Ambient Battlefield Structures... what files determine them?

**~~Miraj~~** · June 11, 2007, 07:55 PM

Hi,

Currently I'm having problems with vanilla ambient structure appearing on our mods battledfields.

For example, in territories controled and belonging to the the Kingdom of Jerusalem (france) whenever you do battle in that region things like stonehenge appear occasionally on the battlemap. When I fight on Turkish Seljuk lands, a faction which used to be Russia, I also see things like stonehenge or clearly eastern euorpean looking buildings, residences and farmhouses.

Do you guys have any idea which files control the factions "ambient building" types since we have already change the problem factions cultures to middle_eastern and still the vanilla default cultural buildings are showing up on the battlemap.

Any help will be credited to Broken Crescent mod.

Thank you.

MIRAGE

**alpaca** · June 13, 2007, 09:53 AM

Hmm that's a bit weird. Not 100% sure but these are probably controlled through the faction creator's culture.
Anyways, you can change the ambients in descr_landscape_ambient_settlements.txt

**~~Miraj~~** · June 13, 2007, 01:11 PM

Originally Posted by alpaca

Hmm that's a bit weird. Not 100% sure but these are probably controlled through the faction creator's culture.
Anyways, you can change the ambients in descr_landscape_ambient_settlements.txt

You're probably right about the faction creators culture. Problem is that I've changed the faction creators culture already. So for example Spain used to be southern_european, now its been changed for our mod into middle_eastern. Yet on occasion when I have field battles in this new "spain"s region I see clearly mediteranean style structures and farms.

And I've edited that file for the North European ambients. But it doesn't solve the problem related to already changed factions that have new cultures but yet are generating ambients related to their previous culture.

I think this question is important for anyone making a mod that replaces an old faction since you will run into having different cultural ambients whenever you mod a vanilla faction into a new culture.

**alpaca** · June 14, 2007, 01:59 PM

Well there's still settlements\middle_eastern\ambient_settlements which probably includes all of these things. However it won't be too easy to edit.

**Ralendil** · June 14, 2007, 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by alpaca

Well there's still settlements\middle_eastern\ambient_settlements which probably includes all of these things. However it won't be too easy to edit.

and it will take a lot of space...

basically it is possible... but it will take a lot of time (I don't think it is the main problem) and also a lot of space (and here I think it is a problem).

By the way, if someone find a file that can control that by only editing it, I would love :p...
for now, I have only found how to manage changes on structures displayed on the battlefield (see the how to in the tutorial section, changing ambient settlements is basically the same of changing the display of the settlement itself)

**~~Miraj~~** · June 14, 2007, 11:20 PM

To be honest its nothing to do with that file really. Because I'm almost getting the feeling its kind of hardcoded into the factions or there is some other file involved. That file defines the ambient structures for a culture. My problem is that factions that have "mid_east" culture now still produce ambient structures that are clearly north/east european.

EG: Russia was transformed into the "The Great Seljuks" - a turkish islamic factions. Now this faction has the mid_east culture assigned to it. But I've still noticed things like stonehenges in the middle of Persia! This is obviously something to do with some element of the Russian factions vanilla characteristic still imposing itself on our mod. However i've seen no file that directly links ambient structure to a faction but only to it culture. And editing a culture's ambient structures wont do much for me when I've already changed a factions culture to Islamic.

Anyways, I'll try to figure this outmyself.

**alpaca** · June 15, 2007, 09:07 AM

Well it could theoretically be tied to climate. Which climate do the areas you experience this in have?

**zxiang1983** · June 16, 2007, 10:19 AM

Search for "northern_european" in all your flies upacked, first those txt&xml in data folder, then expand your search in sub-folder.

This method maybe a little troublesome but I think it'll be useful.

**~~Miraj~~** · June 16, 2007, 03:29 PM

@zxiang
I've actually exhausted that option and haven't seen any significant finds. But I will try it again nonetheless and see if I find anything this time around.

@alpaca
I don't think climates effect it. I've seen a spanish mansion smack in the middle of the persian "sandy desert" climate, lol.

**alpaca** · June 17, 2007, 06:08 AM

Originally Posted by mirage41

@zxiang
I've actually exhausted that option and haven't seen any significant finds. But I will try it again nonetheless and see if I find anything this time around.

@alpaca
I don't think climates effect it. I've seen a spanish mansion smack in the middle of the persian "sandy desert" climate, lol.

Well the question is: Why does it happen in your mod but not in vanilla? Maybe the game has a fallback ambient culture that it uses if you don't have any ambients specified (I know it happened when you set it to middle_eastern but it could be a reason with your new cultures)? You could try to have a look in the trace log which file is actually read for the ambient to get more hints.