The Complete EDB Guide - discussion

[nikolai1962]

There may or may not be some clue in this post:

http://forums.rometotalrealism.org/i...dpost&p=238098

Personally, I'm too confused to tell but might be worth a look.

[Dol Guldur]

Thank you - I thought it did not work in older versions (that feature). Anyway, 3 days of coding (yawn) has eliminated this buggy and unpredictable building-conditioned unit recruitment lines system from my work...

[nikolai1962]

Probably for the best imo.

[Dol Guldur]

Here is something weird that I have not come across before and hope someone else has.

My EDB listed 45 hidden resources. I added a 46th somewhere around position 10. The game then started to kick me back to the menu on trying to load the campaign with the exit error reporting that the first hidden resource in the list was not recognised (in the DR file).

The problem was easily solved - I simply swapped the first and second hidden resource around. How could this be? Why would adding new hr have caused this?

I will do some more testing if I get time though it is not critical. I just do not like the fact that something is at work I do not comprehend ;)

EDIT: Nope, it has now started not recognising the first (formerly second) HR. Hmmm..

[alpaca]

45 is a really strange number for a list size. It wonder why it recognized the resource when you just had changed it really - I'd have assumed that it won't recognize the first resource ever if you go over the max.

[Dol Guldur]

It's a highly complex EDB ;) We needed about 70 HRs and had to come up with clever ways of cutting it down - with a little effort we might be able to reduce it still further..

Anyway the hard-coded limit is supposed to be about 64 so I doubt it is that - and why would it fail to recognise the *first* one listed instead of the last? Or maybe it does not recognise any of them but only reports the first? The map file is generating correctly but the kick back still occurs, though it does not always occur and I cannot work out why. More testing...

[alpaca]

Well it probably would only tell you about the first ;)
But then again I have no idea why it should fail to recognise the hidden resources (it's enough to put them into edb usually, isn't it?) at all.

[Dol Guldur]

The issue seems solved though I have no idea why it caused the unrecognised resource error.

I must admit to not fully comprehending the DUB file as of yet, though that was the file that needed some editing. I needed to add the extra temple_of_violence levels I set up to this file, though not so in the case of the temple_of_mithras. Why does the temple of mithras have no entry in this file in either the BI or Rome data folders? I do not have any mithras buildings in the game at present (unlike the violence ones) which may explain it - but surely vanilla has mithras in or is it not used?

EDIT: Of course. Mithras is purely Roman so requires no listing unless you add other factions/cultures to that tech tree.

[LestaT]

 dockyard requires factions { carthaginian, eastern, parthia, greek, egypt, } and hidden_resource major_port or factions { romans_julii, } and building_present_min_level barracks_roman muster_field and hidden_resource major_port 

Just would like to check. Are these lines correct ? It didn't caused CTD, but haven't tested it yet.

Base on RTR Gold, I wanted to make for roman to have that level must need another building built.

[nikolai1962]

Those kind of conditions have never worked for me. The only kind that have, have been of the form:

requires factions { a, b, c, } or factions { x, y, z, } and a_condition

i.e the first set of factions has no other conditions other than the factions.

[alpaca]

I don't know if I remember correctly but when I once tested this I think the game took all that's to the right of the "or" as one statement and the condition directly on the left of the "or" as the other statement.

[LestaT]

Those kind of conditions have never worked for me. The only kind that have, have been of the form:

requires factions { a, b, c, } or factions { x, y, z, } and a_condition

i.e the first set of factions has no other conditions other than the factions.

So, if doing that only factions x, y, z, have the condition ? I guess I have to do other means, by making the x, y, z, still be able to build but not having the intended bonus.

Something like what we call here , a white elephant project.

Thanks.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Just in case this was missed or not mentioned elsewhere, it can possibly help a situation that I haven't seen many folks mention. nikolai1962 (magnificent bastard) figured out a way to get around this nasty error in 1.5:


(typed out for search engine catching):
Script Error in data/export_descr_buildings.txt

Building DB error - faction X has gap in building prior to X (unavailable at level zero)

Here is his explanation - you may chuckle at how he fixed it - edited a little by me for use by a non-EB audience and a few other clarifications (he hasn't been on the site in a few days - hope he forgives my meddling ):

This error message is the annoying 1.5 thing where the parser doesn't like breaks in faction requirements across building levels.

for example: levels b1 b2 b3

b1 require greek, roman
b2 requires greek
b3 requires roman

Even if b2 and b3 are set up as optional upgrades from b1 (which works in game, and worked without error in 1.2) the initial parser doesn't get it and throws an error message, stopping the game from successfully loading.

You can suppress the error by having a "not" condition somewhere as that throws an error too but it isn't caught by the show_err mechanism so it cancels the other one out (no idea why).

In limited cases where the a *break* building level has no conditions you can get round it with:

b1 require greek, roman
b2 requires greek or roman and not_here (not_here being a hidden resource we have in EB when we don't want buildings to be buildable - as it never appears in a province)
b3 requires roman

So he has a way to stop the error message from occurring, basically by introducing another "mistake" (as EDB doesn't like "and not" requirements - they mess up the building browser and it won't read the building). In this case, two wrongs certainly do make a right.

[Makanyane]

Lots of brownie points if anyone can explain this one. Based on tutorial we thought using:

academy requires factions { eastern, roman, } and hidden_resource sughdian

etc. should disable academy buildings - as sughdian isn't in our regions.txt

two of us were at different stage of modding text files, one found above line worked in EDB other one using same line found it didn't disable building. After many hours copy'ing and pasting sections of working / non-working EDB have found:

Within mod (without changing any other files) EDB line;

academy requires factions { eastern, roman, } and hidden_resource sughdian

works to disable academy buildings if line

city_plumbing requires factions { barbarian, roman, }

is not modded within EDB,

if the above line is ammended to;

city_plumbing requires factions { barbarian, x, roman, }

and here 'x,' can be literally 'x,' or 'faction,' or 'culture,' then the and hidden_resource requirement for the academy is disabled and the roman cultures can build them in any province again.

These appear to be from entirely different building trees and I can't think of anything that would link them. Help!!!

[Makanyane]

Have just re-tested the above using a vanilla version of BI 1.4 (mod was on 1.6) just in case excess intake of fermented apple juice was messing up yesterdays results.

Added new hidden_resource, 'unbuildable' to vanilla EDB and used it to disable building of all barracks, farms and academies. As expected these no longer appeared in building browser or construction screens in game.

Played about with

city_plumbing requires factions { barbarian, roman, }

line

have tested this with requires factions including:
{ barbarian, goths, eastern, hun, nomad, roman, } in various combinations and that is fine; barracks, farms and academies all remain unbuildable.

However adding: 'carthaginian,' 'carthage,' or 'x,' in combination with any of the above gives in game result that barracks remain unbuildable, but farms and academies re-appear on building browser (for Romans) and can be built. Also if playing as Saxons and Goths the barracks remain unbuildable, but they now have the ability to build academies and higher level farms that they / their culture is not on the requires factions list for!

Thought that barracks not being effected could be due to position in EDB relative to city_plumbing. Cut and pasted entire health building section down to bottom of EDB and we're back to everything working as expected i.e. all three sets of buildings stay unbuildable even with 'carthaginian,' in city_plumbing.

So it seems that when game can't find something (?what) related to city_plumbing for 'carthaginian,' 'carthage,' or 'x,' instead of crashing or giving an error message it just decides in retribution to reverse the effect of your and hidden_resources below that point!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Oh. Maybe it has something to do with carthage not autodefaulting to another culture for building images. Go open descr_ui_buildings.txt. What does your first few lines look like? up until the "temple" lines begin? Something like this?

lookup_variants
{
	carthaginian eastern
	carthaginian egyptian
	eastern egyptian
	greek roman

I don't have the original installed files anymore - but making sure you have a proper set of images to default to for that culture may be the issue. (as nikolai figured out I think)

[Dol Guldur]

Yes,

Carthaginian does cause problems, and even changing descr_ui only addresses it so far (I have found).
The usual error though is a kick-back to menu if carthaginian is assigned a new building tree/created building tree or to a new level of a vanilla building tree.

Changing the DUB file overcomes the new vanilla tree/level problem but the KTM still occurs for entirely new buildings. <<< this also has now been resolved (see later in this thread).

Interesting though that you assigned carth. to it and did not get a ktm. Have you already modded DUB? (working in BI 1.6)

[Makanyane]

Teleklos Archelaou, you're right it is apparently to do with that.

Dol Guldur, I hadn't modded DUB in either version until after seeing both your replies. Have no idea why it doesn't KTM (especially using 'x,')!

Have just tried changing DUB (in modded 1.6) to start

lookup_variants
{
carthaginian roman
carthaginian barbarian
carthaginian eastern
carthaginian egyptian
eastern egyptian
greek roman

adding carthaginian in for existing roman and / or barbarian buildings now works Ok and doesn't mess up hidden_resource disabled buildings. Thanks.

[Dol Guldur]

Great. If all else fails, DUB it! ;)

You actually added an x and it didn't complain?

[Makanyane]

Aaarghhh, just re-tested and found that game accepting 'x,' (and carthaginian) in those positions without error message / KTM was due to me not deleting map.rwm, other changes were being picked up so didn't think I had to delete it for EDB changes.

[blacksnail]

Cunctator has confirmed that the "recruit & bonus" CTD mentioned in posts #91-95 of this thread is only caused when the recruit line includes a building conditional. A recruit line with HRs does not cause a CTD when in the same building as a bonus.

[Dol Guldur]

Well, that's all of us in agreement then ;)

I wonder what causes the CTD to kick in once a certain number of BC units are availble from a building? Still, I have abandoned any BC recruitment ideas so it is of no matter.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Bump!

What I might think is one of the most important threads on RTW modding (discussion thread that is) needs some spect!

A question or two that may or may not get answered - they're sort of specific:

-Is not having any capabilities (bonuses or recruitment) for a complex level going to cause a problem? Anyone ever had a problem and directly traced it to this?

-At the end of each building complex you find this:

upgrades
{
}
}
}
plugins
{
}
}

The question is - is this part

plugins
{
}

really necessary? Will it cause problems if it's not there?

[Dol Guldur]

Thx. for the bump ;)

I've had buildings with no capabilities for unimplemented factions; and I am sure at some stage I must have had the same for implemented factions (i.e. working in game) as I set up new building trees for them; not 100% sure though.

The plugin section, as you know, is defunct; I've tested that it can be removed (just now) but have not thoroughly tested the consequences of doing so. I cannot see how it would hurt but best to test it thoroughly first.

EDIT: <<< Squid has discovered that the plug-in has some limited value with scripts (see EDB Guide update)

[Makanyane]

EDIT: Have problem with churches that are in descr_strat not appearing in certain settlements when you start game with MICROMANAGE_ALL_SETTLEMENTS:FALSE in preferences - if this is set to TRUE they appear as normal! Had thought it was side effect of some extensive changes to church system in EDB - after much testing and finally substituting vanilla EDB back in - it appears not to be the culprit, so have editted out my original post and will post elsewhere.

Sorry !!!!

[Renaissance37]

The romans have the great advantage of the highways. I wanted to mod the game so as to start with highways in every single province. I figure this should not be too complicated. Can someone point me in the right direction as to how to do this (I think it is in the descr_strat.txt file). Thanks.

[Charge]

	{
		type defenses wooden_pallisade
	}
	building
	{
		type hinterland_roads highways
	}
	building
	{

add/retype in each city

they will be of roman culture though, unless you'll change edb and ui..a bit more complicated :)

[Renaissance37]

	{
		type defenses wooden_pallisade
	}
	building
	{
		type hinterland_roads highways
	}
	building
	{

add/retype in each city

they will be of roman culture though, unless you'll change edb and ui..a bit more complicated :)

..And this is done in the descr strat file under maps/imperial campaign? Does it need to be changed in any other files also? I did this first (for Arretrium) and it still displayed the "roads" on the map, not "highways".

[Squid]

Did you alse remove the entry for the roads?

[Renaissance37]

Did you alse remove the entry for the roads?

So what should the code look like?