STW for RTW

[Samurai Waki]

Hello, I just recently joined the forums and was wondering if anyone has thought of doing Shogun: Total War mod for Rome: Total War? obviously the answer has been speculated, but is there any actual team about to start developing it? I've played Barroca's Shogun Total War mod for Medieval Total War and was very pleased(albeit there was no final version) I'm sort of a newbie when it comes to modding, but I've expiremented quite a bit with MTW and have had some very pleasing results using the Gnome Editor. So, having that said, I think that a Shogun Total War game using the Rome Total War engine would be awesome and I would like to help in anyway possible.

[ShellShock]

On the general topic of modding RTW, I would like to offer my skills as a C++ programmer.

I'm pretty sure RTW code is written in Microsoft's Visual C++, in which I have tons of experience (but I'm crap at anything graphical). We've yet to see what sort of modding support RTW will have. Probably a lot of it can be done without any programming required (e.g., the battle text files), but it is possible some "real" code may be needed.

Anyone have any more details on this? Will CA even publish the interfaces into their code that we will need to hook into?

[Del Arroyo]

Does anyone know the legal implications of decompiling a copyrighted piece of software? Even not-for-profit?

DA

[sirbin]

i would love some one mod stw.i will play it for sure

[ShellShock]

Does anyone know the legal implications of decompiling a copyrighted piece of software? Even not-for-profit?

DA

a) They would sling the book at you, hardback edition.

b) You can't meaningfully decompile/reverse engineer compiled C++ code, not in this lifetime, or you are a heavy duty assembler language programmer, and not even then.

CA would have to publish interfaces (or "hooks") into their game engine, which we could call from our own C/C++ code. This has been done before (e.g., id with their Quake games - id even publish complete source code for earlier versions of Quake). This would have the advantage of potentially being able to make major changes to the game.

The other type of "script" modding will definitely be in the game; this the type we're familiar with from the demo. You edit unit/building/battle etc details in text or script files, replace graphics/sounds etc. The amount of support for this provided by CA constrains how much we will able to mod the game.

Possibly CA may also want to license their game engine to other developers, in the same way id and others license engines for FPS games.

[sunsmountain]

No, I believe you can forget programming into the game's executable files. What I am sure will be supported, is to:
- modify text files, changing loads of things,
- modifying unit textures & image files, effectively allowing you to create new 3D models and import them by replacing old ones.
- provide basic editors, like unit editor, battle field editor, provincial campaign editor, and historical battle.

I don't know if you get a map editor like the one in Civilization, but the main map can probably be modified a lot.

[Samurai Waki]

Plus I've heard that RTW may come with some sort of modding program that comes with the game I'm not sure if thats true or not or even what the modability of RTW will be...but I sure as hell want to see either a Shogun: Total War 2 or something...my craving for 3d Samurai warfare is reaching critical mass and I'm about to implode.