Lesson 1: Creating the Mod Folder

[GrnEyedDvl]

Cool splash if anyone wants. I don't think we will be making one for this class.

Thats awesome. We wont be creating one, believe me you dont want anything to do with me and artwork. But we WILL be picking images to use for transition screens.

+ rep

Did you sort out your mod folder issues?

[Subuatai de Bodemloze]

Exactly right. Everyone posted at nearly the same time.

For all intents and purposes, the M2TW folder is the root folder as far as the game engine is concerned. All things flow from the root folder.

so simple a plan such a big mistake... got it working

[GrnEyedDvl]

Glad to hear

[Nevada]

That should be fine, you could do all of this from any mod folder, it is just recommended that it be done from a separate one so that there is zero likelihood of other things impacting the changes you make for the class or vice-versa.

ok, I shall setup one.

The only issue I keep getting is that the unpacker stops after unpacking half of the files and I don't know why, since all works fine with kingdoms-unpacking.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Right click My Computer, select Manage. Open Event Viewer and look for an error in the unpacker.

[Alex-ander]

Well after a couple of tries i got it to run in windowed mode which i think is the way it should be. But i have problem with the sound. When i first copied the sound files there was only events .idx in my game folder. Then when i ran the game via the .Bat file audio.idx appeared.

so i now have

events .idx 
audio.idx

but not 
audio.dat
events.dat

When i tested the moded version by playing England briefly the the game loaded ok and i got the cut scene and the music. But when i started the England campain the Advisor appeared but with no sound, she did have when i played the normal vesrion of MEII. Really its my first try at playing it this way so i am not really sure what should and should not be there.

What i do have in the original sounds folder is

Music.idx
Voice1.idx
Voice2.idx
Voice3.idx

Which i did not copy

[y2day]

Did you sort out your mod folder issues?

Yes it is working great. The splash is something i did real quick last night after i got my mod folder working i was so happy i wanted to create something.


Now anyone want that splash here you go. http://files.filefront.com/splashtga.../fileinfo.html
Paste file into mods/ModBasics/data/menu

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[♔Jean-Luc Picard♔]

thats cool. +rep when i can rep you again

Skan

[Agis Tournas]

Dear friends,

I am not a modder and I have to say that I am thrilled that I can learn some things in that classroom.
That said I have to thank the guys that took the initiative to form such a class.

Let’s get to the problems now.

I took every step right, but when I tried to launch the game, it never started.
So I tried to figure out some solutions.
I share with you, what I have seen in the process.

Hello and welcome.
Some of you already have mod folders that you downloaded, such as my barebones mod folder for Kingdoms. For this class I would prefer that you create the new ModBasics folder and use it for your assignments. This will make it much easier to troubleshoot if I have you upload files. If you are running a custom mod folder that I do not have, I will not be able to run your files on my machine.

Unpack the game files
Inside your M2TW folder is a folder called tools/unpacker. Run unpack_all.bat. It will ask you a couple of times to type Y to confirm. If you have already unpacked, running this again will not hurt anything. It takes about 10 minutes to run the unpacker, depending on how fast your machine is.

Create a mod folder
If you have Kingdoms installed you already have a folder inside your M2TW folder named mods. If you do not have Kingdoms, then create a folder and name it mods. Inside that folder create a folder named ModBasics. This will be the folder we are working from for this course.

Create other folders
Inside your ModBasics folder create a folder named data
Inside the data folder make 3 folders: sounds, text, and world.
Inside the world folder make a folder called maps.
Inside the maps folder make two folders: base and campaign
Inside the campaign folder make a folder called imperial_campaign.

Copy original files
Go to the original data\sounds folder and copy the following files to your ModBasics\data\sounds folder. The size of this folder should be 6.45MB
audio.dat
audio.idx
events.dat
events.idx
BROWN NOTE:
There are no audio files in the original folders – anyway, they are re-created by the game once it starts successfully.

Copy all the files from M2TW\data\world\maps\base to ModBasics\data\world\maps\base
Copy all the files from M2TW\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign to ModBasics\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign.

Create batch and config files
Open Notepad and type in the following: medieval2.exe @ModBasics.cfg Note that there is a space between the 2 and the @. Click File then Save As.. and name it ModBasics.bat

PURPLE NOTE:
Is it wrong to use kingdoms.exe instead?
GREEN NOTE:
It is also correct to make a shortcut on the Desktop (making a copy of the original Medieval II shortcut), typing the following lines on the shortcut properties (right-click the copied shortcut and select Properties):
General tab (the name of the shortcut) ModBasics
Shortcut tab – Target (what to run):
"[... the path of your Medieval 2 folder ...]\ medieval2.exe" --features.mod=mods/ModBasics
Shortcut tab – Start in (where to run):
"[... the path of your Medieval 2 folder ...]"

Create a copy of medieval2.preference.cfg and rename it ModBasics.cfg Open the file with Notepad and add the following lines:
[features]
mod = mods/ModBasics ;this is the path to your mod folder
[log]
to=logs/ModBasics.system.log.txt ;this is the path where your logfile will be stored at
level=*script* trace
[io]
file_first = true ;this tells the game engine to use your files first, then the original files
[video]
windowed = true ;this runs the game in windowed mode so that when it crashes it doesnt crash your entire machine

RED NOTE:
If you make commends, the game will never start – this is what happened to me, at least
BLUE NOTE:
Is it better to have it like this (level = * error)?
I tried some “on-purpose mistakes” in the descr_strat.txt, but the log file was not created the other way (level=*script* trace)

Delete timestamped files
If you have just unpacked for the first time then you will need to delete two files from the original M2TW\data folder or the game will crash when you enter the battle map:
descr_geography_new.txt
descr_geography_new.db

Run the game
Double click ModSquad.bat to run the game. The first time you run the game it will recreate the files you deleted and also create some folders in your ModBasics\data folder for saved games and stuff like that.
The size of your mod folder should be 33.8 MB.
ORANGE NOTE:
Is that a small typo?
Shouldn't it be ModBasics.bat?

FINAL NOTE:
The size of my mod folder (not counting .bat and .cfg files) after starting the game successfully is
Size: 32,4 MB (34.020.866 bytes)
Size on disk: 32,7 (34.291.712 bytes)
Contains: 91 Files, 11 Folders

With all the respect,
Agis

[Plan C]

All done and working, GED.
Folder size is 32.4MB but the game runs fine.
Awaiting further instructions!

Thanks, marrow

[Agis Tournas]

What is the next step?

[Hunter Makoy]

Well after a couple of tries i got it to run in windowed mode which i think is the way it should be. But i have problem with the sound. When i first copied the sound files there was only events .idx in my game folder. Then when i ran the game via the .Bat file audio.idx appeared.

so i now have

events .idx 
audio.idx

but not 
audio.dat
events.dat

When i tested the moded version by playing England briefly the the game loaded ok and i got the cut scene and the music. But when i started the England campain the Advisor appeared but with no sound, she did have when i played the normal vesrion of MEII. Really its my first try at playing it this way so i am not really sure what should and should not be there.

What i do have in the original sounds folder is

Music.idx
Voice1.idx
Voice2.idx
Voice3.idx

Which i did not copy

u have to make sure u copy the events.idx and .dat. thats all u need. the audio files will appear when u run the game.

Agistournas did u finally get the game working? the error log is set on trace so that it tracks down every little thing that happens. sometimes things that go wrong will not show up on an *err log and so u have to look through the things that happened right before the crash. if ur log file is not creating then the game is crashing before anything can actually run.

[Agis Tournas]

Agistournas did u finally get the game working? the error log is set on trace so that it tracks down every little thing that happens. sometimes things that go wrong will not show up on an *err log and so u have to look through the things that happened right before the crash. if ur log file is not creating then the game is crashing before anything can actually run.

The game is working perfectly!

I just posted to share (with everyone else) the problems I faced, so that if someone had the same problems, then he will know the answers too.

Thank you
Agis

[Icedie El Guaraní]

I got mine working but i have 1.64 gb mod folder size. but i don´t care.

[Hunter Makoy]

r u counting the whole mods folder size, or just the size of the ModBasics folder?

[Bernem]

modfolder up and running (yet with 31.3 mb)

[GrnEyedDvl]

I got mine working but i have 1.64 gb mod folder size. but i don´t care.

You had to have copied the assassin and other videos, those are huge. You can get them to run in a mod folder without copying them, you just have to change a few paths. I didnt include this in the course as I wasnt too sure people would be ablt to jump right into .xml.

Alpaca originally created this file, but I will attach it for anyone that wants it. Just extract and place it in your data folder and all of the in game cut movies will work.

[Hunter Makoy]

yay for GED! any word on how close we r to having everyone being successful on this lesson?

[GrnEyedDvl]

I will start a thread to keep track of progress.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Agis:

No, do NOT use the Kingdoms.exe. There are new entries in the Kingdoms files that will cause a CTD, specifically the entries relate to boiling_oil and recruitment_offset. I made a barenones Kingdoms mod that you can use as a base if you decide to create a mod for Kingdoms, but this class is based on M2, not Kingdoms. Creating a mod folder for Kingdoms would be an entire class in itself. Stick with M2.

The audio files seem not to matter as much.

You can use whichever shortcut method you prefer, the one I posted is the easiest and allows for better manipulation of the cfg file.

I fixed the typo, thanks.