hopefully the moderator would be better able to summarise what the important info in the thread was :goofy:. But of course that's more work for the moderator.

Alternatively, the IMI index thread could be maintained by a normal member and incorporate all the stickied threads along with a description and the moderator could then stick and unstick at their discretion, confident that the infomation won't be lost.

Of course, if no threads are ever unstuck, then the index would become just another sticky at the top of the forum which somewhat defeats the purpose.

This example (saying dormant if unposted for a month) would leave us with eleven stickies, limiting it to two weeks would leave us with nine, one week seven (including a Welcome and an IMI thread).



Asking questions. If you ask politely and with a post title that covers the questions then you have a much larger chance to get an answer.
Informing fellow modders. Sometimes a new discovery has been made or a bug has been found that affect mods.

These two kind of cover the whole research thing anyway, but I guess it could be more explicit.



This is what it says in the synopsis of the guild forums:

Hmmm... where is this? (Edit: in the Entry Hall) Perhaps this can replace the current Welcome thread.

Oh, perhaps also include a link to Hosted Mods as not all developing mods are in the Forge.

On the same note, not all mods maintain threads development threads on the Org, as in the example at the top of this thread where MajorFreak has spent half an hour looking for the RTR mod (I presume), when as far as I'm aware the only connection that RTR has with the Org is that several of its members post here. :laugh4:

So a link to any other major mod development centres might not be out of line either.

[MajorFreak]

my thanks for that index sticky, i saw it immediately upon entering. I like to play the game the way the developers "intended" the game to be played, with only a few minor tweaks.

i really don't like wardogs and would like to see them reduced in pack size, is this possible? I also find that i never get enough playtime with my pre-marius troops (since i adore triarii) so i'm going to try that "more non-winter seasons" not only to delay the inevitable but also to fight more battle without the darned snow...though i'm worried that i won't get the old seasonal preference for weather - i miss fog. I also want to up the base unit size to get a more realistic phalanx line.

so wardogs/triarii phalanx/more turns/base unit size mod would be great, but i'd prefer an index of all the "tweaks" as well. It would be even nicer to see that index list what major balance tweaks mods do (and if they contain ALOT that should be simply noted)getting a feel for the "minimalist" versus "complex" versus "total conversion" would be awesomei'm installing the available tweaks, but have yet to find a decent wardogs tweak.



oh, btw, is there a way to reduce the ammo for chariot archers? it's awe-inspiring but reduces my Briton experience to a win-game button. oh, and on that topic, is there a way to increase the ammo for horse javelins, cause it's depressingly low? couldn't find any wardog tweak got the triarii tweak more turns mod seems to be a dead link base unit size is actually and ingame option anyways. doh

[Epistolary Richard]

You won't find many small 'tweak' mods because it's normally simpler just to tell the person how to make the change and leave it up to their personal preference (it also means that you don't run the risk of overwriting other changes you've made to the same file). As such any index of 'tweaks' so to speak would be little more than a series of 'how to mod' guides, the list of which you can find on our Guides, Tutorials & Tools forum.

For major mods, the place to look should always be in their readme file or in their initial release post which should document the changes that have been made. If the modders want to they can maintain a living readme (or a link to one) in the Forge of the changes they'd made.

There's no standardised terminology to describe mods re the extent of the changes they make. The idea has been discussed but it's never caught on. There are broad categories (of which you can find out a little more here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=45621)) but it's rather incumbent on the modder to describe his mod accurately to his audience using whatever terminology he thinks is appropriate.

---------------

Wardogs and ammunition can be easily adjusted in your export_descr_unit file

Wardogs
Here's the entry:

type barb wardogs briton
dictionary barb_wardogs_briton ; Warhounds
category handler
class heavy
voice_type Light_1
soldier barb_handler, 12, 36, 1.2
animal wardogs
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest
formation 2.2, 2.2, 3, 3, 3, horde
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 6, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, knife, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 14, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, other, piercing, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 1, 2, leather
stat_sec_armour 2, 1, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 2, -2, 3, 2
stat_mental 4, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 40
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 610, 40, 60, 80, 510
ownership britons

If you want to halve their number just change this line:

soldier barb_handler, 12, 36, 1.2

to


soldier barb_handler, 6, 18, 1.2

The 6 is the number of soldiers (6 is the minimum) and 18 is the number of dogs.


Ammunition


type barb chariot light briton
dictionary barb_chariot_light_briton ; British Light Chariots
category cavalry
class missile
voice_type Medium_1
soldier barb_chariot_archer, 18, 9, 1
mount barbarian heavy chariot
mount_effect elephant -8, camel -4
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, frighten_foot, cantabrian_circle
formation 8.5, 9, 15, 15, 2, square
stat_health 1, 2
stat_pri 14, 5, arrow, 120, 60, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 10, 7, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr launching, ap
stat_pri_armour 3, 1, 0, leather
stat_sec_armour 0, 1, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 0, -2, -4, 2
stat_mental 12, impetuous, untrained
stat_charge_dist 40
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 500, 170, 50, 80, 500
ownership britons

Look at this line:


stat_pri 14, 5, arrow, 120, 60, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1

The 60 is the ammunition, reduce it for those you want to have less (minimum of 2) increase it for those you want to have more.

Multiple turns
Myrddraal had to take the script generator down for a short while and will upload it again as soon as he gets the chance.

[Simetrical]

"Glorified hackers"? Excuse me, what the heck? We're no more glorified hackers than CA is. (Now, Vercingetorix, he might be a glorified hacker, since he's cracked file specifications, but he does deserve to be glorified perhaps more than anyone else in the community.) I appreciate most of your problems with the forum layout, but there's no need for sniping at those who prefer a different game from vanilla, and in fact such sniping is strictly against forum rules.

-Simetrical

[Epistolary Richard]

Yes, that remark was the part of the post I was trying to ignore. Certainly, I feel that in my case I deserve neither the compliment nor the opprobrium. I also felt the forum was ill-served in being condemned for its dearth of certain information when it is so easily available by other means and we have members such as yourself who are willing to give up their time to guide the interested.

However, whatever the initiation, progress has been made as a result. By the way, you mentioned that you appreciated his difficulties with the forum layout, I'd be very interested in any suggestions of how we can all improve the situation.

[Simetrical]

Well, we could have a welcome thread that actually contains useful links. That would be a good start.

-Simetrical

[MajorFreak]

and we got it...to me, that new "index" thread caught my eye immediately (and what i'd been looking for when i first poked my nose in here)

and i still think yer glorified hackers. hehe *runs*


mmmm...and thanks for the ammo. found the dog thing myself but i crashed the game cause i think i tried to reduce the dog number non-relative to the handlers.



and, dude, you should get the moderator to quote you in tha....nm, i'll do it.

[Myrddraal]

There is a minimum of 2 dogs per handler I think.


Well, we could have a welcome thread that actually contains useful links. That would be a good start.

K, I've been assistant mod for the modders for a while, but I only just took DJs place. Any suggestions are helpfull. I think that the index is a great idea, but would you prefer a more detailed intro thread as well. Maybe containing links to good guides for newbies or something...

[Epistolary Richard]

Per modding guides, horsearcher on twc compiled one http://www.twcenter.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=21530
Here’s a suggestion for a welcome thread.

------------------------------------
Welcome to the General forum: this forum was created as a place to ask and answer questions about modifying the game of Rome: Total War and as somewhere you can post and read the latest discoveries and modding breakthroughs about how the game works.

Learning to mod
If you’re interested in learning to modify your game then read through some of the tutorials on the Guides, Tutorials and Tools (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=77) forum and have a go at following one that captures your interest. Once you've done those you'll start to get an idea of how things tie together and what can and can’t be accomplished.
After you’ve followed a few tutorials have a read through what other posters have written on the General (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=73) forum. There you can read the answers to many common modding questions. You can also view the General forum archive (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/archive/index.php/f-73-p-1.html) where you will find every single thread posted here. You may well find that any questions you have have already been answered – plus many more topics that might inspire you as to how you might like to mod your game.

Structure of the modding forums
General (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=73):
If you don't know where to post a thread about modding then post it here. It is meant for the following:
- Asking questions. If you ask politely and with a post title that covers the questions then you have a much larger chance to get an answer.
- Research. Threads researching how to mod the game or announcing a new discovery should be posted here.

Forge (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=76):
This subforum is solely for developing mods. Each mod gets a single thread. These threads are primarily meant for development so do not spam or chat in there since it will only hinder the modders.

Guides, Tutorials and Tools (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=77):
The title says it all, but still it is occasionally misunderstood. You should only post a new thread here if you want to write a guide, tutorial or post your tool. You should only reply to a thread when it relates directly to something written in an existing thread. If you have a question only related to the subject then post it in the General forum.
This forum is meant for providing answers before a question was asked and not to answer questions. Requests for guides, tutorials or tools also belong in the General forum.
--------------------
WARNING – forum names may change without notice!

[Myrddraal]

Thanks a ton ER, once again you save me trouble. I've copied this to the intro thread. Thx.

[Epistolary Richard]

--------------------
WARNING – forum names may change without notice!
Aha, this was just a joke BTW... or at most an aide-memoir Should any the forums change their name we'll need to edit the welcome post (and the corresponding one in the Entry Hall) or it'll be even more confusing :dizzy:

It's just a dolled up version of the original forum summary, but I've realised that I didn't put an additional line break between some paragraphs (I was writing in Word) so you might want to space it out more.

LOST: one skeleton - owner DJ - warning, may bite people who post in the wrong forum - reward considered... or am I just on the wrong avatar settings?

On a similar house-keeping note: the list of mods referenced in the stickied thread on the Forge doesn't exist (and never has as far as I'm aware).

Also, the "Posting a thread that doesn't contain tool/tutorial/guide will result in a ban!" thread in the GTT forum - while highly amusing - is perhaps not the image of the effectiveness of moderation that, moving forwards, you would like to promote.

[Myrddraal]

At least it makes people read it :smile: No I don't think I'll delete that ER, its a legacy of DJ, in the future people will visit it to see how "things were once done".

What list of mods?

[Epistolary Richard]

Well, quite.

From Welcome to the Mod development forum!

A list of all mods
To make it clearer for non-modders which mods are under development we will have a stickied post that will contain a list of all modifications, with a small general description and a link to the thread.
From Starting a modification

Post in the Mod list thread
To make it easier for our regular patrons to find your mod, make a post in the List of modifications thread. Make short general description, 1 to 3 sentences. Do not include features as the patrons will find that out in your mod thread.