Common Mistakes (Even In Good Mods!)

[MasterOfNone]

I thought I'd start this to point out some of the errors that even well-made mods can suffer from. This is not a thread for well-known errors, but rather for recently-discovered or little-known ones that can trip up the best of modders. Often these little gems are spread about the modding forums and hard to find, so I thought I would start this here.

* Port Upgrade CTD. Caused when a port is upgraded and a ship is being built at the same time where that ship has an XP upgrade. This is not true of land units trained from ports
LINK: http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=1457016

* Cloned-Character CTD. Occurs later on in a campaign when a named character in DS was unassigned to the faction's family (i.e. they should all show up in your family scroll in-campaign). However, see DVK's posts below (#19 and #22) (in this, not the linked, thread) for an apparent workaround for this problem by using the sub_faction element.
LINK: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=209675

* Radar Map Overspill. Leave the 2 radar maps in your campaign folder the same dimensions as vanilla. Do not resize them for what you think suits your map, they are automatically adjusted by the game to fit. Failure to this will see the names of regions or the sea overspilling into your unit panel.
LINK: n/a

* Morale Bonus Broken. The recruits_morale_bonus building capability effect in EDB has been shown to have no effect (though it may possibly affect the decisions the AI makes in construction priority).
LINK: None Known

* Units Using Building Conditionals in EDB. These will, as known, cause a CTD when using the right-click feature to bring up the unit info scroll from the building info scroll. However, even when this is avoided through use of the hidden building (or a building with an oversized constructed image that effectively blocks the player from using the right-click feature) a CTD can still be triggered depending on the number of active recruitment lines in any city and the presence of other building capabilities.
LINK: http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...t=50039&page=3

* Carthaginian KTM. The Carthaginian Kick-To-Menu occurs when a mod employs that culture and adds new buildings or new levels of building and fails to make the necessary change in the DUB file.
LINK: http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...t=50039&page=4

TBC

Please add your suggestions for additions to this list below (with links). Thank you.

[Aradan]

The morale bonus that buildings supposedly give to units does not work, units get no bonus.

[MasterOfNone]

Updated. Thanks Aradan.

[Lord Dakier]

I thought that did not work even in RTW itself.

[MasterOfNone]

It's never worked but it has never been highlighted or openly tested (afaik) and thus some mods just assume it works and use it. Pity, really, would be a great bonus.

Updated again.

[florin80]

* Morale Bonus Broken. The recruits_morale_bonus building capability effect in EDB has been shown to have no effect.
LINK: None Known

Yes, but besides not having any effect it has no other consequences, right?

* Units Using Building Conditionals in EDB. These will, as known, cause {...}a CTD can still be triggered depending on the number of active recruitment lines in any city and the presence of other building capabilities.

What do you mean with the number of active recruitment lines in a given city? The link goes to a post about getting two sets of factions into a requirement line and there`s no mention of a ctd in it. Then there are lots of reports of various issues, some of which might not be relevant or accurate. So which is the exact post detailing the ctd you`ve mentioned? This one by you? I was kinda looking for a conclusion.
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...3&postcount=90

btw, thanks for making this!

[Aradan]

Yes, but besides not having any effect it has no other consequences, right?

No, but it misleads players/the AI into building potentially useless buildings.

What do you mean with the number of active recruitment lines in a given city? This one by you? I was kinda looking for a conclusion.
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...3&postcount=90

He means that if more than X recruitment options are available (which can depend on building, hidden resources, etc), you get a CTD. Right?

btw, thanks for making this!

Ditto.

[MasterOfNone]

Yes, that's what I mean. The answers are not always in one post so I've linked to the discussion.

Gah, that link was an old post of mine - I never linked to that!

[florin80]

No, but it misleads players/the AI into building potentially useless buildings.

Heh, really? It fools the ai too?

He means that if more than X recruitment options are available (which can depend on building, hidden resources, etc), you get a CTD. Right?

I`m not that good with math. How do we find the value of X?
And how does the ctd manifest itself? During the campaign loading bar or later in game?

[MasterOfNone]

I made X a value of 4 and, iirc, the CTD occurred when you tried to open the building scroll. But others reported some variations. The bottom line is not to use BC recruitment lines for units unless you know what you're doing. The game was not designed to take them really.

[DaVinci]

Quote:
Yes, but besides not having any effect it has no other consequences, right?

No, but it misleads players/the AI into building potentially useless buildings.

I exactly use this "capability" to provoke the AI to construct certain buildings (with background of course, not for fun or to fool the AI - contrary, to construct determined useful buildings for the case a building has otherwise not much to offer, but anyway: a tech-tree shouldn't have any non-useful buildings, imo.).

Good job, MoN. ChivTW is free of all those issues in the meantime, while the most hidden damn thing was the clone-character-issue discovered by Aradan, that made anger in ChivTW (now it's free of any crashes, thanks to Aradan - that was an incredible discovery!).

However, any modders are good advised to consider the above listed things.

[MasterOfNone]

That's a good idea, if the AI does take note of it. I've edited the above a little. I guess, in such a case, the text associated with it could be changed.

I am sure there are some more to be added above yet - just can't think for now....................... where's Mak?

[DaVinci]

Such capabilities are noticed by the AI, i'm sure. I use them preferred if such a building is a pre-conditional for another building string, for example.
And to this, also the human player is then advised to construct a certain building ( pssst, he shouldn't know that the troops morale bonus isn't due ... the morale to construct is strenghened though ... )

---

You might add the info that character kill command scripts are needed for certain spawn army scripts with named characters (if the same name/character is used, ie. to move a character):
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...85#post4427685
... this is a sub-point to the clone-character thing.

And also, that the clone-character issue is normally not due for the slave faction (if has no family tree created).

[CaesarVincens]

I want to make a note about the Carthaginian Culture issue.

I haven't done extensive testing, but in my modding, I've found that if you work around this issue (remove one of the lines) and load your campaign, you can then add a line back and everything is fine. I can try to give a more specific example if needed.

[Aradan]

Won't you be forced to do this again though if you want to edit something else?

[MasterOfNone]

And make sure you've deleted map.rwm

[CaesarVincens]

Won't you be forced to do this again though if you want to edit something else?

Yes, but the point is that it isn't necessary to make new UI cards.

And make sure you've deleted map.rwm

I am deleting map.rwm, like the good modder you've all taught me to be.

Anyway, from how I understand the explanations, one has to make Carthaginian UI cards for new buildings and delete one of the lines in DUB, correct?

And as I just said, I don't have to make any new UI cards. I have several new buildings in my mod of XGM - Extended Cultures, but I don't have any UI cards just for Carthage, and I have both the lines referencing Carthaginian in DUB.

I do remember running up against this issue once, because I had found this workaround, I forgot about it when I introduced another new building. I spent more time than I should have trying to figure out the problem.
But, once I figured it out and ran my mod, I found I could re-add the line.

Though as I also said, I haven't done any extensive testing; however I thought it would be worth looking at.

Perhaps, we should make a new thread to discuss this though.

[MasterOfNone]

The "sum of all knowledge" discussion thread on the EDB can be found here: http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=828635

Please post your findings, with examples, there.

[dvk901]

With referrence to this issue: * Cloned-Character CTD. Occurs later on in a campaign when a named character in DS was unassigned to the faction's family (i.e. they should all show up in your family scroll in-campaign).

I believe I have found a fix for it. As you can see from this character record from RS2 for the Free Greeks:

character_record Lasthena, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 59, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Karia, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 59, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Hippolyta, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 39, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Bendidora, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 35, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Demetria, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Telephassa, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Maiandria, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Chione, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Omphale, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Castianiera, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Isadora, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Kallisto, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Jocasta, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Tryphosa, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 30, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Cerzula, female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 25, alive, never_a_leader

relative Paerisades_III of Pantikapaion, Karia, end
relative Paerisades_IV of Pantikapaion, Bendidora, end
relative Byzas of Crete, Cerzula, end
relative Suratralis of Rhodes, Demetria, end
relative Hiero_II of Surakousai, Lasthena, end
relative Ziepyrus of Thermos, Telephassa, end
relative Idanthyrsus of Massilia, Maiandria, end
relative Telephos of Athenai, Chione, end
relative Diazenis of Philipoupolis, Omphale, end
relative Pheidippides of Korinthos, Castianiera, end
relative Prusias_I Cholus, Hippolyta, end
relative Hipparinos of Thebes, Isadora, end
relative Atheas of Sinope, Kallisto, end
relative Drenis of Euhesperides, Jocasta, end
relative Thymoetes of Dyrrachium, Tryphosa, end

It is rife with possiblities for this error. To my consternation and horror, I found out about this only yesterday while just browsing around, and found myself staring at a rather lengthy and heart rending job of undoing all I had done, and basically blowing away all my researched names for characters. Working with these blasted things isn't my favorite job anyway, so I was a little depressed. However, I found out one thing about this right off the bat.....the game will not offer for adoption or clone either the 'Leader' or the 'Heir'. Good start, that saves two out of 15 in the list above.

The next thing I discovered on a whim.....if you do this with any character who is NOT related to the leader or heir:


character sub_faction britons, Hiero_II of Surakousai, named character, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 60, , x 176, y 87
traits GoodCommander 2 , GoodAttacker 2 , Energetic 1 , Drink 2 , NightBattleCapable 1 , TurnsAlive 3 , CharacterAges 3, NoMovement 1
ancillaries wine_steward , comedian , aged_retainer
army

Which is to add 'sub_faction britons' (or whatever faction the character belongs to), it works fine, the character is fully recognized as your own, and receives traits and ancilliaries normally. But the character is NOT offered for adoption at all. I was rather surprised this worked, since it was a desperate (Oh please Lord make this work!) move, but I tested a 30yr AI campaign with these settings, and the characters all behaved normally, didn't CTD when clicking on their pictures, and died either in battle or of old age with no incidents. I'll still have to test this more to 'really, really' make sure...but so far, it looks good.

[Aradan]

That's a very neat trick there! Life-saver for historical mods, I bet.