can anyone take time to teach me how to mod?

[VAE VICTUS]

ok its official i suck at modding.i want to do it so bad but alas everytime i try my rtw will freeeze and so i have to restart my computer.i would very much like how to skin etc. i want to be able to do everything.it may take a little to teach me everything but once i get it ill be good at it.
it seems i cant even make a back up copy correctyly.i went to rtw folder and copied it (and everything inside it) but when the modded version froze so did the vanilla,so i must be doing it wrong.i need like an idiots guides to modding.
so if anyone can help PM me please. id greatly appreciate it.

[King of Atlantis]

Hmmm.., Id help you, but modding is very large and nothing you can learn overnight. What i reccomend is this. Read some eas tutorials in the sciptorium and do easy modifications. Once you do that I can help you a bit with skinning...

[edyzmedieval]

The Scriptorium, as in the description in RTW "contains many labouriously copied books"(I love it).

It's the same. Hundreds of guides. It's everything you need(except skinning and other stuff).

[Bwian]

There are some basic do's and don'ts that you MUST pay attention to if you are to avoid the problems you are having right now:

1) Uninstall RTW completely. Do a fresh install, and patch it to 1.2 standards.

2) If you have the disc-space, copy the complete RTW install to a backup install. I call mine 'Stock Total War'. Set up a shortcut on your dfesktop to EACH one. Run them both, and make sure the game works OK. Go into your shortcut for the 'Non Stock' RTW and add the -show_err command after the .exe bit in the shortcut. This will instruct RTW to throw out an error message if something crashes.

3) Get hold of a copy of XPAK and extract ALL the pack files. The stock batch file that comes with XPAK didn't include the patch one, so you should open up the batch file in notepad and add it in. Once you have extracted all teh pack files, you can delete the packs. Make sure your RTW game is still working on your modded install. If something has broken at this stage, copy the patch pack file back and see if that helps. If it does, you screwed up the extract on the patch pack and need to try again.

4) Once you get this far, you have:
a) A COMPLETE and UNTOUCHED set of RTW files as a backup which you WILL NOT MESS WITH
b) A complete install running show_err from the shortcut with all the files extracted and nothing hidden in archives, ready to mod.

Now...you can start.

Assuming you are starting from the 'Total Newbie' position, choose an area to start working on. Do you want to mess with all the text files, do you want to add new maps...or do you just want to do a bit of skinning. Focus on just one area to start with, and take SMALL STEPS.

Here's a good first excercise:

Take the barbarian peasant skin for, say, Gaul. BACK IT UP.
Re-paint it in your chosen paint prgram, and then try it in game

If it works, then look into descr_model_battle and see where your texture name occurs. Then....try re-naming your new texture file. Run the game again...and the model will show up untextured...coz it didn't find the texture.
So...go back to descr_model_battle and change the texture name to your new name. Run again...and it shows up.

That should clarify the link between the texture you paint, and the texture the game uses. Code-wise..thats all a skinner needs to know.

The only other thing you need to understand is the use and abuse of the Alpha channel.

Oh..yes...and what UV mapping means ( but not how to do it ~;) )

In short...when the original model maker built the model, he decided which bits of your texture will go where on the model itself. You can't change that. It varies from model to model, so always use a stock skin FROM THE SAME MODEL as a template when you start painting. Make sure you use the DXT5 DDS format and do not exclude alpha channels when saving, and all should go fine.

Skinning should NEVER cause a major lockup.