unit editing

Interesting indeed. But for what I know they're working on, waiting for them to release the code until they no longer devekop it themselves may take at least another year.

When that happens, I should hope they release the code.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Erado San:
[B]Interesting indeed. But for what I know they're working on

[omissis]

Yeppers Erado, as long as we cannot see their work finished, we cannot know which issues have been solved and which will never be.
I strongly believe they will not release any more versions after 1.13. This bc usually, a new version is released with one or two major bugs are solved while at the same time the main interest of the teams is to solve the connection problems due to multiplay.

The expansion pack will most certainly add new things to the game and i am looking forward to seeing it, though i already know part of me will like the addenda for the increased number of unit tyoes (which SHOULD bring new tactics)...as well as a part of me will not like it for the lack of accuracy in simulation and history( i am pretty confident they ll keep the game as it is)

As i see the game now, the arcade component is so evident that most of the real inaccuracies will be left as they are :-(

Yes, i think they will release the code. I fear we'll have to wait a lot, but i think they will.
And they will, GLADLY :-) especially if we showed interest in a real development.

i hate to dash hopes on such subjects, but realistically it's doubtful that the dev team will release the code even in one year. most software companies never release code. most game companies use existing code or parts of it over and over again. we already know of at least one more game that is being developed from this code and i'm guessing that there will be more than that. i'd be truly surprised if even in 5 years the code is released. it's just not done that often. sure, there are exceptions, but in the main it's just not done. that's their bread and butter and when you spend one to two years developing a game you dont just turn around and release it to public domain. i suppose there is some chance they would sell rights to it or something along those lines but i wouldnt even count on that any time soon, particularly since three companies are involved in this and no telling what legalities would arise from one of them trying to release the code or the rights to alter or use the code.

now, on the bright side there is nothing that says you cant write your own patches for the game, particularly if you're not selling this. you can also write your own .exe's. you can also substitute your own graphic files for the units and such. and you could even write your own map editor or unit editor. but not being a lawyer, dont quote me on any of that. some of that is quite possibly a gray area legally. normally if you're not making your own for profit expansion pack or selling any of the above then there's no real problem....normally. companies can be pretty touchy about someone trying to bite into their profits and with all the piracy that goes on i cant really blame them. there is also no reason why you cant contact the dev team and try and work out some mods but from everything i've seen posted about making contact with creative assembly, good luck. they do have a web address in the uk though, so feel free to try. they even have a couple email addy's posted there for feedback and such. mine hasnt been answered yet.

my advice here is pretty simple. dont count on any help, code, or anything else from creative. my guess is that they're pretty busy with patches, expansion packs, other projects and sequels. they've also done a sports thing for EA...rugby, i think it was. most mods are made, from what i've seen, by single folks with a hex editor and a bit of coding experience. sometimes if graphics are needed an artist will also join in for that.

believe it or not, there is already one mod available. well, it may not be available but it was done. tosainu made a mod of the entire demo game and downsized the whole thing from 97 megs to about 33 megs. most dont think of that as a mod maybe, but it is. i've made one mod myself though i wont release it since it was just a case of borrowing files from the main game and sticking them into the demo game. that is also a mod.

so basically, my advice is get in there and start poking around yourselves. you want a unit editor? great! get a hex editor and find out where the unit data is stored and learn a little visual basic and make your mod. you'd be surprised what you can find out just doing that.

ok, i'm preaching and i hate when others do that so i'll stop ;) the only point here is that 'contacting the dev team', 'waiting for the code to be released', 'putting together a mod team' and all these other things are not 'making a mod'. just go do it. i'm really quite surprised there is nothing out there yet in the way of an editor for maps or units. in most of the games i've played in the last few years the bloody game hits the shelves and a week later there's six editors out or being made. and if you think i'm kidding, take a look at diablo II. i have at least 20 editors for that game now. the tools for making mods are out there. i found one site once where they had dozens of hex editors, packet editors, and other assorted hack tools for doing exactly what we want to do...making mods.

and my last word on this is i'll offer ya a little help in this way: the file you want for unit editing is most likely 'packed' with a proprietary zip system. what i've seen done lately is that companies in order to save space on a disk or to protect their code and prevent hacking somewhat will compress certain critical files with their own compression routines. this is often done with the unit data and the texture data. when you load your game the code simply unpacks it into ram or a temp file...usually ram. in games like total annihilation these were .cab files. the folks who made the third party editors for that game first learned how the compression was done and then made a program for reading and unpacking these .cab files and then went on to build their own map editors. but the first step was making a file decompressor and reader.

K.

Kraell,

the only chance, since what u say is absolutely right and true is to start a team, with someone THEY trust in programming and devotion to the game and therefore sign a contract where they exchange the code for us to use, and with all their limits which we would have to adhere.

Of course, the key to this is that they sell the game we tweak and we earn just a compliment :-)

Technically it is how it happens, when it does.

ah, hmmmm, i suppose that could work given that the dev guys are willing to do it. hope someone can pull it off, specially in light of the upcoming patch and expansion. i wasnt aware that game co's were doing this. first i've heard of it, but it does have the possibility of keeping a game alive and kicking for longer periods of time. nice.

K.

Ya know,

There's only one group of people that can shed some light on this whole discussion. The developers.

Now I know they are damn busy after the X-mas break, and I don't expect any asnwer soon (if any!!!), but let's just wait and see what they say.

My bet is that expecting them to release their code is not very realistic (and that's an understatement). And as I am against unit editing unless it's very well controlled, I won't mind a negative.

Quote Originally posted by Erado San:

My bet is that expecting them to release their code is not very realistic (and that's an understatement). And as I am against unit editing unless it's very well controlled, I won't mind a negative.[/QUOTE]

As far as my battles show, there's no need for unit editing but just of price modeling.
Perhaps the +4 of yari armed bonus when having the correct facing vs cavalry could be made smaller (say +3) to show that after the first clash the yari is replaced by a shortsword...
basically, the yari as any other polearm, is pointed to the ground (and a foot), or held by the man behind you. Your unit braces itself against the charge. But when the charge arrives and is held by the pikes, the rest is sword to sword. Yari is too cumbersome and awkward against a sword and don't forget that they break a lot since apart form the blade, they are wooden.
The price of gunners is to be rised up a lot (and not a bit...hey guns, balls and powder costs !) but apart from this there's not much to alter since i see the game is balanced now.
(i mean the ruled game ;-) )

I would reduce the range of restricted camera and reduce the range at which units hidden in woods are displayed.
Remove the gun shoot-through-friends issue and reduce their range...remove the description of the enemy unit when u put the cursor onto it (they didn't have goggles back there in japan!).

After all of this is done, this game will be granted history and enter the hall of fame as the bestest game ever to have been made on a computer...it will never arrive second in ANY competition vs other games ;-)
Range and cost of guns, range of restricted camera (smaller range), no visual aids by binoculars and smaller range at which hiding units are actually displayed, dat's all.

;-)

Now...where's the code ? lol

i didn't read all of the posts. only the first few so and i only scanned the first one so i don't know if this has already be suggested:

With the unit editor if it was put together some how or if someone figured out how to succesfully create new units this would be truly AWESOME. With the Mongol Invasion expansion pack being released next month (March),unless it gets delayed, we will have the great map editor we needed, and if we got the new units working correctly, we would be able to create MODs! The only obstacle I see if we can get this far would be figuring out how Shogun would support the MODs (I mean getting the MOD to work without messing up the current Shogun: Total War files). If installing Shogun into another directory with the normal files in another one would work.. that'd be fine for those who have the space (if that would work). But if EA (or whoever is in charge of this game if EA isn't) sees that ppl are succesfully creating good MODs than they will support it and release patches that will help us along are way of creating awesome MODs.

Thats just how I see it...

i'll say it again:

--- SWAT 3 ---

know what i mean??? cheers

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the great lord http://www.geocities.com/vinyljock/monn_t.gif jd

MODS create longievity for a game, look at the Quake community. Instead of peeps changing a few values and ruining a game the mods that stand out are ones that excellent design, innovation etc. You work up a system whereby players can play against each other using exactly the same mod. To do this though the chaps at CA are going to have to produce more than just a landscape editor.

I have no idea of programming, coding etc.
But, AFK, there is no game in the market that can compare to the STW battle engine. As long as CA/EA have this "competitive advantage", they have a monopoly. No one gives up a monopoly freely.
STW contains inside some details (like the "medical school") that show that the original game concept was much more far reching than the actual game. The actual game was released too soon, probably, just in order to have this 1 year advantage over the competitors.
I am dead sure that they have great plans with this battle engine, and they will milk it unitl something much beter comes out. I don't see something like this happening befoore a couple of years.

As i said before, i have no idea of programming, so tell me if i am wrong:
The stw battle engine is breakthrough in battle simulation. This is the difference between STW and other games. That's the reason why the whole policy of CA/EA is aimed to KEEP CONTROL OF THE WHOLE GAME.
From the way online gaming is organised to the way the key elements like unit values etc. have been "hidden", all shows that they have long term projects for this engine.

So, to make a short story long, i don't think they wil release any code until the game engine is outdated.

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Long live Celtiberos
Glory and Honour to Clan Celtiberos

frankly, i dont see this happening. i'd love to see it happen, but various indications tell me the dev guys are going to guard their code and mod possibilities as much as possible in order to keep the mods they make sellable. the other caveat to unit editing is, of course, 'cheating'. once you start editing the values of units and other parameters in multi games you inevitably hear the cry 'cheat!'.

now, cheating is very easily defined. it's simply what the other players didnt or dont agree with and that's pretty much it. you think i'm kidding? listen in the chat room sometime where a good player pulls off a huge win against a newbie. the newbie starts shouting 'cheat!' simply because he doesnt agree with the outcome and how it was done. in most cases he hasnt even a clue as to how it was done, but he's really quite sure the other guy cheated. the classic that comes to mind is the lower koku games where you cant buy 16, honor 2 units. the newbie ends up spending all his koku but only thinks he could afford 10 units, while the vet lowers the honor on some units and gets the full 16 units. the newbie doesnt agree that this is possible when he sees his enemy has 16 units so he hollers 'cheat!'.

so, what was my point? simple. if folks agree ahead of time what the unit values are going to be or allow a single person to decide, e.g. the game host, then there is no cheating, because all agree upon these parameters. some of the folks in the game are already playing a 'ruled game' wherein only certain units can be bought in certain numbers. if someone disobeys these rules they are cheating.

the main point is simply this, though, outside of protecting the rights for future mods, the game creators really dont need to worry about 'cheating' if they simply allow the game host's parameters to be used as the overall game parameters. this is already done to a certain extent in things like number of men per unit, fatigue settings, limited or unlimited ammunition and so on. extending this out to unit values is then a piece of cake, particularly if the setup room is altered to allow seeing these parameters ahead of time.

but i think the main reason you wont see a unit editor is because we'd also want a sprite editor in order to change the look of our units to civil war style, egyptian style, napoleanic style, etc, ad infinitum. and this is perceived as taking money out of the pockets of the dev guys...which i dont blame them one spec for.

there are easily 8 or 10 mod packs possible with this current engine and i'm sure the historians among us could name twice that many and that's with simple unit and sprite editing. does the dev team give that away or do they sell it? i've seen it go both ways in games. i've also seen engines 'leased' to other dev teams. if i remember right, most of the Doom spinoffs were 'leased engine' games.

so, it's really up to the dev guys. currently they seem to be sitting on the code as if it were the only egg in the nest, which is why i dont believe we'll see a unit editor from them and why the code seems to be deterring all attempts so far at altering it....at least for now.

K.

Krael -- I suppose this isn't the forum for this discussion, but I can't just let that last post go un commented

You've over simplified the "cheat" problem. Sure there are newbies who don't know all the nuiances of the game, but there ARE instances where parameters have been switched by one player without other players knowing... there is a "ROUT" cheat, as well as the ability to turn "MORALE OFF" for only one player's troops. Most recently I saw a player bring his troops on in a game, after the game started, from behind the DEFENDERS from off the board edge.

Those are the types of cheats that have made even good players question "odd" battles. The shame is that STW was set up to have the occasional victory against overwhelming odds. The problem now, is that u can't tell when troops rout for no apparent reason whether it was a "fair" loss or from a "cheat."

I'm piping up here to agree that the sprite editor is both incredibly important for making mopds, and unlikely to see happen yet. One can make near infinite variations of Total War just by altering the graphics and scripting a short series of battles. There are only a few (a couple dozen being a "few") sprites per indivdual unit type, but the dev team would need to release some kind of a BIF compressor.

I think on reason they may be hesitating is the fear of losing potential sales of future games. "Why buy Ceasar:Total War when TosaInu just released his Imperial Rome mod?" What they forget is that while we fans are making our mods, they can be advancing the game engine itself. We may make new units, but they can introduce game elements like "Hiring Mercenaries" or "Custom Formations." Rather than losing future sales, a healthy mod community ASSURES future sales by keeping the game in the public eye!

Ah, well. Trying to explain anything to a marketing department is a lesson in futility.

Cheating's gonna happen whether editing is officially sanctioned or not.

-- B)

[This message has been edited by BanzaiZAP (edited 04-20-2001).]

shingenmitch,

hehehe...that map that you mention where troops come on from behind the attacker is actually a built in intentional feature of the game. we found this, me and tosa, while playing around making maps. it's quite possibly something that was left over from the earlier versions of the game that they forgot to take out, but it is nonetheless a valid, actual feature. it will and can only occur on certain castle maps. a couple of these were just released by the map makers after testing. it's actually designed to be this way.

and that brings me to exactly what i was saying in my earlier post...cheating is nothing more than something you disagree with. you disagree that this shld be possible and thus you call it a cheat http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

i rest my case *grin*

K.

I can edit the way units look but i cant edit there stats. That may be helpful to later mod development. Right now my No-Dachi are green and i lost my backup files so can someone send me all of there no Dachi files please?

u did what???



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Long live Celtiberos
Glory and Honour to Clan Celtiberos

So you were able to edit the unit color, could you also edit the unit's shape?

I thought there was no way to edit units at all, how did you do it???

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Long live Celtiberos
Glory and Honour to Clan Celtiberos

um, i dont remember for sure, since i've not looked at these in a while, but i think you could edit the .lbm files in paint shop pro or any other paint program that can handle that file format.

i mean, wouldnt it be cool if all your yari samurai looked like heather locklear? :)

i believe we could also edit the textures. just remember that in editing these you are only editing them for yourself. others wont see your mods unless you can pass your edited files along to others. so, there is a slight caveat in editing the textures if you are making maps. you could edit your maps using your textures and they might look absolutely great to you, but like crap to others since they dont have your mods installed. your units could also start acting strange, since if you edited a tree texture into a swamp texture, the original texture is still really a tree texture and your units will react as if it's still a tree texture.

K.

Samurai looking like heather locklear? Hmm , then we would have to ask tone to find some new unit sounds again http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

And i think some would be hesistant to send em into battle hehe http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

yeah, but just think of the cat fights ;)

K.

I'll take Jenny Lopez thx

Quote Originally posted by smeegol:
i didn't read all of the posts. only the first few so and i only scanned the first one so i don't know if this has already be suggested:

With the unit editor if it was put together some how or if someone figured out how to succesfully create new units this would be truly AWESOME. With the Mongol Invasion expansion pack being released next month (March),unless it gets delayed, we will have the great map editor we needed, and if we got the new units working correctly, we would be able to create MODs! The only obstacle I see if we can get this far would be figuring out how Shogun would support the MODs (I mean getting the MOD to work without messing up the current Shogun: Total War files). If installing Shogun into another directory with the normal files in another one would work.. that'd be fine for those who have the space (if that would work). But if EA (or whoever is in charge of this game if EA isn't) sees that ppl are succesfully creating good MODs than they will support it and release patches that will help us along are way of creating awesome MODs.

Thats just how I see it...[/QUOTE]


** NEW BATTLE SOUNDS **

* changed the wavs for each movement attack/advance/run/charge
* uppped the volume of the sounds in table.cfg
* edited charge advance openfire and run ! in table.cfg
* and edited the range @ where you hear them from 4 to 90 http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif in table.cfg
* you can hear the enemy attack/move/run/charge from really far away

** GREEN NINJA ! **

* Edited the ninja texture so there bright green ninja :P you can see the ninja EZr :P
http://shogunnewbie.tripod.com

I'm re-posting this just to show how pessimistic people seem to have been ages ago- as in Kraellin's post in the 1.03 thread (the sixth one).

I'm not sure why repost all this outdated information.

The bif reader/editor had not been written back then, and it took a member of the community to write it.
The developers didn't release it.

Also the lbm editor was still a quest item.
(out there, waiting to be found)
Again the developer's didn't release it to us.

You can now edit your own icons to look like anything you want, this has no effect on what your opponents see on the field of battle. Just you.
(Which could make for some very funny replay's)

Stats can be edited freely, BUT both players must be using the same set of stats or the battle will drop players whose stats vary from the hosts.


At the time this discussion took place none of these tools were available to us.
It took months of experimenting for modders to be able to design new stats, and alter units icons.

This discussion generated ideas,
"there has GOT to be a way" and, given enough time, the resourcefull and the creative members of this community found it.

Remember when the original STW came out?
Players wanted to be able to create their own maps, Someone found a way to do so, posted their notes and the idea spread like wildfire.
This forum is where they exchanged notes, ideas and findings. Allowing the community to create their own maps almost a year before the developers released the map editor to us.

Now we can edit unit sprites, the unit battle Cards (down the bottom of screen in battle), the icons you see during unit selection, and even Unit stats.

If it was not for discussions like this one NONE of this would be possible.

This thread has absolutely nothing to do with the current discussion about unit stats 1.02 vs 1.03.

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

It was just a window into a different era...

Could someone point me at all these wonderful utilties?

actually, a lot of what i said was pretty pessimistic, but also somewhat true; we still dont really have a 'unit editor' or a lot of the other mods that could have been done. here we are over 2 years since the release of the original game and there's still no real unit editor. yes, we can alter the stats and we're starting to understand the image files and animations a bit now, but still no true unit editor.

i've also changed my tune a lot about 'trainers'. i no longer consider these things cheats. they are just mods. play the game with this set of stats or mods or play it straight up. it's just a preferences choice. i do like that shogun checks each player's files to make sure they match up so that all are playing with those same choices.

i've recently been modding dungeon siege a bit and have d/l'd quite a few mods that i like for that game and use. it does have a few drawbacks though. some of the mods are used to gain unfair advantages over other players and this isnt much fun in pvp games. someone will inevitably try and use a mod as a way to 'cheat'. since i mostly play the game with friends, i normally give them the same mods i use or remove my mods when i play them. keeps the playing field level.

the dev guys at CA also did do some mods for us while we were testing 1.02 and those were included in the final version of 1.02. some bugs were fixed and some stats added to the stat files. i just wish we'd all had the time and resources and permissions to do more. it was fun working with the guys at CA and gettting a new .exe every few days to test and debate and beat each other over the head with ;)

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.