Using -mod:my_mod

**Monkwarrior** · 03-02-2005, 10:29

Please, correct me if I am wrong, but from this tutorial it seems to me that in the new campaign we cannot show new symbols, buttons and banners (models and textures?).
Is that true?

I was thinking in the possibility of describing the new path for models, textures, symbols and banners in this way:
In the new descr_model_battle.txt file

Code:

texture				gauls, my_mod/models_unit/textures/unit_barb_infantry_gaul.tga

In the new descr_model_strat.txt file

Code:

texture				egypt, my_mod/models_strat/textures/diplomat_egypt.tga

and so on.

Has anybody tried this before?
In any case, I didn't find the same possibility for info_cards and unit_cards.

**Encaitar** · 03-02-2005, 14:36

An easier solution in cases where the file is referenced from one of the descr_ txt files would be to give your modded version of the texture a different filename, but put it in the normal folder. So your code might look something like this:

Code:

texture				gauls, data/models_unit/textures/my_mod_unit_barb_infantry_gaul.tga

You'd then put this modified descr_ txt file in the my_mod folder.

**DimeBagHo** · 01-19-2006, 19:41

1. To get custom battles working you need to include a bunch of files from data/world in your mod folder. For XGM the installer just copies the entire contents of data/world to xgm/data/world before installing the rest of the mod. I have never bothered to figure out exactly which files are needed.

2. For most files the exe will look in mymod/data first to see if there is a modified version, but it will not do this for .CAS files, so you need to go through the text files and specify the location of modified .CAS files.

In most cases the text files expect a location relative to the install folder, like data/models_unit/foo.CAS, which you can change to mymod/data/models_unit/foo.CAS. But in some cases the location is specified relative to the data folder itself, like say models_building/foo.CAS. Here you need to give the location as ../mymod/data/models_engine/foo.CAS. The ../ tells the exe to look one level up.

3. One bonus that comes with using -mod:mymod is that replacing unit and unit info cards is much easier. The exe will check in the mymod folder before looking in the packs.

**kleemann** · 03-01-2006, 07:52

Hi to everybody,

Where i can find information about RTW-s using -mod:my_mod.
I want to make mod swich for BI. I don't want to overwrite original files and the mod managing is a lot easier then.
If i use "RomeTW:BI.exe" -mod:my_mod then i get CTD when puting BI files into that folder, what's the problem?

**player1** · 03-01-2006, 09:56

Originally Posted by DimeBagHo

1. To get custom battles working you need to include a bunch of files from data/world in your mod folder. For XGM the installer just copies the entire contents of data/world to xgm/data/world before installing the rest of the mod. I have never bothered to figure out exactly which files are needed.

2. For most files the exe will look in mymod/data first to see if there is a modified version, but it will not do this for .CAS files, so you need to go through the text files and specify the location of modified .CAS files.

In most cases the text files expect a location relative to the install folder, like data/models_unit/foo.CAS, which you can change to mymod/data/models_unit/foo.CAS. But in some cases the location is specified relative to the data folder itself, like say models_building/foo.CAS. Here you need to give the location as ../mymod/data/models_engine/foo.CAS. The ../ tells the exe to look one level up.

3. One bonus that comes with using -mod:mymod is that replacing unit and unit info cards is much easier. The exe will check in the mymod folder before looking in the packs.

The biggest drawback of -mod:my_mod is that while it works nice for pure RTW mods, it's horrible for BI mods.

Since BI itself is sort of "RTW -mod:bi", in order to make -mod:my_mod work for BI you need to copy entire BI folder to your mod folder in order to make it work.

**DimeBagHo** · 03-01-2006, 18:30

Originally Posted by player1

The biggest drawback of -mod:my_mod is that while it works nice for pure RTW mods, it's horrible for BI mods.

Since BI itself is sort of "RTW -mod:bi", in order to make -mod:my_mod work for BI you need to copy entire BI folder to your mod folder in order to make it work.

There are ways around this in fact. Some files can simply be skipped (finding out which ones is a pain, but I think the animation folder is one - because the BI animations are all included in the RTW animations files now). With a lot of others you can edit the text files to tell the engine to look for them in the BI folder. You could do this with all of the unit models, textures, and sprites for example (and it would be pretty easy - just a search and replace in DMB for "data/"/"bi/data/" would probably do the trick. In theory you could do this for a lot of other files, although tracking down where the locations are specified in the text files can be a pain in some cases.

Obviously this takes a lot more start-up effort than an equivalent mod for RTW though. *Edit* Actually this seems like a pretty useful community service that someone could do - constructing a base BI mod that contains as little of the original BI folder as possible, with all the basic text file edits taken care of. *Edit 2* Just looking over the BI files I think you could use this method to avoid copying most of the files - but there is really no way to avoid copying almost all of the ui folder - which is about 232 MB.

**kleemann** · 03-02-2006, 13:26

In this case it seems to be easier to overwrite BI files than mess with extra bi install. Hard-disck has limited space

In my case 8 Gb of RTW is too much..

**Frans Ubberdork** · 03-30-2006, 19:26

I have noticed that when you use the -mymod switch to mod BI, that it still loads as if you are playing vanilla RTW.

My problem is that I have the RTW vanilla game modded so it will tell me unit celtic maiden not found or something like that.

Is their anywork around for this?

Thanks,
Tom

**Stuie** · 06-24-2006, 19:31

Originally Posted by player1

The biggest drawback of -mod:my_mod is that while it works nice for pure RTW mods, it's horrible for BI mods.

Since BI itself is sort of "RTW -mod:bi", in order to make -mod:my_mod work for BI you need to copy entire BI folder to your mod folder in order to make it work.

I think I finally figured this out. You need to put your mod folder in the BI folder, and then use this on the command line:

Code:

"C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\RomeTW-BI.exe" -mod:bi/modname

I tried it real quick with TFT, and v1.6 shows on the Options screen, and I can start a campaign. Didn't go much further than that due to time constraints, but it looks promising.

**Dol Guldur** · 06-25-2006, 01:13

Hmmmm...thanks Stuie...I will look into this next week perhaps.

**Makanyane** · 06-25-2006, 07:36

"C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\RomeTW-BI.exe" -mod:bi/modname

Would be really pleased if I could get this to work, have tried setting up file structure have copied in all text files from data and data/text and my mods /world folder and some other changed files but am getting crash on 1st loading screen, i.e. before any menu.

Any idea yet what minimum files / folders are?

EDIT: am now trying to work back from pasting in entire bi folder (re-named to modname) into bi/modname folder it definitely loads initially, trying to see what can be deleted, taking out all model folders, show_err is moaning about models_building/spot_fx, models_strat/symbol_faction.cas, models_engine/heavy_onager.cas and models_effects/torches.cas
if anyhone knows how to correct path names in appropriate files please post, otherwise I'll keep experimenting, (this is not for changed files just trying to get vanilla back to working via fewer files in -mod)