Safe tweaks in mid-campaign?

[EatYerGreens]

I saw something in a recent thread (this Hall) referring to Sicilian kings getting non-historical first names, traced to a fault which incorrectly assigns them Scottish forenames.

I couldn't file the game file that was referenced but browsed some others and found one containing sets of names and was tempted to experiment with making additions.

It then occured to me that modding files while a campaign is in progress is probably a bad idea and wondered, as a general question, what mods are safe enough to make without risk of corrupting a campaign?

I thought name changes/additions were safe and innocuous enough. Not actually changing the game balance or anything.

However, I notice there is an entire directory in the MTW folder which a readme says is specifically for the purpose of storing modified files. It occurs to me that there are whole layers of stuff that I need to know about modding but don't. There must be stacks of stuff to but I'm not ready for that much depth of info yet. A quick reply to the feasibility of the above name-tweaking will be enough for now.

Thanks in advance.

[mfberg]

Check in the modding forum, they know quite a bit about it, and someone has already changed some of the names in one or another modification.

mfberg

[EatYerGreens]

Thanks mfberg,

I have done a little browsing but could not find any threads specifically titled with what I had in mind. It's probably in there... somewhere, just tricky to find it.

Also I'm a bit confused about that forum area. It looks like they have requested no posts to be made (yet I still see the 'post reply' button) and messages only get in there by emailing a moderator and the mod adds the post.

[WesW]

Funny, I never ran across this bug before...
Anyway, open up the DEFAULT_HEROES text, which is in the MTW\campmap\names folder, and in line 64, change the number 14 to 4.
This file assigns the references. What you actually see in the game is defined in the Names text, in the MTW\Loc\Eng folder.
If you are in a campaign, I don't know if changes made here would show up the next time you resumed, or not. As long as you only play around with the entries in the second column in Names, you shouldn't be able to mess up anything. Just back up the originals, of course.

[EatYerGreens]

Thanks Wes. I expect you're busy, so I appreciate getting a reply here.

Actually, before I even saw your post, I got as far as:-

1) Load Default_Heroes.txt
2) Save As... Default_Heroes-txt.bak
3) left the .bak in the same directory (good/bad?)
4) Edit line 64, 14 to 4, as described (this fix got mentioned in other thread).
5) No other edits or meddling.
6) Run game, load last proper save (not an autosave or quicksave)
7) Sicilian King now called Roger, William or something vaguely Norman.
8) Can't remember what his name was previously (a 5 stack re-emergence, sans ships, on Malta some time ago, so I've not even checked on them for years) but recall the "names beginning with A" syndrome, Aedh, Aed, Aodh, etc.


I also had a right old laugh at the offbeat comments about some of the historical characters in Default_Heroes.



You mention 'only second column'. Light browsing of the mod forum and the files themselves gives me a faint odour of 'arrays' being in operation here.

In other words, it's okay to replace existing data entries but attempting to add extra lines of fornames and surnames is going to upset things badly?

[WesW]

Thanks Wes. I expect you're busy, so I appreciate getting a reply here.

Actually, before I even saw your post, I got as far as:-

1) Load Default_Heroes.txt
2) Save As... Default_Heroes-txt.bak
3) left the .bak in the same directory (good/bad?)
4) Edit line 64, 14 to 4, as described (this fix got mentioned in other thread).
5) No other edits or meddling.
6) Run game, load last proper save (not an autosave or quicksave)
7) Sicilian King now called Roger, William or something vaguely Norman.
8) Can't remember what his name was previously (a 5 stack re-emergence, sans ships, on Malta some time ago, so I've not even checked on them for years) but recall the "names beginning with A" syndrome, Aedh, Aed, Aodh, etc.


I also had a right old laugh at the offbeat comments about some of the historical characters in Default_Heroes.



You mention 'only second column'. Light browsing of the mod forum and the files themselves gives me a faint odour of 'arrays' being in operation here.

In other words, it's okay to replace existing data entries but attempting to add extra lines of fornames and surnames is going to upset things badly?

Captain Fishpants, Mike B, wrote most all of the text for the game, iirc, including the comments in the Heroes text. I really liked him when he was posting on the boards here a couple years ago.

The names aren't in arrays, ala the units text. You just have to be sure that anything you add in Heroes has a matching entry in Names or else the game won't load- no error message or anything.