How to mod files with 1.1

[Dumbass]

I have notepad++ and I tried to edit the EDU, but it just ended up with me crashing as soon as I loaded EB up (It worked fine before I touched the EDU).

So how am I supposed to edit the files using notepad++?

Also, now I have a problem that my EB now crashes upon loading, even though I restored the back up EDU.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Not to be a smartass but did you make a back up of the original EDU? Because somehow it sounds like you overwrote the sp edu game backup EDU with the one from your EB/Data (in an attempt to restore the old one)... Which would've been pretty, ehrm, dumb?

In any case you would have to use a/the proper back up to overwrite the sp edu game backup version with (in case you edited EB for SP) or the mp edu game backup version (in case you edited EB for MP).

[Dumbass]

Hmm, well it seems liekly that the EDU in the sp edu back up somehow got overwritten, but I don't know how. Could I use the back up in the MP EDU backup folder to replace the EDU in EB/data? Would it work fine or still crash?

But still though, how do I edit files without all this crashing?

[Tellos Athenaios]

No as the SP edu contains all units available in the EB campaigns, but the MP only contains a subset thereof to make factional units have a more prominent place in custom/MP battles.

So for now either someone has to be so kind as to upload an unmodified 1.1 SP EDU (which I can't do as I don't have such a file for EB1.1 anymore...) or you will have to reinstall. Consider it a lesson to be very serious about keeping proper back ups.

And yes there is a sure way of getting to mod your files without crashing it; or at least without crashes that you can't fix afterwards: that is get some experience in modding those files.

[Dumbass]

Well thanks for the help. It would help more if your tone wasn't so disdainful, but then I guess I'm asking for too much then.

Could anyone actually answer my main question, editting files?
In 1.0, you could simply edit the files in notepad and the result would be immediate.
Now with 1.1, when you edit a file like the EDU or EDCT in the same way, you get a crash on either start up or on new campaign.

Now some people said that you need to use better programs such as notepad++ or crimson to edit the files, which is what I have done. However, whenever I edit the files with notepad++, I still get the problem of the crashing.

So the question is quite simple: How do you mod those files?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Ah I'm sorry if my tone was too much; but the point really is that CTD's result from
a) Trivial mistakes, such as syntax;
b) Not knowing what you are doing.

(a) is easy to fix when you know what your are doing; and/or make sufficient back ups.
(b) is also easy to fix by doing this kind of stuff often enough (and reading tutorials, just goggle them if you need to)...

And no the way you edit EDU or EDCT files hasn't changed since 1.0; it hasn't changed since the dawn of RTW actually. However if you use the trivial script to run EB then you will notice that changes to the EB/data/edu file won't help much as the Trivial Script overwrites those with either the one from the mp backup or the sp backup folder.

This is done so the Trivial Script can offer you an easy, foolproof way of switching between EB campaigns & EB custom battles.

So if you edited the SP game edu and screwed up, your EB/data edu is screwed up also. Which means you can't use that file as backup.

To answer your implicit question about EDCT: that file is rather sensitive to something called character encoding. Which is something plain old Notepad isn't very good at (you would have to explicitly check the encoding Notepad is going to use which is in these cases only possible under Save As); which means for coding (and therefore modding) Notepad++ is better.

[Dumbass]

For a test, I opened up the EDU with notepad++ and editted one value - which was the number of turns to create a boat. I changed the value from 2 to 1. However even this small edit managed to create a crash. I'm sure there was no syntax error involved, as it was just a value that was changed.
It seems that any change made to the EDU with notepad++ (or notepad) causes it to "screw up".

So I wonder if there is anything extra I have to do, as well as using notepad++ to edit the EDU.

I would be very thankful if you could you give me an example of how you go about editing the EDU?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Just make sure that the EDU, EDCT and EDB are saved in what's called ANSI encoding; other encodings won't work (as the game won't recongise the file properly anymore).

But my question here is: did you just (already) get a clean copy of the EDU before you made that change?

Also I am not sure if you can edit *any* value to as you see fit -- quite a few apear to be ratio's (lethality for instance). I am certainly no 'expert' on the EDU, but there ought to be plenty of tutorial/research threads that explain what every value does and to what limits it is bound....

Ah something from the back of my mind: The FATW Complete EDU Guide

[Dumbass]

Yeah, it was a clean copy of the EDU. EB worked fine before I edited it.

So all I have to do is: when I Save As, I click on an option for ANSI coding.
Thanks for the help.

Edit: I found the encode to ANSI in the format tab. It seems it was already set to ANSI.

I did a full re-install, and checked that everything worked fine.
I then edited a value in the EDU and avast! No crashes.
It's strange that it crashed the first time though. It's actually much more simpler than I thought.

Thanks again for the help.