Official CA comment - Total War: The modding situation

[esejony65]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usfiAsWR4qU
THIS IS A HAPPY DAY

[Okmin]

Hopefully there will be some stuff in these DB files (thanks to CA ) that give us at least some clue about how the map files talk to each other and the exe, but I doubt it since most of that stuff is in the ESF files. Can we get a complete ESF schema next?

Anyways, looks like we'll have an awesome DB editor

[ForteS]

I'm grateful for this guys, but since you seem so interested in help us would it be to much gives us the source of the esf files? or explain us how does the pathfinding works?

[Huberto]

Craig, Jack, CA folks:

This is great news and hopefully the "beginning of a beautiful friendship" among gamers -- developers and enthusiasts alike. Just ordered my copy of Shogun 2!

Go buy yourselves a beer or three...

Cheers,

[CraigTW]

Now, wait and see, if this is a gesture without a future or the begining of a new relationship between CA and Total War games modding community.

We absolutely hope it will be.

[Prah]

thanks for the official statement,

so i understand that when you created the game you mainly worked on the raw files and thus there was no need to do what modders are trying to do now (changing the finished game), but does that mean that its difficult even for your company to edit the game files the modders work with??? i dont know how much these files you uploaded will help, but i think that some sort of dialogue/tutorials/q&a might be an even better help, but now im not sure if this is even possible (?)

[Lord Baal]

Our map creation process involves multiple internal and 3rd party apps, it's not simple.

What if you release it under the terms that only will work if you also have X software too? I bet a lot of modders will go out and buy it, or certainly a lot already own it!

[Eothese]

We absolutely hope it will be.

So can you find out why 'Berserking' doesn't work in M2, except for Cavalry, which it was never intended for anyway. I've asked officially before and many modders including myself have spent months trying to figure it out.

[flopsies]

I'm so happy, and I take back the things I've said earlier. I hope people can finally expand some areas of the NTW and ETW communities.

[Lord Shadowscar]

So with these, is there a possibility now that the map for Empire can finally be modded effectively?

[BunnyPoopCereal]

NO catch?

[visser300]

Also, may I point out that CA is under no obligation to release anything to us, right? Don't kick a gift horse in its mouth.

I understand dude. I only point out some issue that CA could solve easily if they REALLY WANT. In this millenium, every firm wants to build a good community for them and CA has it with little effort (this forum ranked 1000 in alexa). If I have chance, I will speak to the head of CA that you have a valuable resource that every formal companies out there want and I will do anything to keep it.

Do you know how much money Wal-mart must spend each year to develop their loyalty program? CA dont have to spend a peny on it. Do you know how much money Adidas, Nike etc must spend to develop and maintain their online media campaigns? Ca would def. spend less money than those companies but they already have tons of loyalty fan who call themself modders.

If I am CEO of Wal-mart and some one come to my office and say: 'Hey, I'm a good branding guy. I will work for you for free, I will help you to improve your product and promote it to my friend and help you sell more'. I will say 'Holy Chirst, are you for real?'

Your product is unique and your market is niche. Those reasons help you to monopoly this market for a long time but no king is last forever. If you guys stop innovating and maintain a good relationship with the community, one day you would fall because someone will see it and exploit it.

[Jingo Eugene]

I now demand that all the "CA never delivers promises, hates modding and is evil" crowd all simultaneously bite their tongue. Better late than never.

[Radiso-FIN]

This is great news! Thank you Craig and CA!
I hope this will lead to even better mods and that we finally could mod campaign map!

[Rome101]

I dunno what 'bout you guys, but I'm a tad bit in love with CA at the moment.

[uanime5]

Thanks for the information Craig.

I have a slightly related question. I've noticed that if a mod causes ETW to crash it creates an MDMP file such as empire_1332_crash_2011_6_1T16_14_47C0.mdmp. Is it possible to open these files to see what caused the crash and if so what program would you recommend using? An error log similar to the one in M2TW would be very useful for modders as it makes it easier to tell what we've done wrong.

So campaign maps are locked for good and no one shall ever be able to mod them in future? Great. Eternal 1 province France and Spain in Empire!

If that was true CA wouldn't have been able to make Warpath, which split up some regions.

The main problem, as many posters have mentioned, is pathfinding.esf; which neither Taw nor myself can figure out. As this file is so complex I suspect CA will have a lot of trouble explaining how it works and it will be even more difficult to create something that will let people mod it.

The purpose of the pathfinding.esf is to tell ETW where units can and can't go, and to control the on and off map parts of ETW.

Regarding where units can and can't go the pathfinding.esf is basically a map of all the playable areas. This is to prevent the player from walking off the map, however it means that unless you can edit the pathfinding you can't make unplayable areas playable.

Regarding the on and off map parts this refers to settlements, towns/ports, and resources. When you send an army or navy into these buildings they go from the map to an off map area, rather than stand on top of the building. When you want them to leave the building the pathfinding helps ETW determine where the off map units are and where they can re-enter the map. However if you can't edit the pathfinding then you can't add new areas that let units leave buildings. This means that if a modder adds new buildings units can't leave them unless they use the pathfinding of an existing building and have the units enter and exit by the existing building.

I can make pictures to explain this if anyone wants them.

[AlfonsoVIII]

Hey Craig, can you look at Civilization 5 and see how their mods work, basically SQL codes to update the database, would that solve any complex problems?

[King Sama]

Wow, thanks a lot! This is a nice gesture at least.

Question: Do you have plans to do something similar for the S2 db files (which I'm sure are still mostly undiscovered)?

I have a slightly related question. I've noticed that if a mod causes ETW to crash it creates an MDMP file such as empire_1332_crash_2011_6_1T16_14_47C0.mdmp. Is it possible to open these files to see what caused the crash and if so what program would you recommend using? An error log similar to the one in M2TW would be very useful for modders as it makes it easier to tell what we've done wrong

Please consider this as well. I remember how useful it was for M2TW.

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

Huh, I picked a good week to come back to TW games (not that I ever left per se).

There isn't anything in these DB tables that'll, say, make NTW features available in ETW, is there (such as liberation)? That doesn't seem like a DB file thing, but . . .

I also suppose we won't be using these directly, but rather to help explain what the "unknown" fields in the DB Editor are.

[Humble Warrior]

Total War: The modding situation

But we’re going to stop promising specifics that we’re unable to deliver, as we all know how well that’s worked out in the past.[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]

Happy modding,

The Creative Assembly

Indeed.

However, this release will hopefully fix many things wrong with Empire. Maybe now the CAi can do retreats on the campaign map. Maybe the BAI will know to standstill on defence and let you attack them instead. Heck, I might even be able to play Empire sieges without cringing.

Nice to se a little commonsense prevailing.