Later Period Castles in Viking campains

**thefirstoneill** · 03-19-2007, 15:51

Hi thereI have added the late model castle (14upgrades) into my viking bulid prod file, and have been able to bulid htem, but when I came to attack a castle, in the actual balltle it appears as a fort not a stone castle Im sure I just have to cut a paste somethinfg either in the startpos file or somewhere, can you help ? many thanks

**EatYerGreens** · 03-20-2007, 02:33

Hi tfn,

Bearing in mind that I'm still only a learner myself....

You'll need to copy and paste the medieval castle battlemaps, into the appropriate Vikings folder. Say 'No' if you get any name conflicts while doing this.

The startpos file will need to be changed so it has entries which match those in the MTW startpos file, so that the appropriate maps are loaded at battle time.

There ought to be a more elegant solution, whereby the startpos entries could simply be made to refer to the directory containing the medieval battlemaps but I don't know how to do that yet, or if it would even work.

Aside from things like brochs, stone fortifications are not exactly historical for the era, IMHO, but that's not the point, is it?

**thefirstoneill** · 03-20-2007, 08:49

thanks for that I will try tonight and fedback to you. The reason Im having the these buildings is for a fictional late era campagain, using the UK map

thanks for the advice
kind regards

**EatYerGreens** · 03-22-2007, 01:38

Well, if it's going to be a late-era UK-only thing, the thought occurs to me that you will also need to browse the MTW folders, looking for things which relate to the buildings which appear on the 3-D battlemaps, otherwise the battles themselves will probably crash (because the battlemaps may contain embedded instructions to place houses and stuff).

For example, in MTW castles, there are often things marked as "House", "Shack" and so on, within the zone bounded by the bailey/curtain-wall.

If you also want the MTW strategy-map info-panel buildings (troop training facilities) to be incorporated into the game, that's a whole different ball-game and beyond my powers to explain how to transplant them, unfortunately.

**thefirstoneill** · 03-28-2007, 21:19

hi there sorry for delay replying, work has kept me away. Ive copied all the bulid requirements, info pics etc, and the campagain runs fine, allowing me to bulid all the mods. It is only during the batttle that the castles are woring, Ive looked at the maps in both the battlemap folder and the battlemap\vikings folder and both appear to be names the same so everyone I try to copy gives a name conflict.

I found another post on this site that stated the castle map name format for example castleplains02_5_2.jjm the 5 means this is a map with a fortress on, so the campaign appears to have access to appropriate maps

I have checked the startpos file and there dosent seem to be any command line that inhibits the number of castle maps available.

This isnt really that big an issue as I can still show maps up to keep level, but it is the last piece i wanted tyo sort.

I have managed to make new factions, new units using custom animations (I have made some napoleonic units by using animations from the Lordz mod), and after all that this seems to be such a silly thing to get stuck on LOL

Devil is always inthe detail. If any of the custom suff is of intereast Im happy to mail it out to anyone,

If you can help with the castles, many thanks

Semper Proesto Patrice Servive

**EatYerGreens** · 03-29-2007, 04:57

Originally Posted by thefirstoneill

It is only during the batttle that the castles are woring,

Slight typo there. Woring = "wrong" or "worrying" ??

Originally Posted by thefirstoneill

Ive looked at the maps in both the battlemap folder and the battlemap\vikings folder and both appear to be names the same so everyone I try to copy gives a name conflict.

I was only guessing that this might happen and it did. Hmmm.

The thing is, I've never played a Viking campaign, so I've not seen for myself what the forts in that are actually like. However, I was also guessing that a "castle_3" in MTW meant one thing but the same name meant a much less sophisticated stucture in Vikings, such that total overwrites weren't necessarily safe.

I've had a quick root around, to see what was what and discovered the following: -

C:\....\MTW:VI\Battle\Maps\ (contains .jjm and .inf files)
C:\....\MTW:VI\Battle\Maps\vikings (ditto)

Samples of inf file content

....Maps\castleflat01_5_1.inf

Code:

Terrains::	LUSH	ARID	ROCK_DES	TEMPERATE

Architecture::	LUSH	W_EURO
Architecture::	ARID	S_EURO
Architecture::	ROCK_DES	ISLAMIC
Architecture::	SAND_DES	ISLAMIC
Architecture::	TEMPERATE	E_EURO

Game_Types::	SP_BATTLE	CUSTOM	MP_LAN	MP_INET

MP_Styles::	LMS	KOTH	CTF

Skybox::	SKY_BOX_NO_WATER

CastleMap

...Maps\vikings\CASTLEFLAT01_5_1.INF

Code:

Terrains::	DARKAGE_LUSH

Architecture::	LUSH	W_EURO
Architecture::	ARID	S_EURO
Architecture::	ROCK_DES	ISLAMIC
Architecture::	SAND_DES	ISLAMIC
Architecture::	TEMPERATE	E_EURO
Architecture::	DARKAGE_LUSH	DA_EURO

Game_Types::	SP_BATTLE	CUSTOM	MP_LAN	MP_INET

MP_Styles::	LMS	KOTH	CTF

CastleMap

Under...

...MTW:VI\Battle\MapImage\

come a set of folders for Lush, Rocky, Sandy (and others) but also a "Vikings" folder, inside which is another set of Lush, Temperate and Winter folders, each containing a full set of Castle .LBM files (names in capital letters). FWIW, the names only go up to _5_ in those.

The Vikings map .inf file is calling for Darkage Architecture, which I think must be located somewhere within

....\MTW:VI\Models

For some reason, only "Western European", inside here, contains a full set of subfolders relating to sub-parts of stone castles. All the other folders (including "Dark Age European") just have the sub-folder for "windmill" and the other sundry files.

Also note

....\MTW:VI\NewModels

which has a set of LBMs for "keep01" to "keep04b" (and "0keep01.LBM")

"New", in this case probably relates to the Viking game? See if you can find anything in the era file which is calling specifically for "NewModels". You might wish to change this to be more like the equivalent call in MTW era files.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In summary:- If you were doing a "total conversion" then maybe overwrites of maps, belonging to Vikings, by MTW versions, carrying the same names, wouldn't be a problem. If, however, the intention is for people to install it as a 'normal' mod and thus still have access to their Vanilla campaigns, then some careful thought will be required.

I see no reason why MTW castlemap .LBM files can't be copy & pasted and given a custom re-naming (maybe in such a way as to make them unique from both VI and MTW names, just in case).

Then make a matching .inf file containing all the right terrain and architecture pointers.
You could try a copy/paste/rename of the corresponding .jjm files but I don't know what they actually contain, or how you go about editing them, in which case they could contain pointers back to the various files you cloned from, causing problems.

Apologies to yourself and all seasoned modders on the sidelines, for this rampant conjecture, not backed up by any experiment or testing but I'm just throwing in some info and ideas, hoping they might help.

**barocca** · 03-29-2007, 06:38

CASTLEFLAT01_5_1.INF

CASTLEFLAT
this means CASTLE on a FLAT map

01 means this is map One for this terrain type (castleflat)
_5 means castle level 5 (from the build prod)
_1 means upgrade level one (again from the build prod)

you need at least one map for each level and upgrade,
thus if you have 7 levels and 5 upgrades
you would have maps from
CASTLEFLAT01_1_0.INF
all the way to
CASTLEFLAT01_7_5.INF

if you had three maps for a first level castle (with no upgrade)
you'd have
CASTLEFLAT01_1_0.INF
CASTLEFLAT02_1_0.INF
CASTLEFLAT03_1_0.INF

there is a limit to numbers of castles and upgrades, but you'll know it when you hit it (i just cannot recall it off the top of my head)

(AND READ EatYerGreens post above carefully too)

cheers
B.

**thefirstoneill** · 03-29-2007, 13:18

Hi there
Many thanks to both of you for the indepth advice, I shall spend some quality time tonight trying to implement it and let you know how it goes. I meant wrong, in my post sorry, I always forget to spell check.

And can I also take the opportunity to say how wonderful this site, is to be able to get the level of support and advice is a god send,

Thanks
Again
Jason

**thefirstoneill** · 04-03-2007, 20:17

Hi theere
I went for the easy option and just copied medieval castle maps into the viking folder. This does effect the orginla viking campaigns, but I have adjusted build times to offset the ability to build out of era castles. Thanks for all the help guys,

Once more unto the Breach!!

**EatYerGreens** · 04-04-2007, 16:30

Glad to hear you got that sorted out, in the end.

I can now ask an irrelevant - and totally silly - question.

Are you "The first O'Neill" or "the first one ill" ?

**thefirstoneill** · 04-05-2007, 15:27

hi there,
Thanks for all the help. I have managed to complete all three mod now, Valhalla, which is a pagan faction, The Avalon which is a chaivalric era mod, and the last one is a napoleonic era mod.

The name is The First O'Neill, LOL but I have had that question before. Semper Proesto Patrice is from the O'Neill Coat of Arms. ( I am ever willing to serve my country)

Im sure I will have more questions soon, so dont think I have finished bugging you

Kind Regards
Jason