Lesson 1 - Introduction and script writing

**J@mes** · June 27, 2008, 11:15 AM

Note to students: Due to the first class being late i'm extending the first class deadline to 5th of July which is a Thursday.

Introduction:

What is a Script?
A script is a sequence of instructions that is interpreted by another program (the game) rather then the computer A script is a list of commands that can be executed without the users interaction these are known as events.

Finding the Script?
you will find the script in following this path open program files.

SEGA\Medieval II Total War\Data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign\
campaign_script.txt

note: make a backup of this file.

This is the file your looking for at this point it would be a good idea to download the Kingdoms documents
HERE

Now i'm going to talk about the script, a script is made up of Events, Conditions and commands this is the basic structure over a period of time in the course you will become very familiarly with theses we will start with an Event. An Event if meet by a Condition with in turn fire a command

basic Event script structure

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

think of the Event as a time which tells the game when to execute.

The monitor_conditions command is very similar to the events
with the important difference of it uses a meta-events which is executed every now and then to check if all specified conditions are true.

Example

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

to monitor our progress on our scripts we are going to make some amendments to our CFG file,
add in these lines of code

Error logging; adding this will keep track of the following triggers monitors and counters as there firing

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Windowed Mode; best to use this if the game script crashes at least you will not have to reboot.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Using Events, conditions, Commands

okay so we have looked at the basic structure of Events and conditions but how can we actually implement this into our script? one of the most important events is the FactionTurnStart if you run though any Kingdoms campaign_script you will see quite few of these being used, checking the Kingdoms documentation you will see FactionTurnEnd exports faction this means the condition will need to be a faction, this maybe confusing at first if you like me to alaberate on this please say.

All Events have Exports which must be our condition.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

so now we have our export information we may now start to build what is to become our first script ad this is an Event we will need to use the monitor_event tag.

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal

end_monitor

you should note here the introduction to the key word end_monitor this tells the game to wait until all monitors are finished. The above script uses the condition FactionIsLocal this is for the faction the human player is in control of. in a nut shell what we have is a script which is monitoring the end turn button when the control is passed back to the player thats when the script will fire.

if wanted this script to effect a certain faction you could replace the factionIsLocal and type FactionType spain, so we have our event set up now we need a command to accompany this, commands are the desired output for Events which conditions are all TRUE.

so we do need something to happen when we click on the end turn button, to get a good idea of command check out the commands document. for our first script we are going to use the console_command add_money this is good for testing if a script actually works

so type into the body of our script console_command add_money Spain, 10000

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal

add_money Spain 10000

end_monitor

you should have something like this

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

so to test this save your file and run the game click end turn and spains balance being the local faction should increment on the start of a new turn,here role can also be reversed to take a negative number (maybe to represent corruption or army upkeep)

take a note here the add_money command cannot take a condition like this

add_money factionIsLocal 10000

this is the most basics of scripts testing a factions turn start and then firing an add_money command.
now we have the concepts of Events we are now going to build on this example.

now we are going to work with multiply conditions as i mentioned earlier in the lesson events can contain more then one condition using NOT and AND, now say we wanted to test when a general captures a settlement say we what to monitor a another sack of Rome we could use the GeneralCaptureSettlement notice below this event as may Exports so we are going to pick one 'target_settlement'

EXPORTS FOR GeneralCaptureSettlement

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

(from document_conditions) Condition parameters

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

monitor_event GeneralCaptureSettlement SettlementName Rome

end_monitor

I want to draw your attention to settlementName this is a condition which is an indirect link to GeneralCaptureSettlement export but parameters for settlementName is a settlementName

so we have

GeneralCaptureSettlement <export>

target_settlement

settlement name <parameters>

Settlement

settlement

Rome

hope thats not to confusing. please ask questions if your struggling with this.

so continuing on we have our monitor set with one condition how lets had a few more conditions factionIsLocal and FactionType
with the locally operators AND/NOT

monitor_event GeneralCaptureSettlement SettlementName Rome
and not factionislocal
and factionType England

add_money England 10000
end_monitor

so now we have learnt how to add more conditions to our script, take into account for a script to execute all conditiond must be true for instance if the settlement is not Rome and The Factions type is not England this script will never be true and will not execute.

To understand this better i have drawn up a logic gates table where 0 being False and 1 being True

Now i'm going to rabble on about counters but if you have skipped first part of the lesson i strongly recommend you go back and read it, Total war do not allow use to define and variables the best we can do is use counters and Event counters this are strings bit assigned with a number.

so first up is declare_counter this assigns memory space in your Random Access Memory (RAM) , next set_counter this set a counter to a number, inc_counter this is used to alter an already set value this is used after the set_counter command,
set_event_counter much like the set_counter command this is used in events, log_counter used for logging (error logging)

(sorry i have lost the post somehow?)

okay now where are going to look at setting up a counter, but first we must ask our self what do we want this counter to do? i what the counter to increase population after 2 turns of farms being built.
For this we will use the Event BuildingCompleted to test when our farms have been build then set up a flag to trigger our population boost.

first of all we need a test script

add this to your campaign_script and runn the game and build anythink
once construction i complete the game should increase your balance to a further 10000 gold

monitor_event BuildingCompleted SettlementName London
add_money england 10000
end_monitor

this should fire on the completion of any building and give the player 10000
now we are going to remove the add_money command and had another condition

monitor_event BuildingCompleted SettlementName London
and SettlementBuildingFinished = farms
add_population england 5000
end_monitor

testing this script should give us a growth boost of 5000 people.

now we need to set up a counter using the key word declare_counter

add this line of code to your script (not inside an event_monitor)
declare_counter farms_built

this allocates a space in memory for the variable farms_build and is sets it to the default value of 0

now we have our counter we can edit our script to work with this. first we will need to set the event our event here we be BuildingCompleted and one of its export is settlement so we can use settlementName condition and give it the parameter London which is required.

monitor_event BuildingCompleted SettlementName London
and SettlementBuildingFinished = farms_built
set_counter farms_built 1
terminate_monitor
end_monitor

the above script alone will not work be its self the script above is checking if a building as been completed and the condition of any building must be farms or this Event fails and is ended, if the condition is true the farms_built counter incremented by 1.

so how in order to test this we must use the event FactionTurnEnd and the condition factionIsLocal (for the human player to notices the chances)

monitor_event FactionTurnEnd FactionIsLocal
if I_CompareCounter farms_built = 2
add_population London 5000
terminate_monitor
end_if

if I_CompareCounter farms_built > 0
inc_counter farms_built 1
end_if
end_monitor

what is going on with the above script? well the end turn button is clicked and the condition is always true because control is passed to the player, The first if statement is encountered and checks to see if the build_farms counter is equal to 2(in order to add the population bonus) because the built_farms variable is only equal to 1 at this point the if statement fails and the next if statement is checked now is the farms_built counter greater then 1? yes it is because we set this on construction complete of th farms so the counter is 1, now the if statement is true so the farms_built counter is incremented by one and the if statement finishes, waiting for the next end turn.

I hope to have the assignment up tonight if goes well student if you question please ask here me and GED will do any damn best to answer them, so fire away.

**Augustus Lucifer** · June 28, 2008, 12:10 AM

Nice tutorial

One thing I'd comment on is making sure all the files you're referring to are well understood. At one point you say "Your CFG File", probably should read "Medieval II Total War/medieval2.preference.cfg". I found it easily enough since there were only two CFG extensions, but just food for thought

.

On to more important things, the problems!

First problem seems to be that my CFG file always changes back to the way it was after restarting M2TW. This may be normal, but it's very annoying, so if there's a way to stop it from un-editing itself that'd be useful.

Second problem is the script doesn't seem to be working. Have double-checked the wording/spelling multiple times, even tried to insure it was tabbed similar to the one you showed. Made sure to play as Spain, tried both without and with the "spain" parameter for add_money, but it doesn't seem to work(at least not in first couple turns). Ran with the medieval2.exe, that could be the issue I guess if you can run the Grand Campaign w/ the kingdoms.exe and this is a Kingdoms-only script. I have the MapClass stuff from GrnEyedDvl in a mod folder of the installation I'm using, but that uses a separate mod folder executed by a .bat, so I'm pretty sure he could attest that isn't the issue(or if it is I guess). Here's the file:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

It's located in "Medieval II Total War\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign" as "campaign_script.txt". I didn't delete any .bin files or the map.rwm file post-changes, but it doesn't say to do so in the tutorial either. If any more info is needed let me know, will wait for this to be resolved before continuing with the tutorial.

Regards,
Augustus

**GrnEyedDvl** · June 28, 2008, 12:15 AM

If you are using my map class mod folder then make your changes to the campaign script there and run it from the .bat file. It will run just fine.

I would suggest that everyone runs a mod folder for this, just to avoid changing vanilla files.

Your issue probably comes from not having the file_first set up properly.

**Augustus Lucifer** · June 28, 2008, 12:37 AM

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

If you are using my map class mod folder then make your changes to the campaign script there and run it from the .bat file. It will run just fine.

I would suggest that everyone runs a mod folder for this, just to avoid changing vanilla files.

Your issue probably comes from not having the file_first set up properly.

I'm not running it from your mod foldier. Your mod folder is just present in the installation, the file itself and the .exe I'm running are all the main installation, and it shouldn't be accessing any of the files in your folder unless I'm running the .bat(which I'm not), so I don't think that was the issue.

I made a backup of the file before editing it, and the installation itself is on a completely different drive than my "main-main" installation, because I have oodles of disk space to spare. To be clear, everything about the game runs fine, but the script doesn't execute to give me 10000 gold after ending my turn as Spain. If "file_first" is the problem perhaps you could elaborate on that.

All the Best,
Augustus

**GrnEyedDvl** · June 28, 2008, 01:04 AM

I'm not running it from your mod foldier. Your mod folder is just present in the installation, the file itself and the .exe I'm running are all the main installation, and it shouldn't be accessing any of the files in your folder unless I'm running the .bat(which I'm not), so I don't think that was the issue.

My map class folder isnt the issue, its the configuration of vanilla M2. One solution to this problem is to run it from my folder instead of running the M2.exe.

To be clear, everything about the game runs fine, but the script doesn't execute to give me 10000 gold after ending my turn as Spain. If "file_first" is the problem perhaps you could elaborate on that.

The game reads files from their packed version by default. To make your mods show up in the game you have to tell it to look for the unpacked files first. You do this by putting a command in the .cfg file that says:

[io]
file_first = true

I think J@mes was assuming that everyone would have either a mod folder already set up or would have their vanilla installation already set up, but for anyone that doesnt you can download either Retrofit Mod or my Barebones mod folder. Both are set up to run with Kingdoms.

**Augustus Lucifer** · June 28, 2008, 02:44 AM

Alright, that explains it. But... now I can't seem to get the Barebones to work :hmmm: . Originally I was getting an unspecified error, but I think that was caused by adding a duplicate to the .cfg file(I hadn't noticed you included the log parameters). So I reverted that, and now I seem to get this error:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

I'm going to try a few things such as changing discs, restarting, etc. and see if it helps. The error occurs before m2tw shows up as a window(before it would at least show up as a window then do unspecified error). To clarify, the error in the spoiler seems to be unrelated, the error occuring now happens once m2tw starts to load via either kingdoms.exe or barebones.bat, and it just closes and has a completely blank error/warning message.

Edit #1: Restarting and changing discs didn't seem to remedy the issue, all of the installations seem to work with both discs, but this error occurs with both after multiple restarts.

EDIT #2: Upon further inspection, it appears that the same sort of error occurs when clicking the "kingdoms.exe" file in the root installation. If I run the launcher and then click on any of the installed kingdoms mods campaigns, they all work perfectly fine, but there's something wacky about kingdoms.exe (and barebones.bat). Is that file modified or affected in any way by the barebones installation that could cause it to be faulty? Sorry for all the questions, will probably have a lot less once the setup actually works, the scripting itself seems simple enough but this setup is a chore...

Edit #3: Copying a new kingdoms.exe file from by other installation didn't change anything. Seems the unspecified error is not entirely unspecified, located the log file it seems to be using to show the error, and here it is:

(When running barebones.bat)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

(When running kingdoms.exe)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Regards,
Augustus, The Huge Bother!

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

My map class folder isnt the issue, its the configuration of vanilla M2. One solution to this problem is to run it from my folder instead of running the M2.exe.

The game reads files from their packed version by default. To make your mods show up in the game you have to tell it to look for the unpacked files first. You do this by putting a command in the .cfg file that says:

[io]
file_first = true

I think J@mes was assuming that everyone would have either a mod folder already set up or would have their vanilla installation already set up, but for anyone that doesnt you can download either Retrofit Mod or my Barebones mod folder. Both are set up to run with Kingdoms.

**GrnEyedDvl** · June 28, 2008, 03:14 AM

Did you follow the read me instructions? Theres another bat file you have to run first that copies some of your machine specific settings over to a cfg file used by barebones.

**Augustus Lucifer** · June 28, 2008, 03:41 AM

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

Did you follow the read me instructions? Theres another bat file you have to run first that copies some of your machine specific settings over to a cfg file used by barebones.

If you mean "Copy these 3 files etc etc" which are Barebones.bat, Barebones_cfgfixer.bat, and Barebones_headercfg.txt to the main folder, and then run Barebones_cfgfixer.bat, then yes I did. and it had no problem creating Barebones.cfg, which seems to have the proper header text in it as indicated by the txt file. I understand what the files are doing and such and have tinkered with it 100 dif ways to no avail.

The error seems to be a global issue with "kingdoms.exe". For whatever reason any time I run kingdoms.exe in any of my installations, packed or unpacked, modified or un-modified, it will provide the error text listed above. The kingdoms installations work just fine through the shortcuts and the launcher, but just the base file doesn't. That accounts for why the barebones.bat doesn't work, since it runs through kingdoms.

Now, since the shortcuts on my desktop seem to work to the kingdoms mods, and they run with the heading ' "D:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\kingdoms.exe" --features.mod=mods/teutonic ', I can only conclude the issue is in how the .bat file asks it to run or an issue in the .cfg(which I've re-created 5 times now). It would appear the kingdoms.exe itself is nothing without having access to the mods folder, which explains why it doesn't work when you just click "kingdoms.exe". So the issue as such is in the .cfg or .bat files inability to duplicate the effect of the shortcut extension --features.mod=mod/teutonic. I'm going to try and make a shortcut and change that to barebones and see if that fixes it.

Edit #1: The shortcut itself works(as a shortcut), but there's still an error. This time it's back to the "CA_LIBS" heading for the error, and the error log does not show up in the "system.log.txt" file like the previous two errors were. All I can draw from this is either there's an issue with the Barebones installation, or something is weird with the .cfg files, since it always reverts my "medieval2.preferences.cfg" whenever I make changes(not sure if this is normal), that issue might be extrapolated to this situation if in fact it is an issue.

Edit #2: After googling for CA_LIBS, surprise surprise it sent me right back here. To this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=78741. Here's the most relevant response by Darkarbiter:

"Its to do with the cfg files... if you incorrectly do them then you get this error. For example copying and pasting something and having one of them being 0 and one 1"

Having worked with him before I trust his input, but now the question is, what's wrong with my CFG file? Here's a copy of the text in my CFG file:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Something to note, I just added the [log] part to try and fix the error, it wasn't working when the first few lines were under [features] either. Also, the CFG file is associated with Wordpad, but to my knowledge that shouldn't mess things up. If it DOES however, that might be the problem, and if it is, and someone would like to tell me how to associate it properly, that might solve it. Anyways that's all I have to go on right now, seems to be a CFG problem. I've already tried adding the file_first parameter to my default .cfg file so I can continue on there, but as previously stated it doesn't work, because every time I launch m2tw the base cfg file reverts

Lastly, if GrnEyedDvl is reading this, I think you did your above reply before I did "Edit #3" in above post, so read that also and see if those logs help at all.

Edit #3: The CA_LIBS was probably a shortcut error since it didn't properly access any .cfg files, so the actual error is the one listed in Edit #3 above post.

Regards,
Augustus

**J@mes** · June 28, 2008, 04:03 AM

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

I think J@mes was assuming that everyone would have either a mod folder already set up or would have their vanilla installation already set up, but for anyone that doesnt you can download either Retrofit Mod or my Barebones mod folder. Both are set up to run with Kingdoms.

yes i assumed, i think i'll make amendments to class today and place some link your barebones folder.
I think where have to wait untill all are at this stage before i continue.

**Augustus Lucifer** · June 28, 2008, 04:22 AM

Problem solved!... kinda

Barebones is still broken. I don't know if it is the files themselves(obviously isn't if other people got it to work), or if it is a faulty download by me, or somewhere in between. And the main .cfg still retardedly reverts. HOWEVER, I installed the "Retrofit Mod", changed the campaign_script.txt file, ran it, and BOOM!, works like a charm, 30k gold on turn 2

. At least I've determined my scripting isn't bugged beyond repair, now just to continue the rest of the lesson when I'm not so frustrated

. Now the question is, does the Retrofit Mod work the same way as Barebones, will I be able to complete this course using it(and additionally, if I want to start futzing around with creating a mod, is "Retrofit" the proper platform, or should I make a new installation and DL something else tailored to that)?

Regards,
Augustus

**sinople** · June 28, 2008, 01:04 PM

Very good lesson, we can do so much with scripts

.

I have just one question, what are we aimed to do ? The GeneralCaptureSettlement script ?

**J@mes** · June 28, 2008, 02:16 PM

will finish this script in short while and then where moving on to the descr_strat.txt

**Argent Usher** · June 28, 2008, 02:18 PM

Done.

Moneyscript 2nd turn and changed the target Rome to Valencia (IMO Rome is too far for a test

) and used the add_money 50000.

And a short question:

In the docudemons i found Zaragoza_Province 13.196.198 and i have a german version the town is called Saragossa - whatever is used for the scripts ???

Note: I know i could test it myself but I've no time.

**sinople** · June 29, 2008, 03:17 AM

Are capital letters necessary for the script ?
If i write

Code:

 
 monitor_event factionturnstart factionislocal

Will this alterate the script ?

Thanks

Edit- This is what i did :

Code:

;------------------- SCRIPTING CLASS EVENTS -------------------;	

	monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal
		add_money Spain 10000
	end_monitor

	monitor_event GeneralCaptureSettlement SettlementName Cordoba
                               and not factionislocal
		add_money Spain 50000
	end_monitor

;END---------------- SCRIPTING CLASS EVENTS -------------------;

**J@mes** · June 29, 2008, 03:53 AM

Originally Posted by sinople

Are capital letters necessary for the script ?
If i write

Code:

 
 monitor_event factionturnstart factionislocal

Will this alterate the script ?

Thanks

Yes the capitals are required the script will not recognizes these else.

**Argent Usher** · June 29, 2008, 05:33 AM

Classmate sinople and i have used a similar script but without the line

and factionType Target Faction (spain)

Does it mean if any faction take over the target town (Cordoba/Valencia) spain get the 50000 gold ?
And in your version it works only if all targetfactions are the same ?

And the line "and not factionislocal" in the example what does it mean ?
It works only if it is/was a "rebeltown" ?

THX for help and please answer also to my first question about the different local versions.

Regards A.U.

**J@mes** · June 29, 2008, 06:56 AM

I will be back here tonight to answer all student questions and hopefully with the task sorry as been late as i have had some life issues to deal with.

**Y_filip** · June 29, 2008, 08:28 AM

Sorry i late for this class
but nice tutorial i will post some of my work tomorow

**sinople** · June 29, 2008, 12:45 PM

This is what I did :

Code:

 
        ; ---------------------
        ; counters
		
        declare_counter Opened_Faction_Overview_Scroll
		declare_counter Opened_Settlement_Scroll
		declare_counter mongols_sarkel
		declare_counter mongols_yerevan
		declare_counter mongols_baghdad
		declare_counter timurids_sarkel
		declare_counter timurids_yerevan
		declare_counter timurids_baghdad
		declare_counter farms_built
		
        
        ; ---------------------
        ; start up

        freeze_faction_ai aztecs

        ;----------------------
        ; monitors

;------------------- SCRIPTING CLASS EVENTS -------------------;	

	monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal
		add_money Spain 10000
	end_monitor

	monitor_event GeneralCaptureSettlement SettlementName Cordoba
                               and not factionislocal
		add_money Spain 50000
	end_monitor

	monitor_event BuildingCompleted SettlementName London
		and SettlementBuildingFinished = farms
		add_population england 5000
	end_monitor

	monitor_event BuildingCompleted SettlementName London
		and SettlementBuildingFinished = farms
				set_counter farms_built 1
			terminate_monitor
	end_monitor

	monitor_event FactionTurnEnd FactionIsLocal
        if I_CompareCounter farms_built = 2
		add_population London 5000
			terminate_monitor
		end_if
        if I_CompareCounter farms_built > 0
			inc_counter farms_built 1
		end_if
	end_monitor

;END---------------- SCRIPTING CLASS EVENTS -------------------;

Don't know if I should remove the first monitor about adding population.

**Y_filip** · June 29, 2008, 01:16 PM

Hi i got confuse what is our assigment ..?

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