Modding disasters

[Dol Guldur]

No, not awful failures in creating mods!

Has anyone successfully modded the descr_disasters.txt file? My coding of it just seems to be ignored by the game and it does what it wants, paying no heed to the regions etc. that I try to limit it to. I think having a flood in the sea is something I would like to avoid ;)

SPECS: BI 1.6 modfolder provincial

Thx.

[Quinn Inuit]

I think Marcus Camillus knows how to, since he fixed/helped fix the Mt. Etna bug RTR-PE was having.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Did you guys get anything figured out on this matter? We've been wondering the same thing but with no luck.

[Dol Guldur]

No, any help from anyone would be appreciated - I've not actually looked back into it yet as I have been so busy with other aspects.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, there are four files I see:

1. descr_disasters in the data file: Just a few entries
2. descr_disasters in the world/maps/base file: lots of entries that seem to make them random
3. descr_events: allows plagues and volcanoes to be placed according to when they historically happened
4. disasters.tga: for some reason in the imperial_campaign folder. Has dots of different colors in places on the map that would seem to indicate where they should take place.

#2 seems to be the one to work on. Here is the example with their info:

; event			event_type
; frequency		in years
; winter		only occurs in winter 
; summer		only occurs in summer
; warning		provides a one year warning
; position		position event can occur in strat coords [can specify multiple positions on consecutive lines]
; region		region event can occur by region name [can specify multiple regions on consecutive lines]
; climate		climate event can occur by climate name [can specify multiple climates on consecutive lines]
; min_scale		minimum size for event
; max_scale		maximum size for event

event		earthquake
frequency	20
winter		false
summer		false
warning		false
climate		rocky_desert
min_scale	2
max_scale	5

Now I will say that disasters.tga seems to match exactly the size of regions.tga, so there may be a way to get it to work using that. But I really don't know. I see that EB has storms set at very frequent in the text file we use but they never occur. Would really wish someone who has had some success could enlighten us.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Actually, just opening up descr_disasters (the one in base folder) and increasing frequency to "1" for earthquakes, storms, floods (which should be in every year), I can go a decade in vanilla without any events. I don't see any .db files for it though - I can't understand why it's not working.

edit: also tried 2, 3, 4, and 5 as possible frequency values, in case there was a threshold and 1 was ignored, but I see nothing occurring after a decade still. Gah.

[Dol Guldur]

I have modded that descr_disasters file down quite a bit and there is one thing I can say: the game pays not a blind bit of notice to it.

I will try and find time to look into it more but research time these days is darn hard to find :(

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, I don't know what else can be done - I deleted the whole file and vanilla still runs fine without it. No error messages or anything. It's totally worthless it seems.

I just wish we could up the frequency a bit. They seem to very very rarely occur (floods I'm thinking) now and I don't recall seeing a storm in a year.

[Dol Guldur]

Yes, TA, I renamed the file and the game works fine ;)

Floods were about the only thing we were getting too (rarely - and usually in the sea!) with the ocassional plague. Someone once said they got an earthquake.

I wonder if it's hardcoded to certain game conditions, floods and plague seem to occur when things are going well and population high and I wonder if it is triggered by such things in order to cut down population etc.?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I moved the 'earthquake in pontus' to the first year of the game and then tried it - I got a historical message, but I couldn't find the actual earthquake. Must be hardcoded stuff we aren't seeing somewhere. Really that is just too bad. Those features would have been really interesting to use.

I redid our disasters.tga map too, to match our EB map (disasters.tga is the same size as regions.tga, so it's pretty easy), but I have no idea if it will help. I have not seen any description of what the colored pixels do, but I assume the two blues are different intensity sea storms, that reds are floods, and that's all I can guess. Maybe the gold color is earthquake fault lines. There is a purple too that looks like maybe snowstorms were planned, they dot the alps and run down through the apennines, but they don't exist anywhere else.

Anyway, I'm still pissed that none of this works really now. Guess it's best just to forget all about it and move on to something else.

[I of the Storm]

Floods are bugged, afaik. Once they have occured, the infrastructure of the province remains broken, i.e. any roads that have been built are useless - the army moves on roads like over wilderness. It's also impossible to build forts or towers in a province that has had floods. So be careful with the flood frequency.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Very interesting post at TWC:

I saw your discussion at the org. You all seemed to be moving toward the consensus that the file isn't loaded. This isn't true, but everything in it is heavily bugged, and in fact, the vanilla file won't activate most of the events.

To start from the beginning with the parameters listed in descr_disasters.txt, the event frequency can't be less than 2, or else the event won't activate. Of the events listed, earthquake, flood, and volcano definitely work in the imperial campaign (ignoring the reported flood movement bug). I haven't tested plague, but my guess would be that it probably works.

The trick with the file is that each event is picky about whether position, region, or climate is used to specify it. Volcano only works with the position statement (and will only do the full eruption if you set warning to false, otherwise the volcano just makes puffs of smoke). Earthquake will take climate or region IIRC. Flood will work best (flooding most often) with the region statement, but there will be occasional floods if you use climate.

The storm event does not seem to work in the imperial campaign, but does work in the prolog campaign. Whether any of the disaster events work in a provincial campaign, I don't know.

Regarding the disasters.tga file, I checked my Sysinternals Process Monitor logfile for RTW and it wasn't listed as loading, but I am not sure at this point if that logfile is complete or not. It should probably be redone to confirm.

If you really want to know how to mod this file, you should ask The Border Reiver, he has actually released mods for it.

I'm PM'ing him now to see if he can give us some advice.

[Dol Guldur]

Yes, interesting - keep us informed.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

He just posted some terrific stuff over there, though storms are dead it seems for sure. Getting earthquakes to work will be nice. He has clearly done more than anyone else with these files and has the best answers we could hope for. Enjoy!

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...25#post1839425

[The Border Reiver]

Thanks for the PM Teleklos. I've done a lot of work on this disaster file in RTW & BI, and now MTW2....literally until it drove me mad. I tried modifying all files such as event titles, event strings, descr_event images none have any effect:(

In RTW1.5 & BI1.6 disasters are bugged as below:

storms - no longer work
floods - yes
earthquakes - yes
volcanoes - yes
plagues - yes
fires - 1/2 work - triggers smoke but has no negative effect
famines - do not work
hordes - do not work
locusts - never implemented
dustbowl - never implemented
brigands - does not work from here

I would suggest not using climates (you'll never see them due to the map size, and don't look for your disasters with toggle_fow, you'll never see them. Minimum event time is 2, 1 does not work. Can work in both seasons. Warning does not work. The descr_disaters txt file in the data folder is redundant and does not work. The disasters.tga file, is redundant and has no bearing.

In MTW 2 Storms work again, very well:thumbsup2

Floods - works either by region name, climate or strat coords. Min scale is better at 5, max scale should never be more than 10 (10 is a 2 region size flood). Does not work in descr_events file. It takes a while, but it is better to name by region. Don't forget the Nile Delta and swampy areas. Does not look good on islands (alaria, sardinia, crete etc)

Volcanoes-works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. Works better and is more dynamic set to an odd number for some reason....19 works really well. I found by actually naming the regions (Campania and Sicilia_Romanus) it is better. By setting at 19 years, sometimes it puffs away with smoke and does not kill or destroy, and sometimes you have a large eruption. Minimum should be 5 and maximum should be 10.

Earthquakes - works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. I actually created a file and never released which drew from earthquake websites based on historical accounts and modern accounts and straart coorded prime earthquake zones (gave up it was a huge job). I did this for the Arthurian Total War mod though. Minimum event here should be 2 for a tremor and 10 maximum. Realistically think of this as the Rictor scale, 1 for small and 10 for huge. Every two years is good, that means if your mod is 400 years, and depending on your region amount (198) each region will have this event twice.

B]Plagues[/B]- works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. I cannot stress underusing this. Set it to 2 years, but make the minimum 2 and the maximum 10. Works without summer or winter tags.

I hope this helps, if I remember anything else I'll let you know. Also please please correct me if I have got something wrong.

Also if there is a mod out there that needs a hand let me know!

cheers
BR

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Thanks for posting it here too BR!

I have heard some members say that when floods occur in RTW that they screw up the province - that roads remain, but movement is affected so that it seems like they aren't there, even well after the floods are gone. And no watchtowers can be built. Is this the case with these now? Has anyone else got a definite answer on this in 1.5?

[Dol Guldur]

I am told that it still occurs in BI 1.6, but I have not personally looked into it.

[I of the Storm]

This is still the case in RTW 1.5, I observe it quite regularly. But I read of one case that save & reload fixed the province again. Then again I don't know if save&reload will fix that in all cases. Due to the rare occurance and randomness of the flash flood it's hard to do test runs.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

You can set them to only occur in one province (choose a flat one!) at a certain set of coordinates, and then make them happen every two years. Easy to test that way. (floods I mean). I had some seemingly mixed results. I just posted over in the twc thread on this same topic, so I'll put the posts here too now:

I would add that floods are still bugged from what I see now testing (RTW 1.5 -mod folder build). That stinks. They look cool after all, and I had already researched where they needed to occur on our map: lots of coordinates.

Anyway, they do make it impossible to build watchtowers or forts anywhere in a province that has had a flood at any time in the past. Plus they negate movement bonuses roads give you it appears. For the entire province. Seems like the benefits aren't quite good enough considering the problems. BUT upon exiting the game and reloading it, those problems do go away. I can build the towers and forts and get movement bonuses back upon reloading the campaign (*after* the flood still).

edit: After trying it a second time, the problems don't go away. Gah. This thing is crazy. Would really like to add them, but if this is the case then I'll probably drop them.

And on plagues:

Ok, another post on the matter.

Plagues can be historically set - I get that. But when it comes to them happening in any given city, does this "random" plague that can be set here by region/coordinates/terraintype work *in addition* to the types of plagues that can just "naturally" occur in a city if it is overcrowded? If plagues here are set to 'false', then would they not ever occur in overcrowded and unsanitary cities? It seems odd not to be able to just make them occur occasionally in overcrowded and unsanitary places instead of this random type of plague, which is set by region/coordinates/terraintype.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Thought I'd post it over here too - just posted this over on the TWC thread:

Finally...it looks like the reason that floods are causing these problems is this: they damage the roads structures in the province. These are hinterland buildings, so they should not be damaged, but they get hurt most times there are floods. If you delete map.rwm, then repair the roads, or if you repair the roads, and delete map.rwm, then you will have the movement benefits back, and you will also be able to build forts/towers again in the province. So you could probably play with floods and every few decades delete your map.rwm and "wipe" the bugs out of the provinces that have had floods.

I can understand the movement stuff, but not why building forts/towers is dependent upon that. Oh well. But I tried reloading a few times after floods - that alone isn't doing the trick. It takes deleting map.rwm, and repairing the damage. Before that action you couldn't build forts/towers, but afterwards you can. That's all I can figure out.

edit: Oh, by the way, for volcanoes - you can have "inactive" ones if you want. Just put the red dots on your features map, and they will appear, but then don't put their coordinates or regions into the descr_disasters.txt file. They will just sit there and not erupt, which is nice if you are wanting extinct volcanoes (there are some huge ones in Iran and Ethiopia and Turkey and the Sahara that are extinct, but look nice when included on the map).

[Makanyane]

Just been having a play with volcanoes (thanks all for the very useful info- I wasn't quite sure where to start before)

Anyway I can get the to work from descr_disasters.txt with the random date set by frequency and they have the graphic I think I've seen before and damage nearby armies,

the ones I've set in descr_event.txt have an over the top sparkler effect graphic and do absolutely no damage to nearby units, which is rather a shame!


Is there any way to get eruption on a set date and do damage?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Didn't realize it wasn't doing damage on those 'scripted' eruptions. That sucks.

I've been trying to test earthquakes and haven't gotten one of those yet other than the scripted ones. Anyone else had some success?

[wlesmana]

When we tested it on my mod, the volcano also didn't do any damage.

Still, we're going to put it in for the coolness effect.