Medieval Modding News Round Up

[Aenarion]

Well done BKB! Thankyou for posting this list of Mods and regarding the Silmarillion Mod, it is still progressing!

Thanks alot again,
Aenarion

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Well if you've got a good pic mate feel free to send it to me, I'll put it up here. I've also got a couple of recent modding discoveries founded by people that I'll post later.

[Aenarion]

BKB I've sent you the picture u've asked me for. Oh and btw regarding ur comment

I've also got a couple of recent modding discoveries founded by people that I'll post later

I'm still waiting for them! lol!

Thanks,
Aenarion

[NodachiSam]

Nice idea BKB!

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Ok a small update. These two 'new discoveries' I mention are as follows, sorry if you already know them and they come as disappointment to you:

Changing units prior to battle engagments:

You know how you can dismount some units prior to battle? Well Cegorach has discovered something so fiendishly simple yet brilliant that I can't believe no one has ever tried before - you can do it with any units! For example, you may want to switch between Armoured and Unarmoured Pikemen in desert conditions. Here's pics of Cegorach's achievement:





And a word from the discoverer:

And FINALLY my pride - the result of lack of modding during Christmas.

I used something which was here all the time, but I really thought that I cannot do it, because it is so... rude and obviously will result in CTD, but... it didn't so it gives some really huge opportunities in making units which can change into different ones infantry to another infantry, infantry to cavalry, cavalry to cavalry, infantry to artillery etc.

Its not essential but it looks good, so for the 'Change Battle Mode' text, first go into 'Changes' and find the line:

["CanDismountBeforeBattle_Tip"] {"Can dismount before battle"}

And change the latter to something more appropriate like 'Can change battle mode before battle'.

To finish it off, then go into 'Battle' and find this section:

////////////////////////////////////
// Mounting / Dismounting
["Dismounted"] {"(Dismounted)"}
["Dismount/Remount"] {"Dismount / Remount"} // Right menu command
["Dismounting not allowed"] {"Dismounting not allowed"}

Change the text in the {} boxes to what you want, like 'Battle Mode Changed' and 'Change Battle Mode' as Cegorach has done and you'll be done I believe. I haven't tried it yet though so I'm not 100% sure if that's all you have to do. Please LMK if it isn't.

And I think that's all there is to it. I'm assuming you'll know where to add whether or not a unit can 'dismount/remount' into a certain other unit. If you don't know where to specify if a unit can change 'Battle mode' so to speak, go into the unit_prod files and have a look at where the dismount for a cavalry unit already in the game is stated. Now apply that in the same position for another unit using the Gnome Editor and 'voila!', it should work fine!

A great discovery that I hope Ceg doesn't mind me posting, and one that's sure to come in handy. I know I shall be using it at least!

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Adding Battle Sounds and Editing Arid Tile Sets

As for the second discovery, well its by that great, often overlooked modder, Iustinus. He does things in terms of Medieval modding that many often don't even consider as they are too difficult, such as edit map textures and battlemap sounds. And he's found a couple of significant new discoveries to do with these fields:

I am finding, though, some new things.
You can create winter ground tile sets for arid, and the game will use them.

Also, apparently you can put in as many sfx as you want, as long as you write them down in the appropriate places in the sound file.

For those of you knowledgeable in these areas I know these will be a great boost - these will help me no end with Age of Warlords, and I'm sure it'll boost some of you looking at doing total overhaul mods also. Hopefully Iustinus at some point can tell us in detail how exactly he did this.

BKB (Attempting to keep the world of Medieval: Total War modding alive! )

[Iustinus]

Hey BKB,
Thanks!
Here's a few things in a little more detail that I have discovered:

1. I have also found that you can create seperate winter ground tile sets for Rock Desert (I don't know about Sand Desert, but I'm fairly sure it would work.)

As an example of what you can do with this, I've taken the Arid summer tile sets and Rock Desert winter tile sets and added green to them with photoshop- so that you get a little of the rainy season feel for winter battles in the desert, and so that Mediterranean landscapes are a little less dead looking in the summer.

All you have to do is create a folder called 'Winter' within the ground texture folders- just like there is a winter folder in the Lush ground tile folder.

2. On SFX, go to battle/sounds and open up the TABLE with notepad.
To add a new sound, let's say a new scream of pain, scoll down to

"Event INFANTRY_DEATH probability 1 maxDist 500 minDist 4 minPitch .7 maxPitch 1.2 priority 0.2
folder sounds\battle\troops"

and add, for example,

"NewDeathScream01"

under the list of sfx. Then go to sounds\battle\troops and place your sound, giving it the same name.

Using sfx from both MTW and the RTW demo, I have created huge lists of completely seperate sounds for Spears, Clubs, Axes, and Swords, so you can really hear the difference on the battlefield when spearmen are fighting and a group of men armed with axes slams into them.

3. It is rather annoying in certain mods (such as NTW and HTW) when artillery not using a model has no sound. I found a way around this, and although it still isn't great, this is what you can do to get some sound:

Go to sounds/battle/artillery and find Missile_Fly. Using Sound Recorder or another program, open it up, and paste another sound at the beginning- for example, Culverin for a cannon or Ballista for some ancient weapon. Now when the artillery fires you should hear the shot ringing out in the beginning before the missile_fly sound starts. I hope that is not too confusing!

Iustinus

[cegorach]

A great discovery that I hope Ceg doesn't mind me posting, and one that's sure to come in handy. I know I shall be using it at least![/QUOTE]

Of course I don't mind, I find it extremely useful and I hope you will too

Regards Cegorach

[Myrddraal]

Hey BKB

You may know that I posted a link and summary of ER's RTW Modding News Roundup on the homepage of the .org. If you'd like me to do the same for this Roundup, PM me