Help in changing province and region names

[dandadandan]

Hi, I'm a propper newb at modding so please please assume that i know absolutely nothing about it. I've tried to piece together some sort of plan on how to alter the ingame name of provinces and regions in MTW2. But so far I've got as far as a text file, that I somehow thought would actually make any difference (imperial_campaign_regions_and_settlement_names.txt) it hasn't I changed all the names inside it but it has made no difference
Please help me through it from the begginning someone, I'm trying so hard to modd but I don't know where to start, i'm just getting flustered

[Goatbuster3000]

Hahaha, I see you've got your bases covered. :D There are some good tutorials over here at the Guild/Org, too.

[adembroski]

Begin here.

[dandadandan]

ha ha yeah Goatbuster. I've got my thumb in every pie.

Thanks adembroski. I reckon that little piece of info mite be all i ever need.

There are good people in the world

[wilddog]

You may find this useful if you're completely new. The info is probably in more detail in some of the guides but I put this together to help someone else out who was having problems.

Basic Guide for adding in a new region in MTW2

1) Not actually required but best thing is to set up a MYMOD folder and run with a batch file.

Step 1.a – Set up the batch file

Open up Notepad and type in

medieval2.exe @testing.cfg --io.file_first

then save the file as a .bat file (eg Launch_test1.bat ) into the same directory that you have the medieval 2.exe

Create a short cut of this and stick the shortcut on your desktop.

When you double click to execute this batch file it will run themedieval2.exe using a config file called testing.cfg and then the command --io.file_first is required to execute unpacked changes prior to the packs. This command isn’t necessary for just amending the regions but you will find it useful if you do further modding.

Step 1.b – set up the config file

Create a copy of your cfg file

Rename it to testing.cfg (or whatever name you want to use)

Add in

[misc]
unlock_campaign = true

[log]
to = logs/system.log.txt
level = * trace
level = * error

[features]
mod = test1
editor = true

You may also find it useful to add in

movies = false
windowed = true

in the section starting [video]
These stop the introduction videos and allow a window setup so you can tab out of the game which can be useful while modding.

To explain the other commands in order

[misc]
unlock_campaign = true

unlocks the playable factions to allow you to choose the factions

[log]
to = logs/system.log.txt
level = * trace
level = * error

This will write an error log to the directory using the detail of the last command in this section. (ie in this case the level * error.

Trace gives a detailed set of info and will create a big file but can be useful for the unexpected error encountered issues.

Error – means only the commands marked as error will get written to the file.

This is VERY useful for debugging

Finally the commands

[features]
mod = test1
editor = true

The mod = test1 says it will run the mod FIRST using the information in a modfolder called test1

Editor = true is required if you ever want to use the battle editor.

Step 1.c the mymod folder
Create the mymod folder in this case
called test1
in the same directory as the medieval2.exe and the data folder etc

now within the directory test1
create a directory called data eg ..test1\data

copy into this directory from the original data directory the following

firstly the sounds directory (needed otherwise you don’t hear anything when running your mod).
Next, the world directory (you don’t actually need all of it but you do need the same structure and the two essential directories
data\world\maps\base and
data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign

You will also need to create a text directory eg test1\data\text
For this you need to add in the text files but these don’t come in the original game and also don’t get unpacked by the unpacker tool. If you are using the english version then these text files are available here

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73971
This is where you need the file imperial_campaign_regions_and_settlement_names.txt in particular.

If you don’t have the english version you need to use the .bin extractor which is available here (written by alpaca)

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75229

(I haven’t used that). I believe that will then create a .txt file for you from the .bin whereas if you already have the .txt file you can edit that and it will recreate the .bin when you run it (no need to delete anything).

Step 2 check things out before proceeding
So now you just need to check it out. To do this simply go into the folder

Step 2.a Check the rwm is created in the right folder
test1\data\world\maps\base and delete the map.rwm file

Now start you .bat short cut and if you’ve done everything as mentioned above the game should start and recreate a new map.rwm – so assuming you get into the campaign OK then come out and check the date of the rwm file. If no rwm file is present then you aren’t running as a mymod and so most likely you haven’t entered the lines correctly in the new .cfg file or the .bat file isn’t looking at the correct .cfg file. So re-check those.

Step 2.b Change a name
Go to the directory test1\data\text and open the file

imperial_campaign_regions_and_settlement_names.txt

this is set up with the information in the form

{London_Province}London Region
{London}London

and so change to

{London_Province}London Region
{London}Londontest

Now delete the .rwm and restart and you should see the name has changed. If not then you haven’t eddited the right file or you haven’t set up the directory correctly.

Step3 – remove the .HGT file
At this stage everything has been checked out for your mod file set up so now we start edditing.

Go to
test1\data\world\maps\base and delete both the map.rwm and the .hgt file

Restart the game …. And it will crash. Come out of the game and go to your log file and you will see some messages complaining about ports.

To correct this simply go into the file test1\data\world\maps\base and amend the heights.tga converting all pixels of RGB 0,0,0 to RGB 1,1,1. The problem is just because 0,0,0 without the heights.hgt file gets converted to water and some of the ports are now in the sea.

Once converted delete the rwm and and restrat and you should eb OK.

Step 4 –Finally start adding in regions

You need to
Add the region and town to
test1\data\text\imperial_campaign_regions_and_settlement_names.txt

add the region into

test1\data\world\maps\base\descr_regions.txt (take an example and copy and paste and change the region and town name and the NEW UNIQUE RGB colour )

The RGB colour must match the colour you used to add the region to the file

test1\data\world\maps\base\map_regions.tga

Note in this directory you may also have to amend descr_sounds_music_types.txt I haven’t tried this yet and its not necessary to get to a playable campaign but I haven’t tried any sieges etc with my new map (which is a completely different map) so don’t really know when this may be being used.

Finally you need to make the amendments to the files in the folder

test1\\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign

add the new region into
descr_strat.txt file – this must happen or you will get an error
descr_mercenaries.txt – if you want to have mercenaries available there
descr_regions_and_settlement_name_lookup.txt – Has them in but isn’t used as far as I know

Note if you rename of delete a province then you must remove them from the first two files above also as well as any reference in the following files

descr_win_conditions.txt
campaign_script.txt
descr_events.txt

If you get any errors you should get an error message or the unexpected error and crash. If the latter sometimes you just need to delete the RWM again (which you should do each time you amend any regions) and restart. You may well get the same crash but sometimes this will generate an error log on the second attempt particularly if you were editing and simply tabbing out of the game.

Max regions you can have as far s I could test is 199 plus 1 colour for the sea. You can have less regions and more sea colours the vanilla game uses 4 or 5 colours for sea for some reason.