Battle Editor: Number of Questions

[RegiaSaxon]

Hi,

I'm in the process of creating a Rome - Total War: Battle Editor for Dummies manual. It will show the beginner how to create historical battles using the Battle Editor. As a result, it's also been a learning curve for me.

Unfortunately, the editor is somewhat lacking and a little bug ridden in certain places. As a result, I'm unsure as to whether or not the problems I'm encountering are bugs or just my lack of knowledge on RTW editing.

The problems I'm encountering are as follows:

1) Does anybody know what the 'Num of supporting armies' actually signifies in the Army Creator requester?

2) Has anyone experienced the 3D model being positioned away from the ground textures when creating a Settlement? They look fine in the editor but are offset from each other when playing the actual battle. I created a Roman Village and I could not get the actual buildings to sit on their corresponding terrain textures, no matter where I moved it to.

3) How on earth are bridges created across rivers? I've actually managed to find a river that has some form of river crossing, but it is only a hardly visible 'road' across the river. How do we actually make a bridge appear over the river? This one has had me pulling my bloody hair out!

4) Is it just me or is the location selection screen completely offset? I can click in sea and it will provide me with a land battle. It's almost as if the X position if offset from the actual map position by about 30 pixels. FIXED

5) When adding models to a battlefield it seems that the actual coverage they take up is huge. For example, if you add a small ruin a reasonable distance from a river, the water in the river is removed because of the huge area that the small ruin model seems to occupy. I'm wondering if there's a way to reduce the coverage area.

Now, I am using Rome: Total Realism, so I'm not sure if this is causing any problems. I doubt it somehow, but you never know.

Any help chaps would be greatly appreciated. All the best.

Chalky

[SirRethcir]

4) Is it just me or is the location selection screen completely offset? I can click in sea and it will provide me with a land battle. It's almost as if the X position if offset from the actual map position by about 30 pixels.

Now, I am using Rome: Total Realism, so I'm not sure if this is causing any problems. I doubt it somehow, but you never know.

That's a problem with RTR. In Vanilla it works fine.

[RegiaSaxon]

That's a problem with RTR. In Vanilla it works fine.

You're absolutely right! I've just installed RTR and reinstalled RTW and the location selection map is fine now. Many thanks for that. I'll have to add a note to the manual for RTR users.

Cheers and all the best.
Chalky

[RegiaSaxon]

Well after adding countless settlements to battlefields and having the textures show in the right place with the 3D models floating off into space I'm real close to giving up on this tutorial - it seems there are just too many problems/bugs/inconsistencies in the Battle Editor to make it worthwhile.

The Battle Editor occasionally writes out incorrect code and seems to be half finished. Constant weather and the actual battle date has to be added by hand!

It's a real shame as the manual is looking very nice at the moment.

I will perservere for a little longer and if anyone knows the answers to any of my question I beg you release me from my torment.

Cheers
Chalky

[Epistolary Richard]

I used the battle editor to create a custom tile with a latent settlement on it - when I went onto it in the game I just got the underlay of the settlement and no buildings at all!

[RegiaSaxon]

Hi Richard,

The settlements seem to be confusing a lot of people, myself included. The standard settlements will always appear as ground textures only in-game. It may be a case that the buildings etc. need to be added manually.

However, if you look in the expandable settlement lists - default_set, which is available above the standard settlements, and then select Roman, you can access other settlements, such as roman_village.txt.

Click the Settlements icon
Click the expand icon to the left of default_set
Click the expand icon to the left of Roman
Select roman_village.txt

These settlements appear properly in the editor and display both the ground textures and 3D models in-game. Unfortunately, 99% of the time the two are not together - God knows why! EDIT: Actually this seems to be only when a settlement has been deleted and then recreated - see below...

The textures will be in one part of the map (normally the place you actually put the settlement in the editor) and the 3D models will be off someplace else.

The frustrating part is that we just don't know if this is a game mechanic that we need to understand or a bug with the Battle Editor.

It could be that the solution has already been discovered by other modders but the link between the many descr files and the Battle Editor has not been made by any of us.

I'm going to do a few more experiments with the settlements in the Battle Editor to see if I can find any trends. I'll let you know how I get on.

Cheers
Chalky

[RegiaSaxon]

Hi,

I've done a few tests and the Battle Editor is so bloody random it's infuriating. There must be a pattern but I just can't work it out.

If the settlement is not ambient then any enemies will attack, even if set to defend. I presume this is because non-ambient defines a siege battle.

Ticking ambient makes the settlement exactly that - part of the scenery and nothing else. Enemies set to defend do exactly that.

Now from my tests it would appear that creating a settlement is fine and moving a settlement is fine. However, if you choose to delete a settlement and then create another one the problem with the 3D models parting from the base textures occurs.

I did several tests on this and everytime the settlement was broken. Unfortunately, in the last test I did the following:

Create settlement and play - OK
Delete settlement and create a new one and play - OK
Delete settlements and create a new one and play - NOT OKAY!!!!

Why this is happening I cannot be sure. Sometimes deleting a settlement and then creating a new one causes the 'split 3D models' problem and other times it doesn't - GREAT!!!!

So back to square one on that one.

Cheers
Chalky

[RegiaSaxon]

I created a new battle with a large Roman city and the 3D models disappeared. Cool, that means the bit of solid information I had gleaned from my previous tests (that the problem only occurs when a settlement is deleted and then recreated) was actually about as solid as diarrhoea.

I feel like I'm taking one step forward, two steps back. I'm beginning to loathe the Battle Editor.

Oh well, back to the drawing board for more mind-numbing tests.

Cheers
Chalky

I'll try and summerise some of the things I've found out (that'll be - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't)

[RegiaSaxon]

There also seems to be a problem with the Edit Army Details requester. I created two opposing factions, each with one army. When I changed the Command level of one of the army's generals it made the same change for the other army's general and vice versa.

I also noticed that the chosen faction for the army I was editing was always the same and disabled ( You cannot change the faction as this would obviously cause problems if faction-specific units had been added to the army, but it should not be the same, it should change to reflect the faction army you are editing.)

Ho hum, I thought. When I actually checked the battle desc file both Command parameters for the armies were set to 0. So I'm not even sure the editor is actually saving out the Command setting.

Yikes. More investigation is need.

Further tests have revealed that the Battle Editor Command setting is bugged and does not save it to the battle_descr file. It has to be added manually.

Cheers,
Chalky

[RegiaSaxon]

Okay, I thought it would be a good time summarise some of things I've discovered about the Battle Editor as I attempt to create a tutorial. I don't know if this is of any interest to anyone - this seems like a very lonely thread . Beuller? Beuller? Beuller?


Edit Battle Details requester
1) Set time limit to 0 to have no time limit for the battle. This causes a Sanity error but still works.

2) There is no option in the editor to set the battle year - this must be added by editing the descr_battle.txt file manually.


Edit Army Details requester
1) Is reinforcement doesn't seem to work or the associated Joins in 0 minutes setting. Reinforcements will appear in the battle at the correct time but they will do nothing. Occasionaly, the unit tooltip reports them as marching when they are still. The Is reinforcement tick box resets itself immediately the requester is closed and then opened again.

2) The purpose of Num supporting armies is unkown at present.

3) The Command setting does not work. It is not written to the descr_battle.txt when you save your battle and needs to be added by editing this file manually. However, if you later resave you battle via the editor the Command setting will be reset to 0.

4) When trying to edit an army you have already created the requester does not update it's settings in accordance with the army you have selected. Therefore, if you have two factions - Romans and Britannia (created in that order), and you select Romans, the Select faction option will still read Britannia. The option is disabled I presume to stop problems with changing a faction that already has faction-specific units assigned to it. I'll be looking into this a little more.

5) There is no option to choose if the current faction is playable or not. This must be added by editing the descr_battle.txt file manually.


Settlements
1) Settlements are highly unstable when it comes to placing them in the battle editor. Most of the time they appear fine unless you delete them (although this isn't always the case). This causes the 3D models to separate from the ground textures and appear elsewhere on the map (randomly, it would seem). Using settlements from within Default_set and Default_port_set is a lot more reliable than using the others.

2) Moving settlements is not very well explained. Click and hold the left mouse button down on the settlement. With the button still down, move the mouse to the location you want to move the settlement to - you will see the green placement area. Release the left mouse button.

3) Moving and placing settlements can cause holes in the map, which are square and show sky through them. These will not show up in the actual battle but you can 'fall' through them when moving the camera over them in the battle editor. This can cause the entire 3D world to go black and you will need to exit and reload the battle editor to clear the problem.


Models
1) There doesn't seem to be any way of adding bridges over rivers, although this could be related to the campaign map and the way in which the campaign 'grows'.

2) When placing a model near a river, the base area of the model is huge and 'dries up' the river. Although the visible model area is only tiny, they seem to have a huge second area. Imagine a Roman legion has to build a fort but needs to clear an area 500 miles square and you'll get the picture. Alternatively, just give it a try.


Misc
1) Rotating the camera facing directly down will result in the view flipping and you will suddenly be looking at sky. Just rotate the other way to restore the view.


Well, there you go, my findings so far. It may well be a case that a lot of the problems are deliberate or possibly linked to game mechanics that are controlled elsewhere (such as adding bridges). It is certain that some are just quirks. Maybe one of the CA guys will gatecrash my topic and help out.

Cheers
Chalky

[RegiaSaxon]

Can't be bothered replying to my replies anymore. I'm going to drop the manual as I'm not into self-flagellation. I can only presume that people aren't too bothered about the Battle Editor.

It's a shame really because it was looking very nice and I had put a great deal of work into it, but the lack of support from CA (I realise you're busy guys) and the countless bugs and general lack of interest in the Battle Editor have led me to believe that campaign editing is where the interest is.

Plus, it also means I can reinstall RTR and enjoy the new 6.1 patch.

Just to see what could have been, a preview of the manual is available here (PDF - right-click and choose Save As... if you don't want to view the PDF in your browser).

Cheers and ta ta, Chalky

I may come back to the Battle Editor for BI but only time will tell.