TEd battle map editor announced (.pdf documentation in OP)

[Huberto]

Just purchased FotS. Will download and install when I get home.

Congratulations, CA!

[CraigTW]

Can the documentation be posted here? Surely it's not too much trouble and a lot of the membership don't have accounts on the official forum.

Sorry, yeah, see above. File is over the 1mb limit for PDFs. Happy if a moderator wants to copy it over from our forums though and upload on my behalf.

[PumpkinBread]

THANK YOU CA.

[BullGod]

A step in good direction. I'm sure I'll remember this when I'll think about buying next TW game. Thanks.
But I have to ask: Will this be free, or some kind of payable DLC?

[Akaie]

Here we go. Up'd in a .7z file, since I'm still re-installing all my damn stuff and can't find my WinRAR.

[Fracchione]

@CraigTW: that's a good thing, sure, but what about releasing a documentation about the AI to modders? This way we can finally mod the AI properly.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Please fix the sound bug that is currently affecting all mods that change existing units or add new ones. This bug makes some archery units sound like rifles or canons when shooting, a very annoying issue. Which units are affected is different in each mod, and all efforts by leading modders to fix this issue have failed so far. This is a very serious issue for the modding community of S2!

[CraigTW]

But I have to ask: Will this be free, or some kind of payable DLC?

Free.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Thanks Craig and whoever brought this up in your meetings. Great idea. Honestly, a campaign map would be better but this is awesome nonetheless. Havnt read anything bout it but it would be awesome to design your own castles.

[Erwin Rommel]

YES!!!

Watch as thundering whineage become thundering praise for about 3 days before reverting to thundering whineage

The hordes of MP boys will decry balance
the hordes of graphics aficionados will decry the lack of gloss
then there are the load-time-is-too-slow advocates, then there are the odd assortment who have CTD problems.

Then they'll say, "what about us? So you've been fiddling around "this" when you should be solving our issues first dammit!"

OH! And the NTW-DLC-new-grand-campaign-map-thing lobbyist will make a cameo as well.

[ccgr1121]

This does indeed look awesome.

Will it be usable for Empire and Napoleon, or could it be edited in some way to work for them?

[Akaie]

I will have to wait until I can practically apply the documentation to judge it better, but at this point it's very clear and concise. This has certainly revitalized my s2 modding interest!

[Humble Warrior]

So, [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1cRIl_y8Iw&list=UUugJq15BiB-c1NDYPHiznWQ&feature=plcp"]

In the next couple of weeks, we’re releasing TEd, which is short for, simply, “The Editor”. This tool will allow you to create your own battle maps for Shogun 2 and Fall of The Samurai, with a suite of features from adjusting terrain height and sculpting hills and mountains, to placing buildings and terrain features. Packaged within TEd, we’re including the full library of props from both games (including railway tracks!).

Well done, CA. It actually doesn`t mean much to me since I don`t play Online, but it`s a step in the right direction and I`m glad for the long term forumers who appealed hard for this. Perhaps one day some kind of AI Ted can be released that will help it to use such maps as an addition in offline campaigns.

(FoTS clan unlock in TWB is a super cool bonus, for example!).

No. It isn`t.

However, well done.

[Fracchione]

Honestly I don't get what's all this excitement about, creating new maps won't solve ANY of the VERY SERIOUS issues with TW-games.

[DARTH VADER]

That is a great step forward to the right direction.
Thank you CA.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Free.

You know people would pay for this... people would pay for a fully functioning campaign editor as well... regardless its awesome.

[Muizer]

As time has gone on and more recent editions of Total War have been developed, the complexity we have layered on the game and our own development processes has meant end user modification has become far harder without dedicated tools that we would have to specially build. Tools that we don’t use in the production of the game in the first place.

Hello Craig,

I wish you could elaborate on the quoted bit in the context of creating a campaign map. What is your reason for not giving a step by step description of how you constructed the campaign map? Is it because you are convinced modders would not be able to follow or is it because you cannot (legally?) disclose what is necessary for them to follow? In other words, would a tool be necessary not so much to enable modding as to obscure technology?

Btw, this is not a rhetorical question and I'm not implying anything. I just think it would be better to know what we're facing.

[THE HIGHLANDER]

well done CA

[MathiasOfAthens]

“It certainly hasn’t escaped our attention that, despite what we’ve said in the press, the feeling in the community is that CA no longer supports mods, or the modding community. With actions speaking louder than words, it’s something we can understand the sentiment behind, if not perhaps the reasoning.

The rather ugly and slightly embarrassing truth is far from what the conspiracy theorists would like to believe. As we said when we released the Empire/Napoleon XML and XSD tables, Med II and Rome were easy to mod, not because we particularly built them that way, but because they just were by virtue of the tech used to create them. As time has gone on and more recent editions of Total War have been developed, the complexity we have layered on the game and our own development processes has meant end user modification has become far harder without dedicated tools that we would have to specially build. Tools that we don’t use in the production of the game in the first place.

omg they read our threads. Thanks CA!

[TheNewKing]

When are you going to bring out the mod tools that everyone really wants is the ability to change the campaign maps and everything else like in rome tw?