Originally Posted by
Ezilkannan
Ok, I was looking for a trait editor for this game for a long time, and this one has been created by Brighdaasa long ago and I didn’t even know about it, what a shame.
I also noticed that there was not a very good/detailed tutorial for this editor
Let’s get started, oops, I almost forgot, before we start
***********CAUTION: ALWAYS CREATE A BACKUP COPY OF THE FILE(S) BEFORE EDITING************
Now, there will be three parts in this guide
1.0. GENERAL EXPLANATION OF THE EDITOR
2.0. EDITING EXISTING TRAITS
3.0. MAKING NEW TRAITS
Now before we start with the explanation, u need to do one basic thing first once, u must open the editor.
If u open the editor, you would have to load the export_descr_character_traits.txt file into the editor. You can load by File>Load>file name (choosing the file)
You can find the file in the data folder of the medieval 2 game, supposedly I installed in Local Disk C,
The file will be in C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\data\export_descr_character_traits.txt
As I mentioned before, create a backup of the file before you do this.
Load the file. Now we can go into the explanation of the editor
1.0. GENERAL EXPLANATION OF THE EDITOR
Now once u open the editor, you would see three tabs below the file option,
01. TRAITS
02. TRAIT LEVEL
03. TRIGGERS
We will start with the traits tab right away
01. TRAITS TAB
Now, this is the first tab that you’ll see in the editor. There would be many columns/dropdown menus in this tab. I’ll explain about each one to the best of my knowledge.
Within the traits tab itself, you would see a column named traits. Once you load the file, this column will display all the traits in that file. Every single trait will be there, and the list is pretty long (@Brighdaasa: it would be really nice if it was alphabetically arranged).
To the right of the Traits column, you can see the Name column, which shows the name of the currently selected trait. There will be a check box named Hidden, just below the Name. I don’t know the exact purpose of this one; I think it hides the trait from the medieval shell or something like that. Anyways this doesn’t seem to be of much importance for either editing the trait or making a new trait.
You will also see a button named Add New Trait to the right of the Hidden check box. This will add a new trait. (We will discuss more about making a new trait in the making new traits section.)
There will be a drop down menu named Trait level below the Hidden checkbox and AddNewTrait button. This will display the level of the selected trait. (We will discuss about traits levels in the Trait Level Tab section)
Below this you’ll see the characters section. This shows the characters that can have this trait *legally*. Legally in the sense, without cheating, i.e., only the characters that are checked can have this trait in a normal (legal) game. For example, in a normal game a Merchant cannot have the trait GoodCommander and a General cannot have the trait GoodMerchant. *NOTE: It is possible to give any trait to any character using the command give_trait which is considered as cheating*
And below the characters section, you’ll see the three buttons
1. Reload file
2. Save as
3. Save+exit
Which could be understood by anyone, I suppose?
The Anti-traits section will be at the top right of the editor. This section displays all the antitraits for the currently selected trait. Those traits that are checked in this section are considered to be antitraits for that particular trait. NOTE: both the trait and antitraits cannot co-exist together.
For example, for the trait GoodCommander, the antitrait is BadCommander. This means, a character (General/Family Member) cannot have both these traits simultaneously.
Below this you will find the Excluded Cultures section. In the Medieval 2 TW game, all factions are divided into 6 regions.
Northern European: England, France, Scotland, Holy Roman Empire, Denmark, Rebels
Eastern European: Poland, Hungary, Russia
Southern European: Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Papal States, Milan, Venice
Middle Eastern: Moors, Turks, Egypt, Mongols, Timurids
Greek: Byzantine Empire
Mesoamerican: Aztecs
So those are the 6 cultures and their respective factions. In this section, the cultures that are checked are excluded from gaining the currently selected trait. That is, if the Northern European culture is checked in this section, the currently selected trait won’t be available for the characters belonging to the factions of that culture *legally*. (As I have mentioned before, it is possible to give a trait using the command give_trait, even though the faction belongs to the excluded culture of that trait)
No Going Back Level is the last column/section in the Traits tab. I don’t know much about this, but I have heard that this represents the amount of resistance for the character to lose the trait. In other words, the greater the No going back level, the harder it is for a character to lose the trait *legally*. (Once again, it is possible to remove a trait with a very high no going back level from a character using the command remove_trait)
That’s it for the Traits tab; let’s move onto the next one.
02. TRAIT LEVEL TAB
In this tab also you will find a lot of sections and text boxes.
We will start right away.
The first section is the Trait level section itself. This dropdown allows you to select the various available trait levels for the currently selected trait [You can choose the trait level from the first (Traits) tab also, using the Trait Level drop down menu in that tab, both these two dropdown menus are inter linked, if u choose the trait level from the traits tab, the same trait level will appear in the trait level tab also]
To the right of this you will find the Add New Level button. This adds a new level to the currently selected trait. (We will discuss about adding trait levels in the Editing Existing Traits section)
Below these two sections, you will see a number of Text boxes
Name
Description
EffectsDescription
GainMessage
LoseMessage
Epithet
The Name text box displays the Name of the current trait level selected
The other boxes show the files used for displaying the description, effects description, gain messages, and lose messages and Epithets ingame respectively. ( We will discuss more about these text boxes in the Editing Existing Traits section)
At the middle of this tab, you will see a section named Effects. This section shows the effects that are affected by the current trait level of the selected trait. The effects which are checked are those that are affected by the current trait level of the selected trait.
To the right, you will find the effect value section. This text box shows the change in the effect due the current trait level of the selected trait. Each effect has its own effect value, so if the value is 5 for the effect Command, it means that this trait level of the selected trait will increase the Command by 5 points. (Decrease in the effect is denoted using the negative *-* sign before the value). As I mentioned above, each effect will have its own effect value. We will discuss more about this is Editing Existing Traits Section.
If you were keen on observing, you would have found that I have missed out a section,
The Treshold section. Now this section is very vital, and best left untouched. We will discuss more about this in Editing/Making new traits section. Don’t even think about messing with it.
03. TRIGGERS TAB
To say in short lines, this tab remains empty for all the traits, which renders it almost useless. Nothing can be done in this one. So the first two are the ones that need much attention while Editing Existing Traits or Making New Traits.
That’s it, now you know almost every part of the editor. You will find the next two sections to be very, very easy. If you have read the above section, trust me, Editing/Making Traits are a piece of cake. It’s as simple as that. Back to the Guide.
2.0 EDITING EXISTING TRAITS
Alright I’ll explain in steps
1. First things first, Open the editor and load the file.
2. Once you have loaded, in the first (Traits) tab, traits section, search for the trait that you want to edit, and select the trait once you have found it.
3. You can do all the changes that can be done in the first tab, for the selected trait like editing the name, character, antitraits, no going back level, exclude cultures etc.
4. Once you have made the changes that you need in the first tab, we can quickly move onto the next tab (Trait Level).
5. Here you can edit the effects, name, description, effect values for the existing trait levels of the selected trait. (You can choose the desired trait levels from the trait level drop down menu in this tab)
6. You can also create your own trait level using the Add New Level button. Once you click that, it will prompt you to give a name for the new trait level. You can type in any desired name that you want for your new trait level.
7. Once you create your new trait level, you choose the effects that you want for that trait level, (make sure that you also fill in the effect value for each effect that you add to the trait level). The other text boxes like description, effects description, epithets, gain, lose messages can be left blank. It won’t do much difference to the game. The only thing is you won’t see any gain/loss messages, description for that trait level which you would usually see in a normal trait level. If you want such messages to be shown ingame, you would have to get a strings.bin converter, and then convert the bin file containing the texts for these messages/descriptions into editable text documents, then add the new messages/description for your new trait level and then again reconvert it back to strings.bin and replace the file. This can be a tedious process. That’s why I wouldn’t want to get more into that.
8. The Treshold section however must be entered with a value of 16. Most traits have this as the Treshold value. I have mentioned that this is very important. Why is this so important? Because if this is left blank, the game simply won’t make any changes even if the trait/trait level is acquired. That is, even if you use the command give_trait, the shell won’t give any error and will execute the command, but your character won’t be having any effects of the trait. So, that’s why it must be ensured that this value is 16 all the time. (I don’t know what happens if you change the value, you can experiment it if you want: D)
9. Click Save As/Save+exit to save your file. It will ask for replacing the old file. (I hope that you have a backup of the file). Click replace and the file will be replaced with new one.
That’s it for Editing Traits Section. Now wasn’t that easy? The Next one is also similar to this, but only with a minor tweak.
3.0 MAKING NEW TRAITS
Ok, we have almost come to the end of the guide. This will be the last section.
I will explain this one steps as well
1. First things first, Open the editor and Load the file.
2. Once the file is loaded, click the Add New Trait button in the Traits tab.
3. It will prompt you to give a name for the new trait. Give your desired name. Make sure you remember this or note it down, as this will be the dictionary name of the trait. So if you are thinking of giving this trait using give_trait command, you will need to type in this dictionary name exactly as it is as otherwise the shell will display an error.
4. Now basically you can make two types of traits. A Good Trait or a Bad Trait. If the trait that you are going to make is going to be a normal trait, normal in the sense that it’s going to have normal effect values, you wouldn’t have worry much about Exclude cultures section. If you want you can exclude any culture, but it isn’t absolutely necessary.
5. But on the other hand, if you are going to make an uber good trait, or an uber bad trait, it is recommended that you check all the cultures in the exclude cultures section as the last thing you would need would be an enemy having an uber good trait or your own generals having a very bad trait that you created for your advantage. In order to avoid this backlash, excluding all the cultures makes the trait either good or bad to be unavailable for any faction normally. But you can always give the trait to any character belonging to any faction using the command give_trait.
6. Now that is all you would need to do in this tab, you can edit the rest of the stuff at your wish, like characters, antitraits and other stuff.
7. In the Trait Level tab, you must create a new level for your new trait by clicking the Add New Level button. As I have mentioned in the above (Editing traits) section, you can edit the effects and corresponding effect values and other stuff. You can also make any number of levels you want for the new trait.
8. Just make sure that for each level you put in the default Treshold value, 16. This is very important for the trait to work.
9. That’s it, once you have completed all editing stuff, go to the first (Traits) tab and click Saves As/Save+Exit to save the file. It will ask for replacing the old file. Replace the old file with the new one and that’s it. You new Trait is all set to be used.
That’s it, You can Edit existing traits/ Make New traits following the above instructions. Also make sure that you run the game with i/o file first command line for the new traits to work. Because usually the game loads the uncompressed files by default so even if you make any changes to the extracted files(compressed files can be extracted using unpacker) the game wouldn’t use the extracted files. So, to make the game load the extracted files first, you must either create a .bat file using notepad and typing
medieval2.exe --io.file_first
or
by adding the line
[io] file_first = true
to the file medieval2.preference.cfg using notepad.
I hope I have covered everything in this, and this is my first post, so pardon me if I have made any mistakes. Feel free to ask any questions if you didn’t understand something.:study:
That’s it for now, Looking forward for replies.:laugh4:
:feedback:
