Modding disasters

**Teleklos Archelaou** · 06-05-2007, 04:00

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

**Dol Guldur** · 06-05-2007, 08:05

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** · 06-06-2007, 20:29

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:

Code:

; 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** · 06-06-2007, 22:16

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** · 06-06-2007, 22:45

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** · 06-07-2007, 03:26

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** · 06-07-2007, 10:09

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.?