[Help] Making my 1st unit

[klesh]

Hi All,

I am trying to make my first minimod for Napoleon: TW here. Nothing fancy, just adding a unit that I would like to use ingame. I've followed some tutorials and used a few tools, namely Hazbones' Access Database tool and erasmus77's PFM. Understand, I am a complete and total novice here... just looking to kill some time on a Sunday morning. Hopefully I havent wasted several hours here and I can get the hang of it eventually.

I've attached what I have created so far. I thought it would work, things seem to be kosher, but of course it crashes the game upon loading. This is a mod style .pack, so add mod try.pack; to your user.scripts.txt file. I tried as a movie type, but it crashed too, heh.

The files inside have only lines pertaining to my new unit, the files are:

• building_units_allowed
• uniform_to_faction_colors
• uniforms
• unit_stats_land
• unit_to_unit_abilities_junctions
• units_to_exclusive_faction_permissions

Do you see anything missing right off the bat that I should've included? What I did was to open the AUM mod.pack, export out .tsv's, copy and paste my one line of info for my new unit in the AUM .tsv's, import the .tsv back into the .pack, deleted out ui & icon files as I dont have those yet.

There were some files I didn't redo in the AUM .pack because I'm not including that info (for instance the one about whether the unit is included in rebel stacks) because as I understand it, to not have the unit included, you leave it out of the file. I deleted those files out and saved; it seemed to have removed them as I intended.

With the above method, I presume the mod should work, but alas it does not. Perhaps someone that knows what they are doing could look and see where I may've gone astray?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Edits w/ Progress:

1. I have managed to get the game to load! I've updated the attachment with the new semi-working file.
What I had missed was renaming the "folders" inside my .pack but leaving the tables themselves with their default names. I have changed everything to have a hac_ prefix now (Howitzer a Cheval). Problem is, when I go into custom battles, I do not see the unit there. Are additional files needed to get units into the Custom Battles menu?

[erasmus777]

Hello again

No, set the "early" and "late" availability booleans to true in db\units. Can't get rid of this underlining for some reason :p

[klesh]

Okay. I copied those lines then from the Artillerie a Cheval unit, which is recruitable, so there shouldn't be any issue there.
I've just finished making the unit card & info image (lol, wishful thinking). I will upload those in a second, contrasting the Howitzer a Cheval with the Artillerie a Cheval, let me know what you think.

[Hazbones]

Ok, your problem is that you renamed the tables in your pack incorrectly.

You have: hac_units_tables / units
When it should be: units_tables / hac_units

Try again and word all tables correctly and it should work.

[klesh]

Ok, your problem is that you renamed the tables in your pack incorrectly.

You have: hac_units_tables / units
When it should be: units_tables / hac_units

Try again and word all tables correctly and it should work.

Ooh.

I will try this right now!!!

[klesh]

Okay, so here is what I've got:

1. I swapped the names of the tables, as directed. Game loads, unit is available in custom battle! Woot! This is the kind of succes I needed to keep me going here. .rar updated on the first post.

2. Unfortunately, I must've done something wrong, as the unit came out as a regular Howitzer (of foot), even though on the mouse-over info box it lists the unit as (Horse Artillery). There is no name on the unit, but I know thats additional files; I'll get to that later once the unit works as intended, if it even can do so? They do however have the grey horses of the a Cheval guys, and I remember changing that when doing one of the tables.

Where would I start to look for where I may've gone wrong?



The attached screenshot shows a regular Howitzer unit on the left (skin changed by separate mod, I'll do the same to my guys eventually [variantmodels]) and the unit I created on the right (with the grey horses).

[Hazbones]

Well, you've gone past my expertise when you start talking about changing skins and such. I just know how to get the unit to show in-game which I guess that part you have got working. Now it is just a skin problem. (better get the lotion)

*And yes, the unit name and descriptions are in the loc file which can also be done in UMD or PFM.

[klesh]

Well, you've gone past my expertise when you start talking about changing skins and such. I just know how to get the unit to show in-game which I guess that part you have got working. Now it is just a skin problem. (better get the lotion)

*And yes, the unit name and descriptions are in the loc file which can also be done in UMD or PFM.

Right on. Thank you for your help. I'm looking in unit_stats_land now to see if thats where I got something wrong. I've got a unit showing that it should be horse artillery, but its acting like foot artillery. I wonder if theres something else I'm missing?

The skinds etc, yes thats all glitz after I can get these guys to actually be horse units (if I can indeed even do so).



Update!
Check out the attached picture, I figured out the issue! It was the wrong gun carriage setting. Upon running them around and deploying, they are indeed now horse artillerymen! One issue I noticed was the barrage function, it should be the targeted fire that howitzers have rather than cannon barrage.

Fixes:
1. Change barrage to targeted fire.
2. Change uniforms to match lord mongsworth's french faction retexture.
3. Get the screen name to show up... here's where a native frenchmen could help me... Howitzer à Cheval, or is there a better term to use?

[Hazbones]

Keep plugging away. Maybe someone with skinning and model knowledge can help you the last 9 yards...

[klesh]

Fixes:
1. Change barrage to targeted fire. FIXED!
2. Change uniforms to match lord mongsworth's french faction retexture.
3. Get the screen name to show up... here's where a native frenchmen could help me... Howitzer à Cheval, or is there a better term to use? FIXED! Once finished I'll get it added to the Compatibility Project for ease of use.

That leaves #2... but from what I can see, those changes are done by varianmodels.pack, so that would need to be a totally separate mod & .pack right? I might just try to add my stuff into his so it at least works for me personally. How do other people handle this? Surely you can include a new unit & a recolour for it in one tidy .pack? I'll have to look at some of the other released mods for inspiration...


Okay, here's where I am up to; I am getting very very close!

I've got images for both the unit icon and the info panel, but the unit icon as you can see is completely white, and the info panel is completely transparent:

I edited those files with photoshop, hopefully I didnt use the wrong settings. I could redo them easily enough I suppose...


Hah! Thats fixed too! Yikes, I think I might be actually done!?!
I'm rechecking lots of little things. MP Cost, Regular Cost. I'm pretty much going with many of the increased Artillerie a Cheval entries, morale etc. Cost is appropriately more; in line with both howitzer cost in general and the elite, a Chevalness of it all...

Stay tuned for a link to the actual download. I'm excited!