Changing architectural style

[Joshwa]

Yeah, basically i've been poking around trying to find out how to give the Byzantines Middle-Eastern cities and castles. I managed to change the campaign map appearance by selectively copying the middle eastern section of descr_cultures.txt over to the greek entry, but so far no luck in changing the battle map appearance, which seems to be controlled from somewhere else. Any ideas?

[Joshwa]

*bump*

Oh come on, one of you modding chaps must know!

[alpaca]

Check the settlements folder.

[Joshwa]

Yeah i thought of swapping the 'Southern European' files for the Middle Eastern ones, but that would give all of Southern Europe the same style. Something must direct the game to that folder for each culture though, so i think i need to find what file tells it to look at the Southern European folder for Byzantium and change that. It's definately not in descr.cultures.txt though, unless im missing something blindingly obvious, and im not sure where else it could be!

[alpaca]

Nope, the southern_european folder is simply the fallback. If you create a new folder it should read them from there if I'm not mistaken.

[Joshwa]

What do i call the folder? I tried calling it 'Greek' and 'Byzantium' and neither seemed to work. For the Greek experiment i renamed all the stuff inside to greek as well, didn't bother for the byzantium one because it took me ages! Figured it'd crash out if it had recognised the byzantium folder but not it's contents. Cheers

[FactionHeir]

Hmmmm there was a file in the data folder that controlled which faction belongs to which culture. The name of the file eludes me.

[alpaca]

Should be greek.
Just remembered: I think you have to open the .worldpkgdesc files with a HEX editor and change the culture in there to greek, too.

[Joshwa]

Ok, i've got my Greek folder, and as a test i've renamed everything in the 'huge city' to 'greek_huge_city.a' etc, and used a hex editor to fiddle with the worldpkgdesc file contained within the same folder. However, the game is now throwing out one of those nauseating error messages at the initial loading screen, akin to what happens if the model database has an invalid shortcut in it. however, i went through the file and changed 'middle_eastern' for 'greek' pretty religiously, so im at a loss to what i've done wrong. Can anyone spot anything wrong with this?

https://img477.imageshack.us/img477/8830/hexbf8.png

This is doing my nut in now but i feel i ought to press on now that i've started! Cheers

[alpaca]

There's some value in there that tells the game the string length (the 0e000000), so you have to change it (to 05000000)

[Joshwa]

Ok i changed that '0e' for '05', and it's definitely the right value that im changing, but it still crashes on startup. I'm wondering, do i have to change all the filenames and worldpkgjiggedy files in all the subfolders for the different types of settlement, now that ive changed one batch? currently ive just changed the filenames. Also, will the abbreviation 'gr' be a suitable replacement where the files are called 'me_...'? Cheers!

[alpaca]

Ok i changed that '0e' for '05', and it's definitely the right value that im changing, but it still crashes on startup. I'm wondering, do i have to change all the filenames and worldpkgjiggedy files in all the subfolders for the different types of settlement, now that ive changed one batch? currently ive just changed the filenames. Also, will the abbreviation 'gr' be a suitable replacement where the files are called 'me_...'? Cheers!
Hmm I think I should stop throwing out stuff here as it could be I'm directing you in a wrong direction. I didn't try what I suggest here so I can't really say :laugh4:

[Joshwa]

ah dang! I think i might just give up, 'tis a bridge too far! Thanks for the help anyway though