How to add Building Descriptions by Faction

[Dol Guldur]

UNIQUE BUILDING DESCRIPTIONS FOR ALL FACTIONS

Introduction

This brief tutorial simply lays out the steps to take in order to provide unique descriptions to any or all of a faction's buildings, regardless of the R:TW vanilla set-up of "one description per culture".

The file listing the description names (see below) does so by culture. So governors_house_barbarian_desc provides the text for the description of the barbarian Governor's House (in-game as "Warrior's Hold").

However, as with the EDB file (export_desc_buildings.txt), Parthia is listed too. So we have (for example) governors_house_parthia_desc. Likewise in EDB Parthia is listed seemingly as a culture. Indeed, in this latter file it is always found alongside the Eastern culture in required factions for buildings (the Parthia faction, together with Armenia and Pontus comprise the Eastern culture). It has been rumoured that Parthia was a culture/remnant code (as far as these files are concerned) but I wondered if that was true.

Initial testing of some time ago - and as I'm sure many know - shows that factions can indeed be used as well as cultures as designated requirements in the EDB. So it got me thinking...what about building descriptions?

Here's what I did:


STEP 1. data\text\export_buildings.txt (this file contains all the long and short descriptions for buildings)

added following new entry:

{governors_house_numidia_desc}
The Numidian Governor's House is the centre for all administrative functions in a settlement. This is the power of Parthia made solid for the people who live here.\n\nThe administrator based here collects taxes, issues instructions to improve the settlement and manages the small day-to-day business of an empire.\n\nWhile not exactly luxurious, the Governor's House is usually the best building in the settlement, and locals try to build their own houses close by so that some prestige rubs off on them!

{governors_house_numidia_desc_short}
The Numidian Governor's House is the controlling hub of the settlement, and the basis of all state power. Without enlightened Parthian government, nothing else can develop.

You'll note that's just a copy of the standard Parthian description but I've inserted the word "Numidian" to differentiate it.

STEP 2.* data\export_descr_buildings_enums.txt

Simply added the following 2 entries:

governors_house_numidia_desc
governors_house_numidia_desc_short

RESULT:



ABOVE: Governor's House building scroll during play as Numidia


OBSERVATIONS:

Numidia is part of the Ct_carthage culture but you'll note my text is invoked rather than the ct_carthage one; this would suggest that a cultural basis can be used to provide shared descriptions to all those buildings in a culture whilst allowing any (or all) buildings to be uniquely described.

NOTE:

* The description still gets in-game without performing this step but it seems like it should be done just to be safe.

I did this all just over the last 24 hours or so and it is not thoroughly tested. Much more research and testing is needed and any help is welcome! There's a thread in "General" to discuss this.