Oppida is a mod for Medieval II: Total War that is designed to bring back the view settlement feature from its predecessory Rome: Total War
in a way that is as close to the original as possible.
It was created in May 2007 as an offspring of the Mediaeval Auctoriso/Anno Domini MXVI mod for the vanilla game after a poll was made to see if public interest
was high enough to warrant the extra work.
In general, the mod works by staging a battle between a rebel army and your own, disabling the rebel's AI so that it won't actually attack
your settlement.
The installation is very simple:
- Make sure you have a clean Medieval II installation (no other mods installed; for pros: the installer copies the map files)
- Start the installer and select your Medieval II directory (should be the default) to install to
- Select whether or not you want to be able to start the mod through the launcher
- Run the installer and wait until it finished
The installer will put a mod folder into your Medieval II directory, as well as a few other files. You can run the mod by double-clicking
Oppida.bat, or Medieval II - Oppida.lnk (both in your Medieval II folder, the shortcut can be dragged and dropped onto the desktop)
or - if you selected it - through the launcher.
In the game, you won't notice a difference, everything will look as usual (which is intended). To enjoy the view settlement feature, you
have to select a settlement on the campaign map, open the construction scroll (click on the construction button or press "b"), then click on
the "Locate position of settlement on the map" button to the lower left of the scroll. This will fire up an advisor asking you to press
"Show me how" if you want to view your settlement on the campaign map. Since you want to, click the "Show me how" button and you will be taken
to the battle loading screen a short time after.
After the battle is loaded, start the battle as normal and you can fly around your settlement without camera restrictions (except for the
height and collision restrictions).
When you have seen enough, simply hit the Esc button (on your keyboard) and wait a second until you see the message that the battle is
over. Then click on "End Battle" and you will see the result. You will win your battle, but except for the stats that are displayed in your
kingdom overview, this won't change anything in the game.
Notes:
- The advisor will only pop up if the settlement was garrisoned when you selected it.
- The installer checks your camera restriction setting at install time and writes it into the campaign script. If you want to change it,
edit the "set_counter camera_restrict 0" line to "set_counter camera_restrict 1" or vice-versa
- You can cheat your unit experience by attacking the catapult if you think it's worth it. But it isn't
- Don't deselect your settlement while the advisor is active but before pressing show-me or dismissing it, or the script won't work
The installer will create the following files and folders:
Medieval II/
Oppida.bat
Oppida.cfg
Medieval II - Oppida.lnk
Uninstall Oppida.exe
Medieval II/Oppida/
Oppida.cfg
data
And the following registry keys if you choose to use the launcher:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\Mods\Unofficial\Oppida
->"FullName"
->"DisplayName"
->"Version"
->"Author"
->"DistributionSource"
->"Path"
->"ConfigFile"
->"Language"
You may freely redistribute this software free of charge (i.e. you're not allowed to make people pay you for it).
You can freely incorporate the script into your mod, but be kind enough to mention Oppida in your Read-Me.
The installer is also under the license of the NSIS install system.
The script is actually fairly easily put into other mods. All you have to do is copy the view_city_thread advice thread (including the text
entries in text/export_advice), the scripts folder, and the city view part of the campaign script.
You'll then have to update the spawn_army sections (including the if that checks for the settlement name) with new coordinates, which means
that for each city you'll have to search for good coordinates to spawn the catapult.
The last thing you have to do is to rework your PostBattle triggers that can possibly trigger on this siege battle to only work when the
event counter isn't set (check the Oppida files for examples).
Added version 1.0.1 beta which fixes a few small things and makes the script a bit lighter thanks to a tip by zxiang1983.
06-04-2007, 23:56
Ilsamir Lord
Re: Oppida (aka the view settlement mod)
Glad to see this feature wasn't totally out of reach :) . Nice work!
I'm looking into the amount of fog in battles (the stuff which obscures all distant mountains and such), so perhaps if I find anything the mods could be combined? Of course this depends on your opinion of the fog, but the view settlement feature in Rome was much more spectacular for the long view distances in my opinion.
Well, as I said, nice work, and the means by which you've made the feature accessible is remarkably smooth all things considered!
06-05-2007, 17:11
alpaca
Re: Oppida (aka the view settlement mod)
Well we could make an alternative version.
This one is "pure", that means it only contains the files necessary for the view settlement feature to work, and I'd like to keep it that way because when I start adding other stuff, where should I draw the line to stop ~;)
06-06-2007, 00:12
Ilsamir Lord
Re: Oppida (aka the view settlement mod)
No, of course :) . I agree that that's the right thing to do, and I haven't really put in the effort on the fog front yet anyway.
