Assembly Kit Q&A - Documentation questions!

[wangrin]

I have made a new agent but haven't been able to make him recruitable yet (sadly, all I found searching the subject was "we were able to create a new agent" but never said how). Since I wasn't able to save my startpos, I couldn't give it to a faction in a starting region either to test if he works, but I'm pretty confident.
I don't think this is a topic for documentation questions by CA though, it's really very specific. I can put up a tutorial (in the appropriate section) once I managed to see him in-game. It does boil down to what I wrote before, and some - if not most - of the tables I edited aren't present in ETW or NTW.

EDIT
Even more searching still hasn't turned up a tutorial on how to add agents, could you please link to one?
Or are you guys really asking CA for documentation, while not providing any yourself after you figured out how to do stuff?

I didn't write a tutorial yet.
You can find some informations here :

• List of tables needed
• tests from Steph

But this is for ETW and NTW.

[Steph]

Or are you guys really asking CA for documentation, while not providing any yourself after you figured out how to do stuff?

And I sent a word doc to Craig as preparation of the meeting (since it was hinted that although focused on S2, it would interest also othet titles. Actually they even said initially it would cover more than S2 before they changed that). This doc contains all my questions, with very detailed info of what I did and were it doesn't work.

And most of these unanswered questions can be found in this thread, started by CA and without any new message from them from months.

Do you really think we are just a bunch of whinners who just ask CA without spending hours first trying to get the solution ourselves?

This agent question was asked in january 2012!

No one could find a solution since then, I think it's legitimate that we ask question about it.

[daniu]

And most of these unanswered questions can be found in this thread, started by CA and without any new message from them from months.

I didn't ask whether you had questions for CA (it's not like a post goes by without you jumping in and ask one), I asked how you can expect them to document anything after showing when even the community doesn't manage to put up documentation of what they found out. I can't see how the agent thing can be so relevant all of a sudden if there's not even a discussion thread about it.

[♔hammeredalways♔]

@daniu - just to clarify the issue is not how to make/create an agent, it is the actual ability for an agent with an added/new religion to actually convert the population to the new religion.

So far all tests ETW/NTW that I am aware of we can get an agent to spawn without CTD, but have so far been able to enable the conversion

For example when the Punjab emerges we had tried to have the religion Sikhism enabled to convert population as they expand.

Having followed Steph's progress he has done the same thing (not with Punjab) in NTW.

The question that has been asked is simply is the conversion ability for new religions hard coded, if not what are we missing. We arrived at the must be possible solution, replicated everything that we can access but still no conversion

I am not 100% certain but I believe Steph has detailed the steps taken to CA, (perhaps he can re-post them here for ease) if not then between us we could do it, but the burning question is simply relates to is there something hardcoded or not.

[Steph]

I didn't ask whether you had questions for CA (it's not like a post goes by without you jumping in and ask one), I asked how you can expect them to document anything after showing when even the community doesn't manage to put up documentation of what they found out. I can't see how the agent thing can be so relevant all of a sudden if there's not even a discussion thread about it.

And I answered that. I explained what I did, and what doesn't work. Now CA does not asnwer anything at all about this topic.
If my explaination are not sufficient, I can give more details.
It's rather simple actually. Just take a gentlemen, which is already there and working (no new agent). Give it the "CanConvert" ability (in the db, and in the startpos as well). Give it Zeal.
Start your game. The gentleman does not convert.
Now, if we knew what more need to be changed to make it work, well, we wouldn't ask the question would we?

So question is simple : is it hardcoded that only "missionary" can convert? Or can we make it work by changing something in the db / startpos, and if yes what more to change that the "CanConvert" and "Zeal"?

[daniu]

it is the actual ability for an agent with an added/new religion to actually convert the population to the new religion.

I understand that. I already said how to do it in Shogun 2, everything else if off topic here and quite disruptive to the discussion. Also, Craig said

Asking us to go back to processes that we're no longer as familiar with and assist in this way is a beyond what we're able to justifiably take the time out to do.
[...]I hope that's the end of it. We're not going to do it, so please stop asking.

which is hardly a subtle hint to take. How obnoxious are people going to get? And how much collaboration do they expect to get from it?

[rainkloud]

Has anyone else noticed that changes made to the resources or commodities files don't seem to take. Tried changing the prices of the resources and they seem locked. Am I missing something?

[wangrin]

Sadly, CraigTW wrote earlier :

We've already released everything we can possibly release for Napoleon: Total War, and we've covered that ground in some detail, so I won't go over it again and take this even further off topic, given this is a topic about Shogun 2 mod tools.

I fear that we will have to help ourselves and should not rely on any other peoples and particularly CA.
"Aide toi et le ciel t'aidera" (God helps those who help themselves) like Esope said...

[daniu]

Are "effects" evaluated at all? Or are they just used to create the popup overlays?
For instance, giving castles the bos_castle_slot_addition effect in building_effect_junction does show up in the castle building overlay ("adds a build slot"), but does not actually add a slot to the city if the corresponding castle is built...
So how does one assign an effect to a building?
Also, when is that effect evaluated? When the building is ordered for construction, when finishing, dynamically when loading the game? That's quite relevant to know for testing mods.

[zhiphius]

Are "effects" evaluated at all? Or are they just used to create the popup overlays?
For instance, giving castles the bos_castle_slot_addition effect in building_effect_junction does show up in the castle building overlay ("adds a build slot"), but does not actually add a slot to the city if the corresponding castle is built...
So how does one assign an effect to a building?
Also, when is that effect evaluated? When the building is ordered for construction, when finishing, dynamically when loading the game? That's quite relevant to know for testing mods.

Im guessing some effects doesnt work in all campaigns?

I successfully added "reduces upkeep by 5%", "Reduces construction cost by 15% for all regions" (or however the tooltip puts it) and so on and so forth but not a darn thing changes when i build the structures with them.

Thus i summarize that some effects are tied in some way to specific campaign buildings (like the FotS effects affecting FotS buildings/units only).

hell i managed to even tie the general upkeep talent to the stoneworks didnt do jack all that either.

Either way, make yourself a list of effects that work in a specific campaign and which does not.
And general thumb of rule: if you making a sengoku mod you can generally forget FotS effects.

A theory though....
Im thinking there is a table.....somewhere....that links this stuff to each campaign.
hopefully that or its hardcoded and we're screwed when it comes to added RotS/FotS effects to other campaign buildings.

[Radzeer]

I deleted a few posts that got a bit too personal and derailed the discussion. This is the second and last warning to stay on topic. Thanks.

[rainkloud]

I think the effects are also limited to certain platforms. As in you can't usually give a building an effect that is tied with a trait etc. I was trying to get the the Peace trait to convert to a trait you get when you make a vassal which would then grant you lowered building costs. I tried a bunch of different effects but none would actually provide the bonus despite activating. I settled for increasing the amount of diplomacy and happiness bonus you receive.

[daniu]

Well yeah, I have no problems changing the effect value if the effect is already bound to a certain entity (say, agent or building), but I failed to assign a new (or already existing) effect to anything; I also don't think it's hardcoded or the db tables would make much less sense.
I think that's kind of a common thing people would want to do, and general enough to know to be useful for several things; so I think it's a good question for someone at CA to give a howto for.

[zhiphius]

Well yeah, I have no problems changing the effect value if the effect is already bound to a certain entity (say, agent or building), but I failed to assign a new (or already existing) effect to anything; I also don't think it's hardcoded or the db tables would make much less sense.
I think that's kind of a common thing people would want to do, and general enough to know to be useful for several things; so I think it's a good question for someone at CA to give a howto for.

Take a close look at the effects tables. Might give some clue. A whole lot new set of parameters >.<

and i agree, i want to use the effects in there, and know how to make them work in any campaign. Would make my current modding oh so much easier ^^ (as i try to make certain province specialty buildings more attractive )

[The Hedge Knight]

With custom battlemaps what are the following (in definition.xml)?

bmd_type='0'
additive_type='1'
terrain_type='2'
simple_colour_blending='false'

[zhiphius]

*deleted* i did not find out what i thought i found out afterall thus nothing to share

[spartan_warrior]

I will post this here, even though I have already presented this to Lusted, in order to mod the campaign map we are going to have to be able to create/edit the supertexture, this file is a really large texture (in the order of about 32000x16000 pixels) compressed into a .STPD and .STPI file. These supertextures control the entire map's normal map and the 2D image which displays over the unexplored regions of the map, so they are vital to any new or modified map. We are going to need some way to compile the supertextures from some editable format (TIFF is the obvious choice because of the extreme texture dimensions) either using the functions of the assembly kit or just be presented the documentation for this format so we can create a converter ourselves.

[Jack Lusted]

I will post this here, even though I have already presented this to Lusted, in order to mod the campaign map we are going to have to be able to create/edit the supertexture, this file is a really large texture (in the order of about 32000x16000 pixels) compressed into a .STPD and .STPI file. These supertextures control the entire map's normal map and the 2D image which displays over the unexplored regions of the map, so they are vital to any new or modified map. We are going to need some way to compile the supertextures from some editable format (TIFF is the obvious choice because of the extreme texture dimensions) either using the functions of the assembly kit or just be presented the documentation for this format so we can create a converter ourselves.

We are looking into this, seeing what we can do.

[Steph]

@ Jack Lusted: I sent you a PM, if you can please read it. Thanks

[weeeee659]

Jack, what's happening regarding the supertextures? Is there anything you can do? I'm sure people won't mind waiting as long as we know it's still being looked in to.