Unpacker and Vista

[Korroth Karn]

I am having a problem unpacking the data files of MTW 2 using the unpacker (the one that comes with one of the official patches). It runs with no problem, as far as I can see, but the unpacked files do not show up anywhere. Running the unpacker as 'Administrator' is no help, since the window closes itself on its own as soon as I open it.
Is there anybody who has Windows Vista and knows how to solve this problem?

[CavalryCmdr]

Try turning off 'user account control'

I got sick of Vista and 'downgraded' to XP and have been very happy with that decision. XP is easier and uses less then half the comp resources Vista dose.

[Korroth Karn]

Thanks, it unpacks fine now. A new problem has cropped up though. I've converted the unpacked Texture files to DDS files and I have modified one of these with Photoshop. I then converted that file back to Texture, but the modification does not show up in the game (I changed the colour of the uniform of the Turkish general, but when I play a campaign the generals still have the unmodified uniforms).

[irishron2004]

Did you delete the map.rwm?

[Korroth Karn]

I have deleted all of the map.rwm files (there were five or six of them), but there is no change.
There's an instruction on the unpacker's readme that I don't know how to follow, and maybe that's what the problem is. The readme says to create a 'batch' file in my M2TW folder and add the line 'medieval2.exe --io.file_first' to it. Can anybody explain me how to create this batch file?

[CavalryCmdr]

A .bat is simply a text file designated (named) .bat instead of .txt instead of being text that a person reads its a text that the computer reads.

As far as I know the .bat simply tells it what config file to use this file in turn tells it what folder to get the files from and example would be

medieval2.exe @mymod.cfg

as a complete .bat file where 'mymod' is the name of the config file for your moded files.

I'm not sure about earlier, but as of 1.2 the method is to add these lines to the very begining of the .cfg file, be it medieval2.preference.cfg or mymod.cfg

[io]
file_first = true

This tells the program to use the files present in the folder before the files in the .pak files.

Hope that all made sense to you.

[Korroth Karn]

Yay, it works now!!!!. Thank you very much.

[CavalryCmdr]

Congrats, have fun modding, always remember to make backups of anything you edit, the best way is to leave all the original files alone and simply work within your own mod folder. Also, many of the .txt files are very sensitive and simple mistakes (space where there should be a tab, period instead of a comma, etc.) can cause ctd sometimes without anything showing in the log, so until you are very familiar with any given file its best to only edit one thing at a time.
It takes awhile that way, but you'll learn quickly and with alot less frustration.