Mod Making

[Andersson]

Ok, I know this is a real newbie thing to ask, so I apologise in advance.

Is there any sort of guide out there that can give me a better idea of mod making? I've read a guide from totalwar.org and, while it was a good starting base, it only really skims the surface of mod making.

I've read about some of the mods that many of you guys are attempting (FTW and the Roman Empire being the two most promising) so I know what can be possible.

If you can help then thanks in advance. In the meantime, I'll dive even deeper into the forum and see what I can find.

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"Will you fight? Or will you run like a coward?"

"Bye!"

[Lord Krazy]

What do you want to mod?

The text files for battels and campaignes?
Anybody and thier dog,
because CA help alot on this one,
could do this .Heaps of writing

Prod11/13.txt?
see above


The maps and objects?
many others with some help
from CA doing good work on this.
you'll find pleanty on that

The Animations?
Barocca,Barocca and that other guy Barocca

The lot?
Good luck

Dig deep

I can assist a bit on most
but a guide I am not


LK

[Andersson]

Thanks.

I'm currently attempting a couple of new campaigns, but eventually I want to create a big campaign with a few new maps, some new units, maybe change Europe a little - to meet my historical requirements obviously http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif So I'm kind of an amateur with ambitions to actually make a useful mod one of these days.

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"Will you fight? Or will you run like a coward?"

"Bye!"

[giskard]

Making a campaign using the standard map means your campaigns will be roughly 25k in size, however making one with a custom map will mean they will be atleast 6meg and given the popularity of MTW your website probably would not cope with the load when users download it.

However, heres a little trick for you. The lbm files in textures are tiny. 700k roughly. You can edit those to change the regions a bit. Then edit the campaign script to suite it.

The resulting download would probably be 1meg tops when zipped up. Thats 6 downloads per day for Yahoo/Geocity unusers lol.

For a site like mine thats 9000 per month. Easily handled.

giskard

[NagatsukaShumi]

Campaigns aye.....feel free to me ask me anything you want, that the side of Modding TW that I am best at.

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Power to the Sultan!
-Clan Seljuk

I don't know Akech, can't trust Mithrandir with the newbies, he may try and create a Miny Mith.-NagatsukaShumi

[Andersson]

So if I change the lbm files, will I have to somehow define the boundaries of my new regions in my campaign txt file?

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"Will you fight? Or will you run like a coward?"

"Bye!"

[Wellington]

Quote Originally posted by Andersson:
So if I change the lbm files, will I have to somehow define the boundaries of my new regions in my campaign txt file?
[/QUOTE]

Don't think so. The campaign text files merely determine what provinces border which others by reference to the province ID's (ID_SCOTLAND etc).

I suspect the relationship between the provinces/sea areas on a map and the province ID's in the campaign scripts are done via the colour number that serves to represent that province and its boundaries. Hence, if you swopped the colours for 2 provinces in Mapluk, MTW would associate the 2 appropiate province ID's with the swopped (and now incorrect) provinces.

I'm pretty sure that's how it's works but someone else will know for sure the exact relationship.

[Andersson]

Not sure I'm understanding this too well - does this mean that creating entirely 'new' provinces isn't possible?

I'd like to try and 'add' Iceland in the Altlantic. While I know that the map doesn't actually have room for me to put Iceland in correctly, I was planning on just fitting in the bottom of it eg. Finland (it's a lot larger than it is in MTW).

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"Will you fight? Or will you run like a coward?"

"Bye!"

[Wellington]

Quote Originally posted by Andersson:
Not sure I'm understanding this too well - does this mean that creating entirely 'new' provinces isn't possible?
[/QUOTE]

Have a good read of this thread: http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000655.html

It's very informative and should answer all your questions. Note especially the contributions by the CA staff.

[Andersson]

Nice one.

It's certainly informative. Some of it is a bit confusing to me (such as how exactly a new region get recognised - just down to colours I think). Also not sure if you have to change an existing region into your own, but keep the original ID in the campaign txt eg. Change name of province in map to Andersson http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif , but keep it's ID as ID_WESSEX).

Or am I just being stupid and missing something obvious?

In the meantime, I'm going to play around with the stratmap and see if I can create something.

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"Will you fight? Or will you run like a coward?"

"Bye!"

[Wellington]

Quote Originally posted by Andersson:
It's certainly informative. Some of it is a bit confusing to me (such as how exactly a new region get recognised - just down to colours I think). [/QUOTE]


If your creating a new region then you have to create a new lukmap.lbm (literally the lookup map) and your new region will have to have 2 colours associated with it - region colour and region-border colour.

Scotland has number 2 in the 256 colour palette. Therefore the identifier ID_SCOTLAND can be associated with the number 2 (and the colour that represents number 2) - likewise ID_WALES equates to the number 8 etc:

The key thing with all this is to recognise there are 40 sea regions (that have 1 colour associated with them) and 100 land regions (that have 2 colours). Therefore don't make a map and try to create > 40 sea or > 100 land regions, else the hardcoded lookup table will fail for some. Also, don't use a sea region for a land region (or visa versa) - or the table lookup will similarly fail.


QUOTE]Originally posted by Andersson:
Also not sure if you have to change an existing region into your own, but keep the original ID in the campaign txt eg. Change name of province in map to Andersson http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif , but keep it's ID as ID_WESSEX).
[/QUOTE]

Absolutely. You gave to retain the region Id's that the game provides - but these are only identifiers. If your buildinmg a map of the USA you may decide to use the colour 8 for the state of Utah. In that case, the game would associate your new province of Utah with the identifier ID_WALES.