Post your "must-know" modding questions here!

JeromeGrasdyke was so kind these answer to our modding questions:
Since the number of questions is not too large I've decided (in a fit of enthusiasm) to answer all of them, so here they are:

Assuming there are individual unit speeds, where are they found?

The unit speeds are affected by a number of factors. The main one is the animations; you may already have noticed that the 'fast' skeletons contain many of the same animations as the none-fast ones, just different, sped-up locomotion anims. A second factor is the ground type modifier - these are stored in the descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt file, but will cause the soldiers to 'slide' around when applied, so it's best to keep their influence to the minimum required. So, there are no individual unit speeds as such, but it is possible to create their appearance by adding new animations.

Where can we find the Marian Reform trigger (and can it be changed from the Imperial Palace)? Can we change the population limits for settlements so that they happen later?

The Marian Reforms are triggered by the first non-Senate faction to build an Imperial Palace, and this is hard-coded. We are planning to add a date limit as well in the v1.2 patch to make sure it does not occur too early. The population limits are also hard-coded, although you could attempt to decrease the rate of population growth by reducing farming and other growth bonusses (this will have substantial knock-on effects for the game balance, so watch out).

Is it possible to create a new faction/rename an existing one, and if so how?

It is possible, but it will be a lot of work. There are many things which go into the look of a coherent faction: names lists, banners, tech tree entries and their descriptions, unit lists, correctly-coloured unit models, and so on. Covering all of this in detail is beyond the scope of a simple question, but all the conversions from a faction tag into the code's internal identifiers run through the same code, and so if you wanted to change the Julian Romans into something else, you could do a search for 'romans_julii' and be reasonably certain that you've caught all instances where the faction is directly referred to. You'll see these faction tags all over the text files, so I won't list them here. Unfortunately, there may be places where it is implicit; none come to mind, but any sequences of numbers or properties in sets of 21 would be suspicious. There will be some trial-and-error involved...

Is there a way to turn off the Fog of War so that playtesting sweeping mod changes is easier?

Yes. Open up your preferences.txt file and change the FOG_OF_WAR setting to FALSE. Alternatively, there is a 'toggle_fow' command available as a cheat through RomeShell.

With a tool already out to allow us to poke around in the files, it looks like the unit data stuff and the textures are straight-forward enough..but what about the 3D files ? Is there going to be a way to mod them?

We're still considering various ways to approach this - no decision has yet been made.

Can new units be added to increase the number of unit choices available, or are there limits as there were with the MTW ones?

The game supports a maximum of 300 units.

Is the campaign map a full 3D object or a 2D image of one? What about .rwm files?

The campaign map is a full 3D object, and is mostly built out of geographical heightfield data, with models merged into the map at the places where there are mountains to give the visual appeal a bit of extra 'oomph'. The RWM file contains this data and quite a few other 'layers' such as a climate map, a ground type map, a region map and a feature map.

Could you give us an idea of what kind of modding support CA are planning? Really just an outline ie. are they going to release a modding guide or will there be a set of tools available too? I'm interested in creating a Japanese/fantasy mod but it would require model editing ability (rather than simple texture adjusting).

We will be releasing a battle editor (which also includes an integrated terrain editor) for generating stand-alone battles with a future patch, and also a rough modding guide which may be added to over time as people run into problems. Other tools, such as the sprite generator or some of the Excel spreadsheets, may be released after a while; again, no decision has yet been made on this.

Can we mod individual (turning) speeds?

No. They are hard-coded.

Is there a list of console commands / command-line options available anywhere?

Not as yet. These will probably be included in the modding guide.

How does the Academy bonus work?

The Academy generates ancillaries for characters which are inside a settlement which contains an Academy. If you examine export_descr_ancillaries.txt you will be able to spot them, together with a lot of other ancillaries which are linked to the presence of buildings.

Can we add new campaigns without adding a new installation of Rome?

There is a mechanism for this, however it is not yet ready for prime time. It will be exposed in a future patch and detailed in the guide.

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I was wondering how to mod the cavalry turn/wheel factor. To me, it seems cavalry can turn on a time and reverse/change direction. Infantry seems to rotate formation in a reasonable manner. I just not happy with cavalry formation turns. I know we use to be able to change the turn rates in MTW. Can we mod this factor in RTW, in particular for cavalry?

DJ: Added

Is there a debug routine that we can turn on, to determine where the crashes come from?

DJ: See post #4

I'll back modding tools. And what other modding support is included. Jerome said that there was a way to get around the fact that changed files will be incompatible in MP but that it wasn't ready. And I'd also like to know if "modding tools" covers a tool to create a map, which seems to have been compiled from the tga files.

And -show_errs on the command line shows errors when you exit.

Thanks, is there a list of command line and/or console commands anywhere?

DJ: Added

Can we make the troops hold their weapons differently as it is now? Can the pikemen be made to hold their pikes correctly with two hands, and the heavy lancers hold their kontos with two hands, are are we forced into one hand to hold the spear/pike?

DJ: This can be done if we can add new animations and that question is already included.

If there are multiple weapons in a texture how can we determine which one the unit uses? (This is probably relevant to the CAS files, so it may count as the same question as DJ's)

DJ: Indeed. The weapon is likely included with the model. When switching weapons the model is also switched and also a different set of animations. At the moment we can't change weapons so we need to add animations and models and that question is already asked.

Academic Building Question: The descriptions of the academic buildings imply that they should improve the starting ratings of heirs. The export_descr_buildings.txt file shows that these buildings have blank "capabilities" so their only current value is to allow other usefull buildings. I see no effect on heirs starting ratings if these buildings are present. One could mod the blank capabilities for happiness_bonus, law_bonus, and recruit_exp_bonus but this would only affect units not heirs. Is there an "heir_bonus" somewhere or is this something that will appear in the "future patch"??

DJ: Added.

General Mod Issue Question: Since modding RTW would involve changes across many files/directories, Does RTW have an equivalent of the MTW "Prodfiles" and other similiar command lines?? Or are mod-ers going to be limited to having a duplicate RTW installation for each mod set?? For example, it would be nice if all mod files could reside in a single directory such as data\world\maps\campaign\My-Mod_campaign.

DJ: Question has been added. On a side note, by chance I copied the Imperial campmap directory. And then I noticed in the main menu that a new item appeared in which I could select "Copy of Imperial Campaign".

Command shell Question: Has anyone found or figured out if there is a "toggle_xxxx" command that will turn off the startup intro so that RTW pops right into the main menu?? This would make mod-testing so much easier and save hours of looking at the soundblaster plug.

DJ: See post #12

TIA for any answers or conjectures.

What about files such as 'export_descr_character_traits.txt' that say:

;This file is generated from the Spreadsheet VnV,txt
;Please modify the spreadsheet and re-xport the data, rather than editing this file directly

How can we mod these files correctly?

DJ: Question has been added.

Further to camulos' question, can we please have copies of the spreadsheets that output those .txt files? We don't even need documentation, I am sure we can figure it out. However, given the almost countless number of changes one has to make to do something like rename a faction, such spreadsheets will no doubt make our lives a lot easier.

DJ: Added, merged with post #9.

Hello

First, I'd like to thank Jerome for his kind offer. It is muchly appreciated.

Second and to the point: Are we going to be able to mod and create events? If so, a full list of the relevant files and where they fit into the scheme of things would be most helpful.


DJ: Added. Although you can change dates, the effects of the events are most likely hardcoded.

For that matter, for any of these files where we can make changes, it would be good to have a short rundown of how these files relate to each other. For example, if you need to change the cost and upkeep for agents, you have to change two files (whose names escape me at the moment).

So it might say: To change building capabilities, open export_building_descr.txt.

DJ: We would get some guides to help us modding. We will see to what extent they help us. I think we are ourselves more than capable to write our own guides if the official ones are lacking a bit.


Thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dhague

Command shell Question: Has anyone found or figured out if there is a "toggle_xxxx" command that will turn off the startup intro so that RTW pops right into the main menu?? This would make mod-testing so much easier and save hours of looking at the soundblaster plug.

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Just cut the files "ATVI_Spinning_Logo_640x480.wmv" & "rome_title.wmv" from the game files and put them in a backup folder for safe keeping, no more intro during those heavy modding sessions

~:cheers:

I'd like to know whether it's possible to mod the population requirement that causes the increase to a settlement's level, i.e. 2,000, 6,000, 12,000, 24,000.

Cheers

DJ: Added. But I can't find it, so most probably not.

I have added most of the questions. See the blue comments in your post.

To all
Please post questions that we are most likely unable to discover ourselves. For example the questions about changing events or population requirements are some that we can answer ourselves if we look through the files. If there no entries then it's not moddable.
For example the question about command line/ console commands is a good one since there is no way we can discover that ourselves. If there are too many questions then I will pick the ones that are asked with the above in mind.

Perhaps we can make a new post in the future where we ask the developers to uncode some things and make the moddable. This has been done in the past with the M:TW projectile files. And the VI expansion allowed us to add multiple campaigns.

Cheers, Duke John

How can we edit terrain and other overlay effects, like climate, map surface and things like that.

I tried to modify the map_heights.tga, which has the same surface features as heightmap as the campaign map in game, but it wont change anything. Next I compiled a new .hgt file, a heightmap file, from a modified heights.tga and did the same for the .rwm file (rome world map?) but when I loaded the game, I was still the default campaign map.

So, where can we modify campaihn map terrain and import elevation data to create custom terrain?

Belonging to the above: Can i create new regions, if I create a new color on the regions.tga (as the regions seem to be stored as unique RGB fields), add a black dot for the settlement and paint it onto an existing region? (modifying a few of those settlement and region text files too)

The same question concerning rivers: Is there a way, to simply PAINT the new rivers in the appropriate file in the base folder? I noticed that all rivers are dark blue, the background black and forable places white.
Will these .tgs tell the engine to create terrain features from existing art work?

mfg

Lance, trying to edit the terrain

Can we mod in firearms?:surrender:

Cheers

Another question:

Is it possible to mod the difficulty level settings for battle and campaign map AI, and mod the AI's tendency to purchase buildings/units? For example the AI never seems to build an assassin.

Cheers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jambo

Another question:

Is it possible to mod the difficulty level settings for battle and campaign map AI, and mod the AI's tendency to purchase buildings/units? For example the AI never seems to build an assassin.

Cheers

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I second that AND also CAn we mod the AI bonuses OUT? So we can play on "smart" AI but without the REDICULUS battle bonuses? (+att+def)

Hellenes

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Duke John

Thank you very much for the offer, JeromeGrasdyke :bow:

Everybody, if you have a modding question then post them here. Once we have enough reasonable questions I will make a poll so that we can decide whitch 5 question are send to Jerome.

My questions:

• Will we be able to make our own campaign maps, ie only England or even Middle Earth?

• Will we be able to import our own models, not just textures?

For me those are the most important since if we're not able to do those things alot of mod ideas can be thrown into the wastebasket.

Cheers,
Duke John

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Couldn't have said it better. For us at the EB (Europa Barbarorum) thread, those are the two of the most important questions to be asked. In addiction to those:

• Can unit stats be edited one by one, regarding walking, running, charging speed, defense, attack, bonuses against cav, etc? I don't mean by category (light cav, heavy cav, etc...), but by unit.

• Can new unit animations be imported into RTW? If no, is there any way to change existing ones?

• Can events (like Marian Reforms) be modded or altered in any way?

Since the number of questions is not too large I've decided (in a fit of enthusiasm) to answer all of them, so here they are:

Assuming there are individual unit speeds, where are they found?

The unit speeds are affected by a number of factors. The main one is the animations; you may already have noticed that the 'fast' skeletons contain many of the same animations as the none-fast ones, just different, sped-up locomotion anims. A second factor is the ground type modifier - these are stored in the descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt file, but will cause the soldiers to 'slide' around when applied, so it's best to keep their influence to the minimum required. So, there are no individual unit speeds as such, but it is possible to create their appearance by adding new animations.

Where can we find the Marian Reform trigger (and can it be changed from the Imperial Palace)? Can we change the population limits for settlements so that they happen later?

The Marian Reforms are triggered by the first non-Senate faction to build an Imperial Palace, and this is hard-coded. We are planning to add a date limit as well in the v1.2 patch to make sure it does not occur too early. The population limits are also hard-coded, although you could attempt to decrease the rate of population growth by reducing farming and other growth bonusses (this will have substantial knock-on effects for the game balance, so watch out).

Is it possible to create a new faction/rename an existing one, and if so how?

It is possible, but it will be a lot of work. There are many things which go into the look of a coherent faction: names lists, banners, tech tree entries and their descriptions, unit lists, correctly-coloured unit models, and so on. Covering all of this in detail is beyond the scope of a simple question, but all the conversions from a faction tag into the code's internal identifiers run through the same code, and so if you wanted to change the Julian Romans into something else, you could do a search for 'romans_julii' and be reasonably certain that you've caught all instances where the faction is directly referred to. You'll see these faction tags all over the text files, so I won't list them here. Unfortunately, there may be places where it is implicit; none come to mind, but any sequences of numbers or properties in sets of 21 would be suspicious. There will be some trial-and-error involved...

Is there a way to turn off the Fog of War so that playtesting sweeping mod changes is easier?

Yes. Open up your preferences.txt file and change the FOG_OF_WAR setting to FALSE. Alternatively, there is a 'toggle_fow' command available as a cheat through RomeShell.

With a tool already out to allow us to poke around in the files, it looks like the unit data stuff and the textures are straight-forward enough..but what about the 3D files ? Is there going to be a way to mod them?

We're still considering various ways to approach this - no decision has yet been made.

Can new units be added to increase the number of unit choices available, or are there limits as there were with the MTW ones?

The game supports a maximum of 300 units.

Is the campaign map a full 3D object or a 2D image of one? What about .rwm files?

The campaign map is a full 3D object, and is mostly built out of geographical heightfield data, with models merged into the map at the places where there are mountains to give the visual appeal a bit of extra 'oomph'. The RWM file contains this data and quite a few other 'layers' such as a climate map, a ground type map, a region map and a feature map.

Could you give us an idea of what kind of modding support CA are planning? Really just an outline ie. are they going to release a modding guide or will there be a set of tools available too? I'm interested in creating a Japanese/fantasy mod but it would require model editing ability (rather than simple texture adjusting).

We will be releasing a battle editor (which also includes an integrated terrain editor) for generating stand-alone battles with a future patch, and also a rough modding guide which may be added to over time as people run into problems. Other tools, such as the sprite generator or some of the Excel spreadsheets, may be released after a while; again, no decision has yet been made on this.

Can we mod individual (turning) speeds?

No. They are hard-coded.

Is there a list of console commands / command-line options available anywhere?

Not as yet. These will probably be included in the modding guide.

How does the Academy bonus work?

The Academy generates ancillaries for characters which are inside a settlement which contains an Academy. If you examine export_descr_ancillaries.txt you will be able to spot them, together with a lot of other ancillaries which are linked to the presence of buildings.

Can we add new campaigns without adding a new installation of Rome?

There is a mechanism for this, however it is not yet ready for prime time. It will be exposed in a future patch and detailed in the guide.

Thank you for answering all the questions. Looks like many things are undecided at the minute but at least we have plenty of things to be going on with for the time being. (goes off to try adding a faction or province) :charge:

Thank your very much for your answers, JeromeGrasdyke :bow:

Although we're still a bit left in the dark considering the tools, I can completely understand that just releasing company made tools isn't always the obvious thing to do. Still I would like to add that mods do sell games. Not all people might be interested in buying a roman game, but if there are fantasy, medieval or napoleonic mods with a large modding community behind it then it's a different story. At the moment we're limited to tweaking the original game and IMO that is waste of the huge potential that the engine has.

Still many thanks :medievalcheers:

First off thank you for taking the time to help us with answering our questions. Truly appreciated. :)

Now, on to my question:

Many, many of us have been desperately and intensely trying to slow down the "kill rate" or rate in which combat happens. So many of us feel combat is over way too quickly and there should be more time for the fight to commence thus allowing more tactics not to mention a more "epic" feel to the battles.

We have tried in desperation everything we can think of, or find.

1. Kill - rate modifier (last one on the line)
2. boosting hp's
3. boosting defensive skill and other skills

... and every combination of the above we can all think of and test.
So far everything has been a dead end because some part of what we change ends up disrupting something else in a way we can not figure out how to rebalance.

So, I (we) ask of you, please, can you help us?

What is the way in which we can prolong the melee combat experience without or with minimal disruption of the balance of the units and the game itself?

Several of us are also using this in combination with a 10-20% decrease in the descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt file.

Thank you very much for your time.

Best Regards,
Jordan Trais "AstroCat"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JeromeGrasdyke

Since the number of questions is not too large I've decided (in a fit of enthusiasm) to answer all of them, so here they are:

Assuming there are individual unit speeds, where are they found?

The unit speeds are affected by a number of factors. The main one is the animations; you may already have noticed that the 'fast' skeletons contain many of the same animations as the none-fast ones, just different, sped-up locomotion anims. A second factor is the ground type modifier - these are stored in the descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt file, but will cause the soldiers to 'slide' around when applied, so it's best to keep their influence to the minimum required. So, there are no individual unit speeds as such, but it is possible to create their appearance by adding new animations.

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Thank you for your answers!

So, if I am reading this correctly, you are saying that the unit animations can actually increase or decrease not how quickly the unit -appears- to move, but rather how quickly the unit -actually- moves? By "move" I do not mean the movement of limbs, but rather the actual distance travelled over the same amount of time.

Thanks,

-khel

Quote:

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The game supports a maximum of 300 units.

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Noo.... :embarassed: :help:

I might be speaking out of school, but I was wondering how I can change the unit sizes. Even at Huge 160 men will not do it. At least 200 men per unit max would be feasable to me. How could that unit size number be changed? I tried to do it in preferences file, but it changes back to 160. I guess it won't work. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Cheers! ~:cheers:

Thanks for the responses! Don't know if there will be an opportunity for future questions, but I'm curious about the following:

1. Spears/pikes vs. cav. We are seeing some odd effects where spear units don't seem to do that well vs. cav. (compared to sword infantry), and horses jump over phalangites, etc. Where should this be adjusted (file and stat), and is it working as intended by CA?

2. Missile stats and units. Is there some factor for reducing missile effectiveness at extreme range? I'm not seeing much loss of accuracy/killing power at range and would like to tone it down for the "elite" units. I realize the missile attack rating can be lowered, but what about accuracy/penetration vs. distance?

Thanks again.

Thank you for your time and responses Jerome.

Although we're still a bit left in the dark considering the tools, I can completely understand that just releasing company made tools isn't always the obvious thing to do. Still I would like to add that mods do sell games.

Yes, totally true. But it's one thing to have a tool for internal use, and another to release it to the public at large. There are some legal issues, and business ones as well, which need to be thought through and dealt with.

Many, many of us have been desperately and intensely trying to slow down the "kill rate" or rate in which combat happens. So many of us feel combat is over way too quickly and there should be more time for the fight to commence thus allowing more tactics not to mention a more "epic" feel to the battles.

Increasing the number of hit points is probably the best way to go, as long as you multiply all of the hit point numbers by a small amount (x2 or x3). There are a few problems: for one, the engine only supports a maximum of 15 hp, and hence you will need to increase the armour of those troops which are already near the limit in order to compensate. The elephant units are the only ones that come to mind, although the individual general and officer soldiers will also become more vulnerable relative to the other soldiers, and there's not much that can be done about that. Combined with a decrease in the movement modifiers, as you mentioned, this should do most of what you want. Then there may be too much fatigue resulting from the longer battles; it this turns out to be a problem, it could be resolved by adding the 'hardy' attribute to all units (this gives a boost to fatigue resistance). It will also be necessary to increase the amounts of ammo for all missile troops, since it will take at least two hits to kill a soldier, and also the attack strength of all 'precursor' weapons (such as the Roman pilum), since they function as one-shot weapons prior to engagement and their impact will be considerably weakened.

So, if I am reading this correctly, you are saying that the unit animations can actually increase or decrease not how quickly the unit -appears- to move, but rather how quickly the unit -actually- moves? By "move" I do not mean the movement of limbs, but rather the actual distance travelled over the same amount of time.

That is correct. The mocap-derived animations drive the distance travelled as well as impact points of weapons, sound events and the movement of the limbs and even the cloaks. The ground type modifier, on the other hand, only modifies the actual distance travelled, and hence the men appear to 'slide' a little when it is large.

I might be speaking out of school, but I was wondering how I can change the unit sizes. Even at Huge 160 men will not do it. At least 200 men per unit max would be feasable to me. How could that unit size number be changed?

The preferences file sets a general scale modifier for units in general, from x0.25 to x4 in size, relative to a default average of 40 men per unit. Hence the multipliers of 20,40,80,120,160. The reason for the this is that parts of the engine only support a maximum of 256 men per unit; hence x4 means that a 60-man unit can scale to 240, while a 40-man unit scales to 160. You could create a mod in which most of the units were 60 men in size and run that at x4 to get units of mostly 240 men, but it would run that much slower.

Spears/pikes vs. cav. We are seeing some odd effects where spear units don't seem to do that well vs. cav. (compared to sword infantry), and horses jump over phalangites, etc. Where should this be adjusted (file and stat), and is it working as intended by CA?

The default spear vs cavalry bonusses are hardcoded. It may be a balancing issue - I'll ask someone to investigate. Alternatively, you could use the 'mount_effect' entries in the unit database to boost the combat performance of specific units against mount categories or individual mount types. These are applied on top of the default bonus.

My apologies in advance if my questions have been addressed already.

It would be most helpful for me to know how the data files are read by the game to "build a world".

In the "Data" directory there's a heap of files relating to the game world. Then there's the "World" directory which contains what looks like dummy templates to go into campaign files (is this right?). There's a directory called "Base" under that which looks like some more generic data. Then under "Maps" there's the Campaign folder where you can add new campaign - which I've successfully done & played with only a few variables like start end date etc.

My question about this is:
-How/when does the game read these data files? Is it looking for certain files to be under certain folders. Or can you change parameters safely by copying files from "up the tree" into your Campaign folder & edit them there?

My last question
-In the file descr_rebel_faction there's "Chance" setting, is this like the M:TW rebellion likelihood? I've assumed it is so to experiment, am setting all to 6 to see what happens. But my main question is, Do factions Reappear, if so, does this file have any effect on the chance of this occuring? If so what other than chance of revolt determines what & when a faction should appear. If it's in another file, which one, or is it not editable?

Irrespective of whether you get time to look at my q's, many thanks for your contributions to date, they're greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Jerome,

Thanks for the answer. I look forward to seeing what changes happen with future patches to address areas that are confusing or frustrating us at the moment.

I hope you guys are remaining thick skinned about all of the comments. :hide: We can be pretty biting at times, but most of us mean well. :charge: I wouldn't bother getting so involved, except that I've seen CA fix serious problems in the past. I also know that if we don't figure out what seems a bit off early (now), we will run out of time on patches. So strike while the iron is HOT! (and there is still money to pay the developers to work on patches...)

~:cheers:

If the campaign Ai settings are changed part-way through a campaign (descr_stats.txt) will the changed (new) AI settings be utilised in that continued game, or are they only applied (applicable) from the start of the game and then used *for ever after*? (Hence to use the new AI settings you have to start a new game).

If the new AI settings are utilised is there anyway to trigger a change in the AI upon a certain event? (e.g faction takes Rome and then changes AI policy)/?

For JeromeGrasdyke, a big thanks for taking time to answer our questions.

And a few more questions, of course :P

in the export_descr_unit.txt file, the header of the file states that

Quote:

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;Details of unit's primary weapon. If the unit has a missile weapon it must be the primary
; stat_pri From left to right
; attack factor
; attack bonus factor if charging
; missile type fired (no if not a missile weapon type)
; range of missile
; amount of missile ammunition per man
; Weapon type = melee, thrown, missile, or siege_missile
; Tech type = simple, other, blade, archery or siege
; Damage type = piercing, blunt, slashing or fire. (I don't think this is used anymore)
; Sound type when weapon hits = none, knife, mace, axe, sword, or spear
; Min delay between attacks (in 1/10th of a second)"

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but the actual units descriptions (the following line is just a random example from one of the units):

Quote:

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stat_pri 1, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, knife, 25 ,1

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shows there's another term in the end which isn't defined. our researches points to the fact that both the last term and the one before the last one are both implied in the computing of the actual damage that specific unit will do per a RTW standard time interval (gamne tick).

the term before the last one seems to be in fact the last term from the header (the Min delay between attacks (in 1/10th of a second)"[/quote] one), while the last one seems to be a sort of probability which shows if that unit's damage is beeing considered or not for that RTW game tick (the lower the term, the lower the probability for that unit to do its damage during the actual game tick).

if all of the above are true, wouldn't be much more indicated to use this last term (and eventually the one before it) for the slower killing speed mod than to use any kind of modification to units' HP, AF, damage which seems to trigger a unpredicatble chain of subtle propagated effects?!!

that would be all for the moment, thanks for your time!

A few questions from me:

Is there currently any other way to Mod the Senate works other than the descr_senate.txt file (which is *highly* limited in what it contains)?

Can we mod things like the Zoom ranges; we really need to be allowed to zoom out more, for those battles where really large numbers of troops are involved.

Will it be possible to externalize into a .txt files two essential features: "hidden_resource" feature to allow us to create regional units similar to the Spartan Hoplite; the trigger for Marian Reforms?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by adonys

If all of the above are true, wouldn't it be much more indicated to use this last term (and the one before it) for the slower killing speed mod than to use any kind of modification to units' HP, AF, damage which seems to trigger an unpredictable chain of subtle propagated effects?

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It would certainly be a good avenue to explore, although it will also have its side-effects. For example, it will raise the value of precursor attacks relative to a period of hand-to-hand melee, as they are fairly strong one-volley missile attacks before combat starts, and it may weaken phalanxes more than other units as they rely on killing soldiers in front in order to prevent them getting through the spears and breaking up the formation. It will also increase the relative value of charges, which are represented as a temporary boost to combat stats, and so it may be necessary to bring charge bonusses down somewhat. Changing the combat rate in this way will also have some visual impact in making the battles look considerably less dynamic and impressive (as soldiers would be playing their attack anims less frequently).

As you can see, the system is quite subtle and many-sided. I think whichever way you go you will need to rebalance a few of the other factors to fit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Nobody has said that everything else about the game *has* to stay the same when you make a kill-rate mod; the advice I would give is to experiment, then test it until you're sure it's still fun to play and hasn't introduced any game-killers. That's part of the joy of making games...

Thanks for answering questions, you can't imagine how good it is to see official people actually giving explanation of the inner work of the game ^^

I have a question that is quite important for me : actually, my main gripe with the game is the excess in rebellion. I would like to make some modifications to tone down slightly the negative loyalty effect of distance and squalor. Is this possible to do something like that ? Or are squalor and distance rates and effects totally harcoded ?
Additionnally, is it possible to alter the effect of garrison in the same way, toning up or down how much one unit improve the public order ?

Thanks JeromeGrasdyke!

Well, our tests showed up that by modifying the last one the visual speed of the animations isn't modified at all, but only the computed damage effect. So please be kind and explain us what exactly the last two terms from the export_descr_unit.txt's stat_pri line mean.

And of course, yet another questions:

1) Will CA ever consider a unit orderly retreat function, as this seems to be a big miss from the actual game? This function should allow an in shock combat engaged unit to slowly draw back WITHOUT turning their back to the enemy or disengaging from the combat, very usefull to lure a portion of the enemy line an open up some of their flanks.

2) Would CA be so kind and move as many as they can (all would be the best!) actually hardcoded values/constants from the RTW exe file into an editable text file, to allow us to modify them if we really need/want to?

3) We want to know if CA and Activision will release the Unit Editor, Terrain Editor, Battle Editor and Strategic Editor in the upcoming patches/addons... or not!

4) RTW community asks CA to take in consideration Alexander The Great's campaign as a possible setup for a future RTW expansion (and remember CA will much more doing such a thing because of the free advertising they'll get from the Alexander The Great movie's launch too!!!).

Thanks!

Thanks again!

Hello


In the effect files I noticed that the naming conventions of the effects
are somehow linked to events..

For example

effect_set flaming_man_effect
{
lod 10000
{
burning_man_halo
burning_man_smoke
burning_pig_skeleton_fire
}
}

My assumption is the effect_set is the trigger.. flaming_man
is this tied to an animation event named flaming_man.

can you explain the naming conventions used in the effect files and what they
are attached to?

also can you explain
type blood
in descr_particle.txt

How can I get rid of the blasted time limit on the battles without using that infernal Time Negator Mod? By the way which crashed my game. :furious3:

before you start a campaign, go to the historical battle menu, then exit and start a campaign = no timer for that campaign.

Colourpalette in interface?
I've been altering the interface, importing M:TW parchments into R:TW, but there is going something wrong with the colours. Does the interface use a limited selection of colours which might cause the weird colours? If so how can I figure out which colours are safe?

This is how it looks in my PSP:
http://chronicles.metw.net/dungeon/interface_new.jpg

And this is blown up piece of a ingame screenshot:
http://chronicles.metw.net/dungeon/i..._new_wrong.jpg
It goes especially wrong on the sides. The middle colour is also way off.

Any hints are greatly appreciated,
Duke John

1. (This was asked before, but unfortunately, ignored) Can we edit the battle AI difficulty levels and their effects? I´d want to play with the best AI tactics possible with the current AI, but without any combat bonuses to them.

If the answer is no, could you please tell us exactly what boni the AI gets on Hard and V.Hard, so that we could mod our own units to have the same boni (or perhaps the counter-boni)?

2. How should we go about making the AI handle its generals better, and not lead them in suicide charges? What governs the way a unit act - classification seems to do nothing. Or are you planning to improve this in a patch?

3. Would it be possible to modify the game so that the AI would always use the "attacking" posture in battles, instead of the passive "defensive" one it uses when you initiate the battle (ie. most of the time). Of course, siege defenses might be an exception. The defensive AI is far too passive and does not even make use of the terrain very well.

I'm not sure if this has been answered already, but will it be possible to allow a starting faction to be a protectorate of another faction, or, like in the sons of mars campaign at the beginning, have factions with no lands but simply having armies marching around to create an RPG element before they gain lands?

I'm sorry if my quistion is not important but, I read that the max no. for unit scale is 256, my quistion is: Can the number of units a player controls in a battle be increased, & if so How? because 20 units is a bit small & the ai commands your troops for you, which is very frustrating.

Again, I thank you & appologize if my Question has been asked.

I don't have a question but I must say 3 cheers for Jerome, our diplomat to CA ~:cheers:

Is there a way to influence what factions should "naturally" want to ally with one another? We've got some threads going about how the game approaches building, and subjugation, but not interfaction relations. I'm thinking primarily of Numidia + Carthage that always seem to be at war, making for a Roman walkover of Carthage.

Is it possible to make units available to factions to which they were not originally allotted? I.e. I've been trying to give the Greeks some more cavalry options, but adjusting the export_desc_buildings file causes an immediate CTD before the Activision video.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nerouin

Is it possible to make units available to factions to which they were not originally allotted? I.e. I've been trying to give the Greeks some more cavalry options, but adjusting the export_desc_buildings file causes an immediate CTD before the Activision video.

---

already done!!!

please take a look in here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/index...howtopic=11296
and in here:
http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...cID=1273.topic

:P

are guns possible?

Some more questions:

1. In my Citadel mod, I want the papacy to have the same sort of relation with the catholics as the senate does with rome. Is this possible?

2. If and when an expansion pack comes out, how easy/hard would it be to upgrade your mod from the regular to the expansion? Will there be a lot of changes necessary, or would the mod be compatible anyway?

3. This has probably been already answered, but can we make new unit skeletons?

4. Can we use existing siege equipment (I'm thinking more 'onagers and ballistae' than 'rams and belfries') and change their models, so that we can have new thingies, like trebuchets and mangonels?

Is there a way to change the names of regions and cities?

That city name, domus dolcis domus (literally means "home sweet home") is really bugging me.

I have a few questions:

1) Will it be possible mod structures which are separate from cities, eg a structure which appears in a province and grants bonuses, but has these bonuses taken away if it is 'blockaded'?

2) Will it be possible to mod different city sizes? eg, can I mod a city which is smaller than a town (and, inventively, call it a Small Town)? Modding the whole tech tree would be necessary after this...

3) Will it be possible to mod in flying units?

4) Will it be possible to mod faction leader's 'death ages'? eg, if I want a faction leader who can only die in battle, can I set his 'death age' to something ridiculously high?

5) Will it be possible to mod in female generals or faction leaders?

6) Will it be possible to mod in MTW-style 'glory goals', or at least (heavily) mod the victory conditions of Rome?

Thanks.

Damn, only remebered this as I clicked 'submit' (and I'd checked the post, as well :embarassed: )

Similar to Silver Rusher's question: is it possible to include a Senate-like faction, which cannot be assailed without popular support and which makes requests or demands of various factions?

Is it also possible to have a number of factions at war with each other and yet (forcibly) allied to this Senate-like faction?

Thanks again.

I have quite a simple question to ask, not neccersarily for jerome but to anyone who has some modding knoledge of the game.

Can i make some units more widley available to the factions?, for example, can i give the people of pontus the ability to train camel and elephant units ?

Is it possable like in mtw to make all units available to all factions and just dependant on owning a specific region .

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by buujin

I have quite a simple question to ask, not neccersarily for jerome but to anyone who has some modding knoledge of the game.

Can i make some units more widley available to the factions?, for example, can i give the people of pontus the ability to train camel and elephant units ?

Is it possable like in mtw to make all units available to all factions and just dependant on owning a specific region .

---

that's already possible!

hi adonys, im sure it is... so let me rephrase my question .


HOW ? do i , ect.

Yesterday i got my hands on the export_unit_descr file and had a tinkle, i was sure it wouldnt be as easy as simply adding other faction names to the bottem line of the unit description, and i was right, i get a ctd when i run the game.

Can you tell me what other changes i need to make in the data files to allow me to build for example, camel units with pontus.

I appologise if this has been covered before, if anyone can help me a little it would be much appreciated, thanks ! .

buu

Ok so. i got the game running by editing both the unit and building files, but theres some spooky goings on, maybe someone can shed some light on this:

I added armenian legionaries to pontus but when i went to test it out, they show up as peasants in the recruitment options unit picture, and then in battle they looked exactly like the roman legionary cohorts, rather than the bluey green legionaries that armenia have.

I looked again in the export_unit_descr file and theres nothing in there that i can see referring to they're colour or the picture for the unit training options,
Afterall it was just a copy of the armenian legionnaires text, so why have they turned out red instead of green ?!

I apologize once again for my lack of knowledge, can anyone help ?

@buujin
The Peasants-pic shows up when there is no Unit-pic for the specific faction.
You can read more about that in @adonys link from 10-10-2004 03:14.

For the texture in battle the descr_model_battle.txt must be edited as well.
You can chose the textures for the units for each faction there. That´s in general not necessary for factions of the same culture backgrond, since there are normaly already textures of the proper colour...

In your case I´m affraid it might be necessary to make the right texture yourself...


By the way... I edited Mace. & Comp. Cav. as previously described, so that the greek cities were able to build both units. Worked fine. Giving them a good picture was easy as well ( at least after reading how...).
My problem is that this doesn´t work with edited pictures! It matters not if just renamed or edited an saved... RTW just takes the original picture! What´s wrong and what can I do to change that? :help:

Is there any way to edit mercenaries, especially recruition location and availability?

Psyco, yes you can edit mercenaries. Look in - Data\world\campaign\Imperial_campaign\descr_mercenaries

It refers to merc location,type, starting exp, cost, replenish rate, max number, and the initial number.

I have not edited it much, though I am tempted to edit the maximum number, but I am afraid the AI will recuit more than I want them to ~;) .

Thanks for the answer.
Another question. Is there any way to see where an error is (I've modded a bit, but it always ctd before loading the start movie, so I need some way to find where the error(s) is/are)

Edit: Figured it out already, sorry.

Not really a modder myself (well, not yet at least ~;)). But I had a few questions... albeit with a different flavor then the other ones asked here:

What was the weirdest thing (unit, behavior anything) you accidentally made for R;TW? ~:)
And secondly: what thing would you dare the mod community to mod? Something that you think is very challenging for the mod community, but very rewarding as well, or maybe something that you had great difficulty with, or simply something you wanted to try out, but didn't have the time/resources for?

Thanks for your time ~:)

Does the presence of an officer in a unit (i..e centurions & signifers in legionary cohorts) confer any morale/combat bonuses to the unit or are they just for show? If the former is true can these bonuses be modified for each type of officer?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psyco

Is there any way to edit mercenaries, especially recruition location and availability?

---

As @itkotw said, but be careful! You will not be able to start a new campaign anymore when you mess-up here! The programm will returne to campaign menue when you start a new campaign. Only merc_* untits can be assigned
to the regions! Or units you gave the ability (attribute) in the export_descr_unit.txt to be a mercenary unit...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by khelvan

Is there any way to add requirements to a building being built? Any help you can give us in editting the buildings would be most appreciated.

---

You can do so in the export_descr_buildings.txt. But if you do so, it might be necessary to add the changes to the update-buildings as well!

Hi,

Where are the building requirements hidden for the units?
And what files I have to edit to add a new one?

Sorry if this is an old one but I just got the thing and I am trying to build some tools to make the processes as easy as it can possibly be done.

@komninos

In the export_descr_buildings.txt! You must go the other war round as in MTW - instead off giving a unit a building requirement, you must give a building the abillity to build a specific unit! But don´t forget to copy this entry to the following building upgrades!
When you open the export_descr_buildings.txt you can see very easy the structure.

Will it be posible to have different unit models in a unit? That would make look them more realistic. For example a general rides a cataphract and his bodyguards ride on normal horses.
I fear it isn't possible.

moved to modding suggestions.

Hi,

Has anyone seen a way to landlock units? ie. make Spartans produce only in Sparta???

Hi

Can anyone tell me how to change the coloring of mercenaries, so that they take the color of the faction that bought it. It just annoys me to see my line's color messed up by tha one shade of green.

Thanks in advance-INU

My question:

What are the maximum dimensions for a campaign map?

You ahve to require a good in a province and then put that good in the province. This is how it currently works with spartans. Unfortunately you can't define new goods.

How do you edit the Tech Tree?

Thanks

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tombom

Unfortunately you can't define new goods.

---

Err, why not?

I would like to make some modifications to tone down slightly the negative loyalty effect of distance and squalor. Is this possible to do something like that? Additionally, is it possible to alter the effect of garrison in the same way, toning up or down how much one unit improve the public order?

Unfortunately these factors are all hardcoded. We are fine-tuning the effect of squalor on order for the 1.2 patch, though.

Can we edit the battle AI difficulty levels and their effects? If the answer is no, could you please tell us exactly what boni the AI gets on Hard and V.Hard?

Again, these values are hard-coded. The combat bonusses are easy; they apply to attack only, while on Easy the human player gets a +4 bonus, on Hard the AI is given +4, and on Very Hard +7. The morale bonusses are much more complex, as they work on a series of sliding scales, detailing which is beyond the scope of this document.

Would CA be so kind and move as many as they can (all would be the best!) actually hardcoded values/constants from the RTW exe file into an editable text file, to allow us to modify them if we really need/want to?

There's over 500k of setup scripts open to modding and you want more?!? Well, we'll see what can be done. All constants would be a bit optimistic, as there are an awful lot of them, but we may be able to extern a few more things.

I'm not sure if this has been answered already, but will it be possible to allow a starting faction to be a protectorate of another faction, or, like in the sons of mars campaign at the beginning, have factions with no lands but simply having armies marching around to create an RPG element before they gain lands?

I believe these things are currently not possible, except in the case of the human player surviving with at least one named characters and no settlements. AI factions must have both characters and settlements to survive. It is worth noting that there is a set of pre-determined likes and dislikes which is baked into the faction setup, as well. Nothing so strong as actual alliances, but it changes the likelyhood that an AI faction will go to war with another faction quite substantially.

We want to know if CA and Activision will release the Unit Editor, Terrain Editor, Battle Editor and Strategic Editor in the upcoming patches/addons... or not!

The battle editor (which contains the terrain editor as well) will likely be released with the 1.2 patch. There is no such thing as a unit editor - the units were created by adding a new entry and all of its corresponding artwork to the various setup scripts, mostly by hand. A decision has not yet been made about the campaign map editor, which would probably be of limited use anyway as it's quite a basic tool.

What about the weird texture colour effects?

It depends what format the textures that you are feeding into the game are in. The DDS files are compressed and so you can lose a lot of quality; the end result depends quite a bit on the compressor you use. The NVidia one is reasonable, but the one included with the MS DirectX SDK gives better results although it takes a lot longer to run. The game engine freely substitutes DDS's for TGA's, so if you have a texture which you absolutely cannot get right as a DDS, you can feed it in as an uncompressed TGA. But be aware that doing this eats up more texture memory, and you will notice that other things may start to degrade and get blurry if many DDS's are replaced with TGA's, especially on machines with little video memory.

Is it possible to make units available to factions to which they were not originally allotted?

Yes, it is possible. In order to do this, you need to change the 'ownership' field in export_descr_unit.txt for the unit you wish to change, make sure that the soldier/officer/mount models referenced by that unit have texture assignments for that faction (these are in descr_model_battle.txt), and modify the buildings files so that the faction in question can actually build the unit from the tech tree. If you want to give the new unit a description and a picture you also have to change the text which is linked in via the 'dictionary' tag and the image pointed to by the image field. Be aware that the game always first searches the .paks for data, so whenever you refer to a new file, give it a new, unique name to avoid any problems.

In my Citadel mod, I want the papacy to have the same sort of relation with the catholics as the senate does with rome. Is this possible?

You could make the three Roman factions look like Catholics, and the Senate as the Pope, and then alter the mission texts and so on to fit. So, doable, although a fair amount of work. As to having more factions have this relationship with the 'Pope', I'm afraid not.

Is there a way to change the names of regions and cities?

Yes, there are text files which contain the names which are linked to the Provinces. If you do a search in data/text for 'Domus Dulcis Domus' I'm sure it will show up, although you will need to use a search tool which can handle Unicode text files.

Will it be possible mod structures which are separate from cities, eg a structure which appears in a province and grants bonuses, but has these bonuses taken away if it is 'blockaded'?

Nope.

Will it be possible to mod different city sizes? eg, can I mod a city which is smaller than a town (and, inventively, call it a Small Town)? Modding the whole tech tree would be necessary after this...

Nope.

Will it be possible to mod in flying units?

To a certain extent - you can make them look as if they fly by changing the animation files, but the collision detection happens mostly on 2D planes, and so something flying over the ground will end up pushing things underneath it out of the way. You can edit the collision radii, so you could have a flying dragon which only has a tiny collision radius, but that's as far as it goes.

Will it be possible to mod faction leader's 'death ages'? eg, if I want a faction leader who can only die in battle, can I set his 'death age' to something ridiculously high?

Nope.

Will it be possible to mod in female generals or faction leaders?

Possibly, but only for an entire faction at a time. The models and so on which are used by campaign-map objects are set up in the descr_sm_*** text files.

Will it be possible to mod in MTW-style 'glory goals', or at least (heavily) mod the victory conditions of Rome?

'Glory Goals' not, but you can change the victory conditions. They are in the descr_strat.txt file, near the top. There are a bunch of undocumented ones which do not involve becoming emperor, for campaigns where it is not appropriate. I'll look into digging out the exact syntax.

Is it possible to include a Senate-like faction, which cannot be assailed without popular support and which makes requests or demands of various factions?

The behaviour of the Senate is unique and cannot be assigned to other factions, and is linked to the senate faction id.

Does the presence of an officer in a unit (i..e centurions & signifers in legionary cohorts) confer any morale/combat bonuses to the unit or are they just for show? If the former is true can these bonuses be modified for each type of officer?

They do look cool, don't they... but they are mostly for show. However, they do get an extra two hit points, so they're worth more than a regular soldier on the battlefield. Interestingly being close to a unit marked with the 'command' attribute does confer a morale bonus - for example, the Legionary First Cohort.

what thing would you dare the mod community to mod?

The whole Rome team is really waiting to see what the community is going to come up with, and we do follow closely the work by people like Vercingetorix (quite clever, isn't he) on the technical side, and things like the realism mod on the gameplay side. If I had to pick one that I'd like to see people attempt, it's a Lord of the Rings complete conversion - the engine is fantastically well suited to it, and it's something we can't do due to licensing issues.

Thanks for the reply Jerome :)

Nice to know that another patch is in the works and you're hoping to release the abttle editor with it.

i have a question concerning custom effects.
a couple of guys over at the twcenter forums including me are trying to figure (sp?) out how the effects (particle) system works. we have been able to create some custom effect but we are clueless as to how the effects are triggered. in other words we can replace/edit existing effects like the effects that occur when projectile hit but not add new ones. it is our understanding that there must be hidden tags/triggers like flaming_man_effect which oviously triggers one effect in descr_burning_men_effect_final.txt. is there a chance you might tell us where to find these tags or could you tell us for example how to link en effect to.. lets say an animation?

oh, and please excuse my english.. not an native speaker ;)

I just got to ask this one, sorry... there is quite a thread over at twcenter of people trying to activate the "blood effects" in the game. Would you be willing to help them out in anyway with some information on how to do this?

Thanks for your time.

Jordan "AstroCat"