A Building Issue that the "Issues" post missed

[Teleklos Archelaou]

One of the biggest problems we are currently having with the mod deals with buildings that are in place at the start of the game. For some bizarre reason totally incomprehensible to our members working on the building code, when we place some buildings in the descr_strat.txt file, the game refuses to recognize the corresponding entries for the buildings’ names and descriptions. Instead it looks to the default or base description. Because of this we now have some structures that appear to be in an incorrect language and have an inappropriate description (see accompanying image). Note that this problem only occurs with buildings that are in place at the game’s start though. You may build the exact same troublesome building in another city (or even in the same city after you destroy it first) and it will look and function correctly. Additionally, this situation only affects certain buildings and certain factions, though some building complexes seem particularly troublesome.

We do have a way of getting around this problem though. It will not be in place by the release of the open beta, but in a relatively soon update. It involves placing the troublesome buildings by script instead of by their inclusion in descr_strat.txt. This is rather inelegant, and ignores the problem itself though. By the way, if anyone is able to figure out the problem for us we would be extremely thankful. Until the scripting solution is put into place, the problem will exist. It does not affect certain factions at all, while others are particularly hard hit. We hope you will bear with us until the solution is effected.

[nikolai1962]

It does not affect certain factions at all, while others are particularly hard hit.

Do the factions affected/unaffected match up with those factions which no longer fit their vanilla culture group?

Thrace for example is no longer barbarian as it is now epeiros while arverni are the vanilla gauls and still fit. I don't know if the factions which fit each culture are hard coded or not or if you re-assigned the groupings.

I noticed one thing while looking around the files which was these four lines at the top of the descr_ui_buildings.txt:

carthaginian eastern
carthaginian egyptian
eastern egyptian
roman greek

I know they do something because when i deleted the roman one and looked at rome most of the buildings lost their icons, replaced by the generic barracks one. I mention it in case these lines are to do with culture groups as ct_carthage is the carthaginian one not "carthaginian".

[nikolai1962]

I think i know what your problem is. I'll try and work out how to explain it legibly and pm you.

(ignore the thing about carthaginian in previous post. that may be part of solution rather than the problem)

[Dol Guldur]

Nikolai,

Could you post your thoughts here or PM it to me as well? I have so little time to research this at present. I'd also like to keep the EDB Guide and the Adding a New Culture guides updated.

Teleklos, nice to see a mod using the faction-specific building descriptions - again, though (Nikolai!) let me know if an update is in order for that tutorial.

Hope this gets sorted but I will look into it when I can.

Good luck with EB!

Dol Guldur/MasterOfNone aka Palantir, Fourth Age: Total War, Management.

[nikolai1962]

This started off from investigating how to get the sauromatae buildings to display correctly but is more general and *may* be related.

1) There is a vanilla file called descr_ui_buildings.txt with lines:

eastern barbarian
carthaginian eastern
carthaginian egyptian
greek roman

They relate (at least partly) to ui graphic folders that the first culture type should look in if they can't find a specific graphic in their own folder.

2) At least sometimes "not" conditions on building requirements prevent buildings displaying in the building browser.


I made lots of changes which eventually made the sauramatae taverns appear with the right graphic and display in the browser but went back and re-installed EB so i could be more systematic.

Changing the line "eastern egyptian" to "eastern barbarian" in the ui_buildings file on it's own doesn't make the barb graphic appear.

If the "not" condition is changed so as to make the tavern display (with the wrong graphic) in the building browser then also changing the ui_buildings line to "eastern barbarian". Then the barb tavern graphic displays.

This may or may not have anything to do with the weird startup problem but it shows problems in the browser display may reflect other side-effects elsewhere with the program parsing the building data.

[nikolai1962]

The roman sewers is the same problem.

1) Add "farming" as a resource to the rome region.
2) Add "farming" to the hidden resource list at the top of the buildings file.
3) Change the end of the sewers requirements line from "and not hidden_resource desert" to "and hidden_resource farming or hidden_resource mixed or hidden_resource nomad".
4) Delete map.rwn file
5) Tada!

For some strange reason the bug/feature that prevents the building browser displaying properly (sometimes at least), when there is a "not" condition in the requirements, also messes with the lines in descr_ui_buildings .txt that link cultures/culture ui folders in some way.

[Dol Guldur]

Nikolai,

Great work. This has helped me understand why the Carthagnians can cause a kick-to-menu problem when trying to start a campaign: there was no fallback folder for them if you assigned them certain buildings or certain levels of buildings (all tavern levels for example and the top 2 levels of vanilla public health buildings).

You are right about the "not" causing problems with the BB display but, as you discovered, there are ways around this.

I am not sure of the details of the EB Mod's problems but I suspect a little experimenting in this area will find that it is to do with the way the EB/EDB and descr_ui_buildings.txt file interact.

The descr_ui_buildings.txt file can, like many commonly-modded files, be copied into the bi/data directory and the BI game will work off that version rather than the base data folder file.

I would suspect that the "greek roman" line is the place to start. I am not familiar with EB's set up re culture etc. but I'm sure the team can work it this out ;)

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Hmm. The bad thing is that we have so many HR already, that it might prove difficult.

We might just use the scripting placement to get around the problem still. Why in the world this problem happens though if we use (what would appear to be a valid) 'and not' conditional, I guess we will never know.

Great job nikolai.