Host of Questions

[ULC]

I'm rather new to M2TW (just got a computer that plays it), and already I want to Mod . I have a few questions though...

1. I heard that in rome you could "dismount" mounted units, add legs, etc, and have a full blown unit. Is this possible in M2TW?
2. Would it be possible to port the units from Kingdoms into M2TW? How about the Factions? I am concerned because there were issues with doing this with RTW/BI.
3. How much does milkshop cost? Is there any other editor one could use?
4. Is there any way to get units further upgradeable (armor) with out massive editing of the graphics files? Could you have different armor, Lameller on Hungarain and Polish for example (you'll have to excuse me, haven't played a campiagn with them yet)?

[alpaca]

I'm rather new to M2TW (just got a computer that plays it), and already I want to Mod . I have a few questions though...

1. I heard that in rome you could "dismount" mounted units, add legs, etc, and have a full blown unit. Is this possible in M2TW?
2. Would it be possible to port the units from Kingdoms into M2TW? How about the Factions? I am concerned because there were issues with doing this with RTW/BI.
3. How much does milkshop cost? Is there any other editor one could use?
4. Is there any way to get units further upgradeable (armor) with out massive editing of the graphics files? Could you have different armor, Lameller on Hungarain and Polish for example (you'll have to excuse me, haven't played a campiagn with them yet)?

1. If you mean creating a new unit for them, yes the horse and unit models are separate.
2. Partly yes, partly no. Depends on what you want to do, there are some features that won't work in vanilla (more than in R:TW really)
3. Not much, around 30 bucks or so
4. You don't have to change the model to have more armor upgrades, it just looks better

[ULC]

1. If you mean creating a new unit for them, yes the horse and unit models are separate.
2. Partly yes, partly no. Depends on what you want to do, there are some features that won't work in vanilla (more than in R:TW really)
3. Not much, around 30 bucks or so
4. You don't have to change the model to have more armor upgrades, it just looks better

1. Yes thats what I meant.
2. I want to do is give say Greek firethrowers to the Byzantine in vanilla, or put up a Lithuanian faction in (of course) Lithuania. What would the process be if possible? I don't want or need to implement the features of the kingdoms campiagns (which of course brings up a seperate question: would it be possible to create a new campaign utilizing Kingdoms that would be just like vanilla?) I just want the factions and units.
3. Awesome! Fantastico! thats well within my budget!
4. So you mean I could possibly give lamellar armor to the Hungarian version of Chivalric Knights (dismounted and mounted versions), both statistically and graphically speaking, and there would be no errors? The reason I ask is because the of the UNIT_upg line near the bottom of each unit.

A few MORE questions....

5. What would one have to do to change the faction colors on the units?
6. Is there any way to make the Mongols/Timurids Playable?
7. Would it be possible to script the emergence of a faction, say if I were to somehow import the Principality of Antioch, could I have it appear in Antioch at the correct date?
8. Are the weapons part of the unit skin, or are they stored somewhere else?
9. How much work and what would I have to do to "import" a unit to another faction, say Huscarls (Saxon) to the HRE?
10.This isn't really a question but, whenever I use the unpacker it yells at me that its missing MSVCR71.dll. Is this normal? What do I need? I have version 1.2.
11. How do I unpack the music Files? I mean really unpack so that windows media player could handle it.
12. I am a little confused at the Info panel for units. Say If I were to upgrade my Billmen to light chian mail (which *appears* to be 5 armor in the export_units) it shows up as 2? This makes it kind of difficult to balance out things correctly and I was wondering if there was a guide to unit balancing, or at least how the stats relate to one another.

[alpaca]

1. Yes thats what I meant.
2. I want to do is give say Greek firethrowers to the Byzantine in vanilla, or put up a Lithuanian faction in (of course) Lithuania. What would the process be if possible? I don't want or need to implement the features of the kingdoms campiagns (which of course brings up a seperate question: would it be possible to create a new campaign utilizing Kingdoms that would be just like vanilla?) I just want the factions and units.
3. Awesome! Fantastico! thats well within my budget!
4. So you mean I could possibly give lamellar armor to the Hungarian version of Chivalric Knights (dismounted and mounted versions), both statistically and graphically speaking, and there would be no errors? The reason I ask is because the of the UNIT_upg line near the bottom of each unit.

A few MORE questions....

5. What would one have to do to change the faction colors on the units?
6. Is there any way to make the Mongols/Timurids Playable?
7. Would it be possible to script the emergence of a faction, say if I were to somehow import the Principality of Antioch, could I have it appear in Antioch at the correct date?
8. Are the weapons part of the unit skin, or are they stored somewhere else?
9. How much work and what would I have to do to "import" a unit to another faction, say Huscarls (Saxon) to the HRE?
10.This isn't really a question but, whenever I use the unpacker it yells at me that its missing MSVCR71.dll. Is this normal? What do I need? I have version 1.2.
11. How do I unpack the music Files? I mean really unpack so that windows media player could handle it.
12. I am a little confused at the Info panel for units. Say If I were to upgrade my Billmen to light chian mail (which *appears* to be 5 armor in the export_units) it shows up as 2? This makes it kind of difficult to balance out things correctly and I was wondering if there was a guide to unit balancing, or at least how the stats relate to one another.

2. I don't know if the flamethrower thing is in vanilla, in fact I doubt it.
4. Nothing prevents you from doing it but you'll have to change the model to fit your taste
5. Change all the skins
6. Yes, the easiest way is playing with hotseat (however you have to enable that running the game through the kingdoms.exe and editing the menu)
7. Yes, have a look at my script-o-rama and the vanilla campaign_script.txt it contains a bit of info about it
8. The weapons are stored in the model and skinned using a so-called attachmentset. Which one you have to change can be determined by looking at the modelsdb
9. Depends on what you want to change, in general you just need to copy the edu entry, dictionary entry (in text/export_units) and add textures for the model in the modelsdb
10. Copy that file from your M2TW dir to your unpacker dir
11. I think there's still an old tool floating around Vercingetorix wrote for RTW
12. Stats are difficult, and it gets worse once you find out animations have a distinct impact, too.

[ULC]

2. I don't know if the flamethrower thing is in vanilla, in fact I doubt it.
4. Nothing prevents you from doing it but you'll have to change the model to fit your taste
5. Change all the skins
6. Yes, the easiest way is playing with hotseat (however you have to enable that running the game through the kingdoms.exe and editing the menu)
7. Yes, have a look at my script-o-rama and the vanilla campaign_script.txt it contains a bit of info about it
8. The weapons are stored in the model and skinned using a so-called attachmentset. Which one you have to change can be determined by looking at the modelsdb
9. Depends on what you want to change, in general you just need to copy the edu entry, dictionary entry (in text/export_units) and add textures for the model in the modelsdb
10. Copy that file from your M2TW dir to your unpacker dir
11. I think there's still an old tool floating around Vercingetorix wrote for RTW
12. Stats are difficult, and it gets worse once you find out animations have a distinct impact, too.

1. No I meant importin from Kingdoms the Greek Flamethrower unit, the Alemanoi, The Norwegian faction, etc, to Vanilla M2TW. I this as simple as copy past?
4 and 5. Milkshop can do both correct?
6. Any other way?
7 and 8. Location?
12. {Insert Explicitive}! How exactly do animations figure in? Might explian my invincible Dis. Gothic Knights, as I gave them better armor and skill.

[ULC]

Just tried to import the English Huscarls into the HRE and I keep getting crashes. I changed the EDU and EDB, I moved the unit cards around, I checked the modelsdb, which had a entry for the HRE, and attempted to play. Everything works fine until I try to load a battle, in which case the game promptly crashes. Can any one tell me what went wrong, or at least how to do it properly?

[alpaca]

1. No I meant importin from Kingdoms the Greek Flamethrower unit, the Alemanoi, The Norwegian faction, etc, to Vanilla M2TW. I this as simple as copy past?
4 and 5. Milkshop can do both correct?
6. Any other way?
7 and 8. Location?
12. {Insert Explicitive}! How exactly do animations figure in? Might explian my invincible Dis. Gothic Knights, as I gave them better armor and skill.

Yeah what I meant was animations, etc. You can probably copy them but I'd try some easier stuff first

You change skins using Photoshop, the GIMP or another image editing program.

The campaign_script is in data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign and the modelsdb is in data/unit_models, but I'd use KnightErrant's python script to edit it (look for formatted modelsdb)

I'm not exactly sure how animations figure in tbh but they have some effect such as units with short weapons are much less effective attacking mounted units for example.