Campaign Editing: findings

Hey guys,

First off,

I want to thank hecose for the making a very friendly program.

Second,

I think campaign editing and an editor to work with is VERY important and I hope others can help bring about a fan-based editing system that incorporates and allows as many changes as possible.

Alright,
so now to what I have found....


I made a campaign based on the 1550 campaign and edited it according to a rough estimate of the politics of 1565.

My first difficulty was with Daimyo/heir/generals (ronin and player)... this involved both ranks, positioning and selecting the unit they controlled.
-I didn't care too much about the unit they controlled, but I did get upset that all the "unique" leaders were in the same territory and I couldn't control their rankings.
-I also got upset that I couldn't control which ronin got taishos with a rank and which were not.

-The main problem though was that I got COMPLETELY random daimyos... And I didn't know why for a while.

-As Hecose was posting and saying his thoughts on the matter, I was looking through the txt files in the "startpos" folder... and decided that after making a campaign I needed to insert a number of lines based upon what I saw in the pre-made campaign txt. Thus, I added the exact copy of the "daimyo starting" lines straight into my txt and restarted the map...
--this worked better and on the "alliance" page all the names were correct BUT they were not the ones I wanted....
-So, using the list hecose constructed (I didn't remember exactly who was where, but had an idea) I messed around with the numbers and got the daimyos I WANTED to show up on the "alliance" screen... HOWEVER, they were not on the actual campaign map...
Instead, Takeda Shingen was "the daimyo" for not only his clan, but also for the Mori and Hojo clans. (although he didn't get the horse icon).
-I messed around with this for a while trying to figure out why, and I still don't know for sure, BUT by changing a daimyo's starting position on the map... the bug becomes worse, better, or stays the same...

For example: The Hojo daimyo started in Sagami but was "takeda Shingen" and remained so when I moved the REAL Takeda Shingen to either Shinano or Suruga (the real having been in Kai). HOWEVER, when I moved Takeda to Suruga (I think) Takeda Shingen became "Uesugi Kenshin" while Mori and Hojo were still "shingen" and Uesugi remained himself...

THEN, seeing these results, I moved Hojo to Musashi and MAGICALLY he became himself (horse and all)... Seeing this, I then tried the same with Mori and on the first move (to Izumo I think) he became himself.
This appeared to solve ALL related problems... I don't understand it though.
BUT, when I next loaded as Hojo, the heirs were ok on the campaign map, BUT on the "heir sheet" they had the Takeda heir names (their correct Hojo ages though). However, when I restarted the game, the heir sheet was correct... so, not sure about this problem.

-The next problem I wanted to solve was the "unique general" problem of being stacked. This one is actually quite simple... The computer, when starting the game appears to just place them in their "order".--not sure where this is exactly, but the computer has it set somewhere.
For example: If a clan owns province 9, 10, 14, 15, THE UNITS in province 9 will first be assigned heirs, then the other "unique" generals if the units have space, this setting then moves to province 10, etc... until all uniques are gone. However, non-unique generals will appear anywhere. THUS, you can control where heirs and other generals will start in a game, but not too well.
-my recommendation... don't put a clan's "first" province too far from the heart of a clan's territory as the heirs may be killed quickly.

what else....
ok, from what I can tell, A LOT of useful editing info (info you can edit that is) is NOT in txt files that are on the hard disk, but rather on the CD rom itself..
: (

I really liked how they did Civ II because you could edit the txt files on your computer and totally change the game since you didn't need to have the CD rom unless you wanted the graphics (more games should do this--Civ II sold a TON of games even though a CD was not mandatory)


Anyways, if Hecose or Tosa or Erado or Magyar or Khan, or Krae or anyone comes up with some stuff, please let me know...

I BELIEVE that we are "this close" to getting a fully editable game... including playing on custom maps in a campaign game... we can edit maps... we can edit starting stuff... if we can just find the files... wait a sec... we probably can do it already...

HEY, WOULD THIS WORK?????
Finding the totomi map and changing the files related to it.... you guys following me??? then playing a campaign on the "new totomi" map.... basically we could REALLY create our own stuff. EVEN though we may be forced to use the original Campaign map, we could have our own battlefields, our own starting forces, and our own unit stats (I don't know much about this, but I know Khan and others have been messing with them).
--this could allow for a "civil war" campaign for example with civil war maps.... you would just have to remember that Virginia is now known as "Yamashiro" and Gettysburg is now Shinano on the campaign map... BUT, the tactical maps would be of your own design...
OR, even a korea/china/mongol/japanese game of sorts... hmmm... lots of potential..

Anyways, what do people think? or, has someone already thought this up and tried it or been working on it?

well, I'm back to figuring out some stuff. I hope to have my first campaign done soon... hopefully I can have internet connection shortly to upload the campaign.
btw, I know how to set up your own "campaign description" now... I think that's what Hecose was talking about earlier. It's pretty cool actually.---AND I CAN SEE ALL 8 clans when starting up actually, as opposed to jsut seeing shimazu at first...

WEll, keep me informed guys!

-Zen Blade

------------------
Zen Blade Asai
Red Devil
Last of the RSG
Clan Tenki Council-Unity, Retired
SHS Core Member

nice work, zen :)

changing the maps that are the defaults is pretty easy. take any map, rename it to totomi, and save the current totomi to somewhere else. this could also be automated as well with a simple script routine.

i havent tested this, but the theory is sound.

changing the actual map of japan is the real trick. i havent looked into this yet too much, but if i recall my initial scans, it's going to involve figuring out the .bif files....i think. and that's also the key to some of the other mods as well.

at any rate, again, nice job!

K.


------------------
I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

Konnichiwa Zen-Blade san,

Yes you could rename green.jjm and green.tga to shinano.jjm and shinano.tga. If you play a campaign then and wage a battle in the province shinano, you battle on green. This is also possible with the original stw.

About heirs, this means that you can now put heirs into a hcav unit or a wm or a ya, all up to you. If you also put advanced buildings for that unittype in the province (in the startpos!) or a swordsmith/armoury they'll get the upgrades. Imagine a h3 a3 w3 hcav right at the start :-).

If you start a campaign with the daimyo as sole unit, heirs will be put into the first unit you'll build. In the 'startpos.txt': it might be that a heir is assigned to the FIRST (and so on) unit that's listed in the textfile. The game processes the file from top to bottom (when you put an illegal statement inside the file, the file will be processed until the illegal statement and will then halt). So when the file encounters an illegal statement it might mess your daimyo position.

This is also what happens with your campaign:
honorable hecose san made a small typo in his valuable listing of the different daimyos. (The CampaignEditor doesn't do this at all yet, so you should edit it by hand in a txteditor).
The command is not ListStartDaimyo(x,y) but
SetStartDaimyo:: 2 4

The first command is an illegal statement and will not be processed, hence PlaceDaimyo:: 13 2 will be the last legal and processed statement and the game will complete this with any daimyo he likes.

- All daimyoplacements are in the format:

PlaceDaimyo:: 25 2
SetStartDaimyo:: 2 4

PlaceDaimyo:: 13 3
SetStartDaimyo:: 3 4

If you type an error in line 2, the Mori daimyo will get a computer choosen name (Takeda Shingen), but the the Oda will not get an daimyo at all. The Oda have provinces but no daimyo. So the game might do very weird things.

One might expect that any unit has it's own ID, Japanese units are already listed in the startpos files by the developers, but the mongol units aren't listed at all nor are the xbow or the nc, here's a list of every unittype. Also the father visitor! But it might be an ordinary priest as he's probably not fully implemented in the game. Note: any
unit beyond 26 leads to a illegal statement and will cause an halt of fileprocessing.
The first number is the province id, the second is the unit id. You can put muskets vs mhc, bombers vs yashi and you can include any mongol unit into your Daimyos army. You can use sengoku units in MI campaigns, and 1274 units in sengoku. Next step is assignment of these units to a proper buiding: i.e. if you have a horse and archery dojo you can not only recruit lcav but also mlc (This isn't the case yet! That property might be in the BIF files of campmap/review_panel/buildings).

MakeUnit:: 1 0 //lsam in satsuma
MakeUnit:: 2 1 //ysam in osumi
MakeUnit:: 3 2 //nag in hyuga
MakeUnit:: 4 3 //nod in higo

MakeUnit:: 5 4 //lcav in bungo
MakeUnit:: 6 5 //hcav in chikugo
MakeUnit:: 7 6 //ycav in buzen
MakeUnit:: 8 7 //yashi in hizen

MakeUnit:: 9 8 //arq in chikuzen
MakeUnit:: 10 9 //musk in nagato
MakeUnit:: 11 10 //wmonk in suo
MakeUnit:: 12 11 //battleninja in iyo

MakeUnit:: 13 12 //kensai in tosa
MakeUnit:: 14 13 //Kskirm in Iwami
MakeUnit:: 15 14 //Kspear in Aki
MakeUnit:: 16 15 //KGuard in Izumo

MakeUnit:: 17 16 //tbomber in bingo
MakeUnit:: 18 17 //xbow sanuki
MakeUnit:: 19 18 //ncav in awa
MakeUnit:: 20 19 //mlc in hoki

MakeUnit:: 21 20 //mhc in bitchu
MakeUnit:: 22 21 //leg geisha in mimasaka
MakeUnit:: 23 22 //priest in bizen
MakeUnit:: 24 23 //ninja in awaji

MakeUnit:: 25 24 //FATHER VISITOR in inaba (might have ordinary priesterstatus as FV isn't implementated)
MakeUnit:: 26 25 //emissary in Harima
MakeUnit:: 27 26 //shinobi in kawachi

------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi
http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[This message has been edited by TosaInu (edited 09-07-2001).]

TosaInu and Zen_Blade, This is great information you have posted! This will be very useful for the campaign editor. I'm currently doing some more work on it, fixing some bugs and adding some features. This information will come in very handy.

Sorry about the misinformation in my earlier post where I posted the command

ListStartDaimyo(x,y)

Actually that's some VB code I have written in my program (an array declaration) and is not meant to be the code to be put in the campaign TXT file. The correct code is "SetStartDaimyo::", as TosaInu san pointed out.

Hey guys,

I will make a full post later,
but yeah... I agree with a lot that you are saying...

Especially what Tosa said about heirs/units... That is exactly what I meant. You can control (to an extent) the starting conditions for an heir's unit and such, BUT it is very limited if you want to give a clan more than a few territories.

also, was play testing my campaign.

so far, MOST things look good. Still a balancing issue with the Mori though. ALSO, there is a recurring "problem" in that heirs will be produced, but then often enough a duplicate "unique general" will be produced with the exact same name... Not sure what effect this might have, but it occured with both Takeda and Uesugi that I saw.

-Zen Blade

------------------
Zen Blade Asai
Red Devil
Last of the RSG
Clan Tenki Council-Unity, Retired
SHS Core Member

zen,

there was a bug report in the general topic that there is still a bug with duplicate heir names and that this was one of the things that Target was going to address in the upcoming patch....i think.

K.


------------------
I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

I know Krae!

I was the one who reported and tested it for him!

: )

-Zen Blade

------------------
Zen Blade Asai
Red Devil
Last of the RSG
Clan Tenki Council-Unity, Retired
SHS Core Member

zen,

hehehe......oh. ;)

K.


------------------
I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

We'll never see a fully editable game until we have the means to alter the birthdates and rankings of Daimyo and Heirs. Until then we're largely limited to creating post 1520 Sengoku-era campaigns, (Terazawa's Gempei-era campaign notwithstanding).

I've edited a campaign with a 1517 startdate to test the '0' Daimyo of the 8 clans. It works well except that Imagawa Yoshitomo seems to be a generation younger than the other Daimyo, being about 0 years old at the start and having a son at the ripe old age of 2. You need to suspend disbelief here and imagine the advisor in the throne-room standing in for baby-Yoshitomo when it comes to his marital obligations.

Rather than playing around with a proto-sengoku era campaign starting in 1517, I'd really like to be editing something that would take place in a somewhat accurate historical setting the 1300's and 1400's with working Daimyo capable of having heirs and not about -149 years of age. Will we ever see operating Warring Courts, Muromachi or Onin era campaigns?

We need to be able to edit and generate

Daimyo and heir lists (and their stats, year of birth etc.),

Generals lists (and their stats, when they become available etc.),

Buidling availabilty list (disable guns, enable monks etc.),

These all need to be in the distinct campaign folder itself, so we do not have to edit or swap in/out files from frontend and loc.

Alternativly
a 'loader' program that offers us a choice of which mod's we have available, and 'swaps' in/out the files for the mod we select to play and then proceeds to load shogun.
Naturally we'll need a way to tell the loader about the mod and which files to swap etc.

But, until we can generate our own Daimyo, heir and general lists we are rather limited.


------------------
DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

Arrived too late here. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

If your start date is before Sengoku Jidai or after, you will get a random daimyo yes.
In fact I had to look up the random daimyo's names and change them in events.txt...

In the version 1.0 of the campaign you HAD to put (for example) the Imagawa daimyo in a province which in the original campaign is an Imagawa province, or else you won't get a daimyo! Don't know if this was arranged in the following versions of the editor - Hecose?

Another problem is that in non-SJ-dates, heirs are not assigned. So you have only one daimyo, and if he dies, you are lost.
Fortunately, lol, in my testing, the daimyo in 1130 seemed to never die or come to age... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif So that problem maybe is auto-eliminated because if heirs are not assigned, even the death of daimyos isnt!!!



------------------
Honour to Clan Torîi Aku.

Visit my resource centre here!
Evil is within us... http://terazawa.totalwar.org/emo.gif

I have been working on some custom mongol era campaigns, they are available at the org for download.

Many thanks to all those who have posted their findings and ideas.

They are non-invasive, they change none of the games original files, simply some new folders and text files for the campmap/startpos folder.

They include custom clan descriptions inside the folders which STW/WE/MI reads and displays for you.

I used the 'format' of the mongol/hojo descriptions from the original mongol campaign to enable the clan descriptions.

STW automatically checks which provinces have been assigned to the clans and notifies you of nearby resources!

Using predefined=false allowed me to give custom campaign descriptions also.

They also include a custom made mongol icon for position 3 in the clan selection screen with a matching background, very tidy and many thanks to TNG for that.


I also assigned the highest ranked Daimyo to each clan, and as mentioned above he should never die of disease or old age, so don't worry if some of them appear as age -1 etc.
8)

They are designed to be tough on normal setting, and i would suggest starting there and work you way up to harder settings.

The are not correctly balanced for a human mongol player, but you could have some fun playing the SE version as the mongol.

There is a folder of readme files and notes included, best bet is to have a quick read through them before playing them.


for the *.dsc and position.txt files you can include as many line::"text here"'s as you wish.
just remember to end each line with the quotation marks


for the positions.txt file the first pair of number for each clan is the position of the 'greyed' out icon,
the second pair is the size of the icon and the third pair is the location of the coloured 'currently selected icon,

data::3 "mongol.tga" 73 310 101 123 "mongol.bif" 80 324 "The Mongol Horde" "Mongol1.tga" "mongol.dsc"

data::4 "imagawa.tga" 80 459 90 115 "" 80 459 "Clan Imagawa" "" "Imagawa.dsc"

as you can see from the above excerpt the *.bif file is only needed for the mongol, and the second *.tga is not needed by the japanese clans either.


I would have loved to have an heirs list for each clan, and to have changed some of the clan names, but unitl we are given this capability without having to edit the loc files we will have to be happy with what we can do.

I hope you enjoy the campaigns, they are meant to be hard and fun.



------------------
DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

Barocca you mentioned the following

"I also assigned the highest ranked Daimyo to each clan, and as mentioned above he should never die of disease or old age, so don't worry if some of them appear as age -1 etc.
8)"

you mean the Daimyo will never die unless killed in combat?

Ive been trying to find a way that you can keep playing for years on end.. without having to worry bout your Daiymo dieing from old age.. and no heirs to take over.

example i want to make a non Mongol campaign..and play Takeda Shingen.. ex starting date 1530

what would i put for Takeda Shingen in the start.pos files?

startdate 1530

PlaceDaimyo:: 29 5
SetStartDaimyo:: 5 2

what numbers would give me takeda shingen and have him immortal from natural death?

( Im new to editing and not fully understanding what the numbers mean )

thanx in adavnce for any help offered

Akur

Terazawa said:

""Another problem is that in non-SJ-dates, heirs are not assigned. So you have only one daimyo, and if he dies, you are lost.
Fortunately, lol, in my testing, the daimyo in 1130 seemed to never die or come to age... So that problem maybe is auto-eliminated because if heirs are not assigned, even the death of daimyos isnt!!!""

I play tested that theory with Takeda Shingen.. start date 1130. he was 136 years old...
all the other daiymo's had no heirs.. and they started to die off from old age.

Takeda Shingen died numerous times.. thou I reloaded from save point continuously.. and got him to 159 years old.. before he started to die every time i end the turn.

so it seems to be that the Immortal Heirless Daiymo theory doesent work. ( unless somehow i made a campaign a lil different from Terazawa... i set it at 1130 start date.. and did not add any choices of what units the heirs will assume .. maybe i did something wrong?? )

I would love to see some editing capabilities where as you wudnt have to worry bout Daiymo's dieing from natural death.

what i am hoping for is a campaign that can be played for hundreds upon hundreds of years... and being able to get the daiymo up to a couple hundred battles won.

Is this possible?

an Immortal Daiymo Campaign.. DemiGods of Battle.

please anyone who is well talented in editing Shogun.. can we investigate this idea?

Ak, surely enough I haven't tested until 159 years old! Normally a campaign wouldn't last that much...but since the daimyo can live 100+, the heirs problem in actual gameplay is eliminated.

As for the utopiacal immortal daimyo gameplay, errr, don't know.

------------------
Honour to Clan Torîi Aku.

Visit my resource centre here!
Evil is within us... http://terazawa.totalwar.org/emo.gif

Tera from all the campaigns I have played ( which I played this game for many many months before finding this website.. and finding out that editing is possible, since then I have edited campaigns and downloaded home made campaigns.. Ive been playing even more )
it is my findings that when you start a Daiymo at a young age.. ex 16.. he lives to roughly 60-80 yrs old before he starts to die .. I think my highest age i got a daiymo to was 82.. after multiple re loads of saved game.

with the start date of 1130.. your daimyo starts at age 132 or so... so yes it seems that a Daiymo can live past 100 years... BUT... he dies quite often.. if you dont save and reload when he does die.

it got so frustrating... hitting ctrl-s every turn he lived.. and then hitting ctrl-l everytime he died from old age.

it took the fun out of playing a campaign.

what is the lowest negative age that anyone has found in daiymo/start date editing?

I recall seeing a Daiymo at the age of -88.

that seems to be the only way so far to play a really LONG campaign.

Ya figure he lives till he turns 0.. then he has some heirs at age 2-20ish.. lives to about 60 ish.. so thats 140 yrs... without using an heir as Daiymo, if your lucky ya got a young heir when the Daimyo dies.. so mayhaps extend the campaign another 60 yrs to a total of 200 or so years.

what Im looking for is a way to play the game for 3-500 years.. as One Daiymo.. rack up the battles won, and be able to at least have a few clans left to fight. Winning the game is easy enough... dunno why it is.. Im looking for a bit more than just winning.

so with editing starting Daiymo to start at a negative age,thats all I have found to have a really LONG campaign.
Thou... what usually happens is its my Clan.. versus the Ronin.. cause all other clans die out by that time.

I searched high and low thru the games files.. and cant find anything that relates to daiymo's age and heirs and old age death, thou I am no professional at editing.. what Ive learned Ive gotten from all you here at the Org.. Thanx.

so if anyone stumbles across something in thier editing ventures, that pertains to Daiymo natural death or Heirs.. please post what you may have found.

I will carry out some tests...
Thanks for the points Ak.

------------------
Honour to Clan Torîi Aku.

Visit my resource centre here!
Evil is within us... http://terazawa.totalwar.org/emo.gif