Sucess with mdding the demo!

[Leet Eriksson]

thanks a load aelwyn i can now test my roman skills against the carthaginians.

[Steppe Merc]

Could we somehow insert another square so it doesn't mess up?

[Steppe Merc]

Yeah I think I might have figured out how to make the unit sizes from 2 digits to 3 digits. You do edit, insert string then press in the space bar to to add in another blank block. I have yet to test it, so it might not work. Wish me luck!

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Some guy over at TWC has added Sacred Band Infantry and has shown a pic! After testing I can confirm they appear on the unit screen, but as of yet I can't seem to get the battle to work! I think there are more Carthage units possible to add also!

[Steppe Merc]

BKB have you tried uping the unit size? I tried it on the tutorial, but not luck... Oh wait, I didn't change the unit size on the prefences... Could that be it?

[Sinner]

For those trying to use Gauls, etc, if you look further down in the file after the unit selection, from hex address C81050h onwards, you'll see additional references to Carthage and the Jullii Romans - these also might require editing to get the other factions to work properly.

[ShadesPanther]

I think yo can only add in faction specific units except probably mercenaries.

someone add iberian infantry please ~:p

[Steppe Merc]

Grrr. I tried and double all the units sizes, and I did, and it showed up on the prebattle screen. It froze, and I managed to get out of it, but it exited out. And when I checked to see what I did wrong, everything I changed had been undone.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I've check it out, and Iberian Infantry, Long Shield and Round Shield Cavalry are all present and appear at the unit screen but when I tried to load the battle it crashes!

[Steppe Merc]

Odd. After futher checking it seems that were I changed it it was original. However, there seems to be a similar section later on.... Could it be there are two parts that denote unit size?

[Aelwyn]

Some guy over at TWC has added Sacred Band Infantry and has shown a pic! After testing I can confirm they appear on the unit screen, but as of yet I can't seem to get the battle to work! I think there are more Carthage units possible to add also!

Yeah I'm sure there are more available units, much like in the MTW demo. The problem is finding them and how to add them.

[Steppe Merc]

I'm so confused. In the sections that I thought that the units had to be in twice (one higher up, and one later on), the unit sizes don't match what was origannaly denoted, and theres some Sacred Band infantry scattered in there, as well as Carthigianian Medium cavalry.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

My first bit of modding (ever):

screwed around with the preferences.txt, and found out how to get back the old command scheme! The left-click to move setup! Just go to "Classic UI" or something like that and change "FALSE" to "TRUE".

I liked the old way. Made it less like a generic RTS and I've grown to like it. Plus I am way too used to the MTW/STW way. I just can't figure out how to change the length of the units - when I hold down the left button I get a select box, and not a unit formation adjustment-thing.

I hope someone figures out how to change the unit sizes.

Oh well.

[Lucius Lucullus]

that hexeditor gives me a headache

I´ll give it another try tomorrow, when I dont have any lectures to attend to

[Kraellin]

umm, guys, why dont you just write a .pak packer/unpacker. would make this a whole lot easier. most likely, and i havent looked at the file structure yet, the .pak is just a packed (zipped) and compressed file. i'm guessing the entire thing could be opened fairly simply, edited, and then put back togehter.

also, in some games, (though usually not the demo), the packed files like this can also be bypassed by a 'user folder'. i havent unzipped the demo yet to look, but is there a 'user folder' somewhere in there?

K.

[Aelwyn]

I thought about that, as doom 3 has pak files, and people could unpack them with winrar. I tried with no success. Also searched for .pak unpackers. There were some, but they were associated with other games, and didn't work. But if you can build one it'd be nice.

[Steppe Merc]

I have no idea about any sort of computer toolsl to do those kind of things. It would be a heck of a lot easier though. Right now I'm so confused... haven't been able to change unit sizes at all.

[Sinner]

I've tried a variety of tools as well & I'm beginning to suspect that CA have either created their own pak format or they're using an obscure version that is different from that used by the likes of Quake, etc.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

I got the infantry unit sizes in the battle of Trebia up to 120 men by editing dpack_0.pak with a hex editor, but they wouldn't go over that, and I did change the unit size in preferences.txt to 200.

Note that the demo code doesn't support unit sizes above 250 men in total, so if you hack the .pak files to go above that it may crash the game in odd places, although the .pak parser may still accept the new values.

[Sinner]

A useful tip to modders: as well as opening the file with your hex editor, also open it with notepad, which gives you a far greater feel for the general layout of the battle script.

I suspect that it shouldn't be too difficult to add extra units rather than just swap one for another, it's just that in a hex editor it's difficult to picture the overall structure of the file and thus important info gets left out leading to CTDs & the game refusing to play.

I think there are still limits though: I tried to swap the Roman's light cavalry for heavy and arcani for velites, getting a CTD with an error about missing graphics for both units, so I would guess that we only have a subset of available units rather than the full complement.

[PaolinoPaperino]

Some guys on this site has done some nice patches.
U can play as roman..etc..

http://www.rome1.de/cms/

[Beirut]

On behalf of all of us who are just too plain dumb to understand the intricacies of game modding...

Thanks for what you're doing. We're all looking forward to the fun you will provide us.

[Papewaio]

Hail the Great Modders!

Hail the Great Geniuses Programmers who make TW moddable... it really adds variety to a very good base... a bit like having your favourite pizza with your favourite beverage...




I like Pizza... but I hate Pepsi so no Pizza Hut...

[ShadesPanther]

It's very well done. A few annoyances but they will be gone.
I don't really like having to unlock other factions. I want to be carthage first
But The Romans are still quite good

[Steppe Merc]

Jerome, I tried doubling the units, and it still CTDed. Sinner, I tried opening up with the notepad, but it wouldn't open.

[Sinner]

One thought, what version of Windows do you have, Steppe Merc?

There are filesize limits for Notepad using 98SE or older as I recall. I'm using XP & had no problems using Notepad with either the dpack_0.pak or the far larger dpack_1.pak file.

Worst case, I'll copy the structure to the fourm later tonight once I get home from work.

[Steppe Merc]

I have XP. And it works. For some reason, I had to open notepad and open it from the open file. Thanks for the help.