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