Important Modding Information Thread index - all once-stickied threads

This is an index of all threads that contain important modding information either released by CA or discovered by the community – essentially any thread that has ever been stickied in this forum. It was created so that dormant threads containing this information could be unstuck without fear that the knowledge within them would be lost.

If you consider the list or the descriptions require updating or emendation please send me a PM.

Modding forum archive
All the threads and replies posted on the General forum ever


Barbarian Invasion
Unlocking factions

HGT-Converter
The thing you need to make the .hgt file you need to make maps in BI

:mod switch and custom battles
Details of how to make custom battles work whilst using the :mod switch

Campaign scripts in BI
Solutions to difficulties in using campaign scripts in BI.



Rome Total War

Converting from 1.2 to 1.5
Ongoing community research thread.

Campaign map
Research: editing the campaign map

Putting features on the Campaign map (custom tiles)
Details on how add customised battle map tiles created in the battle editor to the campaign map.

More than one town per province.
How to add a second (ambient) settlement to a province.

Graphics
Changing the in-game menu structure
Modding the 'look' of the options in the in-game menus.

Sprite Generator… CA?
Details of how to generate your own sprites for custom skins.

Back to basics -still having problems with shield's textures
Getting rid of the unpredictable black squares around shields

Models & Animations
DB files created + Request to CA
News that certain .db files auto-recreate after being deletion, plus a request to CA for the files that are needed to recreate them properly.

Need help with descr_skeletons.txt
Attempts to try and add new skeletons to the game.

Modding extras by CA (unsupported)
Additional files provided unofficially to aid with the modification of animations.

Units
spearmen with secondary CTD
A curious tale of why the game sometimes CTDs when you remove the phalanx ability from some units - now with a solution!

Recruitment
Complex conditionals for recruiting and building
Contains detail on additional conditionals for specifying the recruitment capabilities of buildings in export_descr_buildings namely 'or' and 'not'.

Buildings
discovered nice feature for buildings...
Research discovery of how to fit _nine_ buildings within a complex instead of the previously considered limit of five.

Additional capabilities and requirements for buildings
Also details of additional bonuses allowable to buildings and how to use them, an extra trade resource and an explanation of what plug-ins where supposed to be.

Scripting
New docudemon files
A comprehensive list of scripting events, conditions and commands from CA.

Events, Conditions, & Commands

Research: Parameters for commands & console commands
An attempt to compile a definitive list of command parameters

Console commands & command line options for modders?
More console commands

Some modest results with spawn_army
Some awesome results with spawn_army, it's now working and an insight into Rome descr parser to help scripters solve other problems.

More than two turns a year - release
A script that allows you to mod your game to have more than two turns in a year.

Miscellaneous
Hard-Coded Limits
Ongoing documentation of the hard-coded limits encountered in the moddable files.

A modder's guide to CTDs

You don’t need to repack PAK files

Modding suggestions for the next patch
Contains requests for additional modding support to be included in the v1.2 patch, which has since been released.

CA's Modding FAQ
More modding questions for CA - as yet unanswered.

Post your "must-know" modding questions here!
This thread is now closed. It contains answers from CA staffer JeromeGrasdyke to modding questions posed by the community.

Uploader for RTW files.
Contains an upload script for RTW files.

Many thanks ER, I will now unsticky most of these threads. If anyone has any objectsions, please post them here and I will see what I can do.

Threads wich I will leave sticked:
Uploader for RTW files
Modding extras by CA (unsupported)
Sprite Generator… CA?
You don’t need to repack PAK files
Hard-Coded Limits
Welcome to the General Forum

I've now added a link to the Modding forum archive where you can find every thread and reply posted on this forum.

If you look through them you'll find that there are many many threads with information in them at a basic and a more advanced level which is of great help to modders, but which was never fully compiled into the Guides forum for easy reference.

This leads to the situation where newcomers are often required to reinvent the wheel and ask the same questions time after time, while other members have to type out the same answer time after time as there is no guide that can be easily linked to.

I would greatly encourage every newcomer - and every other member - to the forum to look to contribute to the Guides forum (especially in this thread) when they discover how to do something that they couldn't find there already. It is an excellent method of both helping out your colleagues and gaining a reputation as a valuable member of the community. The more everyone in the community contributes to it, the more we shall all receive from it.

Updated

Updated with links to BI threads and the research discovery increasing the number of buildings in complexes.

Updated with the latest stickied threads. Some stickied threads have been unstuck and others moved to Scriptorium.

Remember, if you're looking for a thread that was previously stickied, you can find the link in the top post above.

Valuable information that shouldn't be lost amongst the many questions:

There is a bug in the importer/exporter that will cause your units to not form up correctly when you have exported the march loop animation.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=62204

Research: Info files for engines and buildings
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=61234