Alexander:Total War - update on Max script

[Isnogood]

Against better judgement I just bought Alexander:Total War, although, after the initial reviews I'm not even very interested in playing (I'm in the middle of a Blue Lotus campaign anyway).Why I bought it ?I'm kind of a CA-fanboy, been since S:TW and I really like toying around with the models and skins customising them for my purposes, in A:TW however most models apart from some Indian can't be openened with Vercingetorix' latest script.

So my question -or rather humble request-is, if there might be an update on the script by the mighty Verc (if he has A:TW) or anyone capable (if there is such a one) ?

[spirit_of_rob]

So you can even edit models.... okay well that was the one and only reason that i might possible consider gettin alexander were for the models forget that!

Hope there is an answer to this coz if not im def not buying their mod

[Duke John]

The reason is that CA is constantly upgrading his CAS editor. It happened with BI with the added RUM files. I believe they also used it for Spartan and now they have a new version for M2:TW. It's nice that they try to get the best out of it, but it's just bad habit not to say anything about the changes. It also happened with modding campaigns with the sudden need to have a map_heights.hgt file.

It is starting to look more and more as if CA sees modding support as including lots of things in text files and perhaps a few textures. The rest is all put into filetypes that we cannot read without having a programmer hacking the files. They responded to how moddeable R:TW would be with something like: "You can change the look, but not how the left foot looks like." That came across to me as being able to change the texture but not the model. And I was right. CA never intended to let the community change the models. It excluded the battlemap and campaignmap editor from public use.

Vercingetorix dived into the filetypes and made a few tools and everyone was happy. But it was sheer luck that the community had programmer who could make them. The CAS tool is far from perfect and if we had more such programmers than someone else would have helped Vercingetorix into making it flawless.

Imagine having no CAS editor or even the PAK tool. The only thing you could do was editing the textures of units and the text files. That is how CA thinks about modding support.

Meanwhile the hopefulls keep posting new mod ideas for M2:TW without putting any attention to the past.

[Sundjata Keita]

I have seen it with other games too and usually the community relies on one or two people to reverse engineer the filetypes so we can open them. It can be a frustrating time but as Duke John says, game developers think they can get away with telling us the game is moddable just because we can edit textures. Then when the community does finally crack some filetypes and start modding properly what annoys me the most is to see companies advertising their game as moddable and then showing these mods off, as if they have provided the mod support.

[edyzmedieval]

CA doesn't want the game to be modded. Point.
Lucky for us, we have Vercingetorix.

Who promised he will make new tools for us with the arrival of MTWII.

CA is like Blizzard, they have an awful Customer Support.

[Makanyane]

Great news about Vercingetorix, I'd been wondering if we'd have anyone That could get into MTWII to mod it. (and therefore if it was worth buying)

Is there anywhere to 'petition' CA about modability so they can know the strength of feeling for it???