Modding Questions and Help Thread

[aetiusaetius]

If you haven't got Photoshop or an equivalent, download a program called GIMP. Then go to your main medieval 2 folder/mods/Third_Age_3/data/world/maps/base and find a file called map_features.tga. Copy it and save an unedited version in case something goes wrong, and then open the original in GIMP.

Here you'll see a mostly black version of the games map, with some blue lines running through it and some wehite and teal around the blues. The blues are rivers, the whites are where the rivers start and the teals are crossings. To make your own crossing in a river in Dunland, just set the brush type to a pencil with a 1 pixel (the smallest) size, and change the colour to teal with the RGB values 0, 255, 255. Add your crossing on the river of your choosing (so that two blue pixels are next to it, you can't if the next pixel over is diagonal to your new crossing) and then save and close the program.

Before you launch the game you must delete map.rwm from the "base" folder, then you can open the game and hopefully everything will be fine. And if you're interested in mapping, have a look at this

Thanksyou so much Mhaedros for the info and your detailed information. I tried editing pixels in map_features.tga before but didn't work... maybe i was lacking the correct information on how to do it. I'll try again following your steps; thanks! +rep

[Wallachian]

Hi, the Tsardoms Total War mod would like to ask permission to use the wonderful map textures from Third Age Total War. Of course all credits will be given and any work from our mod is to be shared. Would anyone be able to help us with this permission?

[Ngugi]

Hello Wallachian,

King Kong made the map, so he's the one you have to ask for permission; while if he used resuorses from elsewhere I never heard anything about it I'm afraid.

If there are still open questions please pm me (with a clear title that it is about permission issues)

Hopefully he'll visit the forum and sees it soon enough.


http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-Mod-Guideline

[Wallachian]

Thank you for your advice. I have sent King Kong a message a few days ago. I really do hope that he replies. Are there any guidelines about members' work which have left the forum? Sadly the M2Tw community is dieing so we need all the help we can get.

[Ngugi]

Very true, very true indeed.
I hope KK drops in soon, but I will also suggest you check with Gigantus; if anyone, he might know if KK used a resoure that might be avilbale somewhere?

[aetiusaetius]

Hi, I'm back again and I´m afraid not with good news . I did as you told me and worked with GIMP2 in order to make just a little change in the map, in map_features.tga . I didn't express corectly last time: i want to make a crossing on a river but this river is ingame part of the ocean, so it's not coloured in map_features.tga , anyway the procedure is similar, just painting a (straight) line of various pixels with color green 255 (RGB) crossing the river I chose, which divides Eriador from Dunland.
So original map_features.tga is this: [UNABLE TO LOAD ANY OF THE IMAGES, NOT .tga, nor file, nor zip; how can I do it?)

So apparently everything is ok, I did as told, the map_features.tga image looks allright, the crossing seems just as the original ones already included, map.rwm erased... but still nothing!!! what am I doing wrong?! I tried so many times by now, I just want a single crossssing My Precious!!!

Help please!

[Mhaedros]

Hi, I'm back again and I´m afraid not with good news . I did as you told me and worked with GIMP2 in order to make just a little change in the map, in map_features.tga . I didn't express corectly last time: i want to make a crossing on a river but this river is ingame part of the ocean, so it's not coloured in map_features.tga , anyway the procedure is similar, just painting a (straight) line of various pixels with color green 255 (RGB) crossing the river I chose, which divides Eriador from Dunland.
So original map_features.tga is this: [UNABLE TO LOAD ANY OF THE IMAGES, NOT .tga, nor file, nor zip; how can I do it?)

So apparently everything is ok, I did as told, the map_features.tga image looks allright, the crossing seems just as the original ones already included, map.rwm erased... but still nothing!!! what am I doing wrong?! I tried so many times by now, I just want a single crossssing My Precious!!!

Help please!

So if I understand correctly the issue now isn't a crash, but rather that the change doesn't show on the map? Or does the game actually crash after your edit?

If it launches fine I think you're alright, since if I remember correctly, land bridges don't show up in TATW, they're invisible. Move an army next to where you wanted your bridge and try if he can get across there (you've probably done this already, but it's the only thing I can think of since land bridges shouldn't cause any issues iirc).

[Greymane]

Hi, I'm back again and I´m afraid not with good news . I did as you told me and worked with GIMP2 in order to make just a little change in the map, in map_features.tga . I didn't express corectly last time: i want to make a crossing on a river but this river is ingame part of the ocean, so it's not coloured in map_features.tga , anyway the procedure is similar, just painting a (straight) line of various pixels with color green 255 (RGB) crossing the river I chose, which divides Eriador from Dunland.
So original map_features.tga is this: [UNABLE TO LOAD ANY OF THE IMAGES, NOT .tga, nor file, nor zip; how can I do it?)

So apparently everything is ok, I did as told, the map_features.tga image looks allright, the crossing seems just as the original ones already included, map.rwm erased... but still nothing!!! what am I doing wrong?! I tried so many times by now, I just want a single crossssing My Precious!!!

Help please!

Aren't sea crossings different from river crossings? I might be understanding this all wrong, but sea crossings are signified with green arrows (but the TATW Anduin River and MOS's Greyflood might be too thin for that) and normal river crossings are actual map features and will show up as a ford. Ergo: you might have placed the wrong kind of crossing in the wrong spot.

[aetiusaetius]

Aren't sea crossings different from river crossings? I might be understanding this all wrong, but sea crossings are signified with green arrows (but the TATW Anduin River and MOS's Greyflood might be too thin for that) and normal river crossings are actual map features and will show up as a ford. Ergo: you might have placed the wrong kind of crossing in the wrong spot.

Yes, as it's part of the ocean, it may be an ocean arrow crossing as you say. Maybe I had placed it in a very thin place as you say. I found a map_features.tga which has a crossing in the right place, it was made by the creators of the mod ( maybe you ). You can find it in \Third_Age_3\data\world\maps\campaign\custom\Fellowship_Campaign . I guess it was used before in the Fellowship Campaign, so it should work perfectly. I copied it and paste it in \Third_Age_3\data\world\maps\base and I erased map.rwm but it doesn't work: as I press to start a new campaign the campaign never launches and I'm throughn back to menu. I can see the game created a new map.rwm but still didn't work. any idea??

Btw, sorry for the long time, I haven't been able to play for some time :/


Edit: finally managed to do it. You were right Greymane, it was too thin, I put the crossing in another wider riverbed and it worked! Thanks for the help Greymane & Mhaedros!

[aetiusaetius]

Hi again!! I've managed to make a minimod where Isengard has is own religion, Followers of the White hand, and every thing seems perfect: Sauron is gone, I can see the new religion-pip in the map... but unfortunatly I cannot recruit anything now. I've seen in the export_description_ buldings that uruk-hai need some minimum catholic religion in the settlement to be able to recruit them, how can I solve this? How do I allow them to be recruitable for the new religion?

Another issue: if I'm playing with religion catholic and I get excommunicated by Sauron (I'm going to keep the Ring for me, my precious ) is there something I can script to deal with unhappiness in settlements?

[Ngugi]

In EDB, change the required religion from "catholic" to whatever you named the new religion, for Isengard units.
Example, from:

                recruit_pool "Uruk-Hai Raiders"  1   0.18   3  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion catholic 33 and hidden_resource mountains
                recruit_pool "Uruk-Hai Raiders"  1   0.12   2  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion catholic 33 and hidden_resource grasland
                recruit_pool "Uruk-Hai Raiders"  1   0.09   2  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion catholic 33 and hidden_resource forest or hidden_resource desert

to:

                recruit_pool "Uruk-Hai Raiders"  1   0.18   3  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion sarumansbeard 33 and hidden_resource mountains
                recruit_pool "Uruk-Hai Raiders"  1   0.12   2  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion sarumansbeard 33 and hidden_resource grasland
                recruit_pool "Uruk-Hai Raiders"  1   0.09   2  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion sarumansbeard 33 and hidden_resource forest or hidden_resource desert

And yes, it's needed for each unit, x2 or x3 depending on terrain entries, per building level (up to nine buildings in case of first tier units), so it requires some labour


For units that Isengard/france share with other factions you have to separate them however, to not disable the unit for the other faction(s).
Example, from:

                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.18   2  0  requires factions { hre, france, }  and region_religion catholic 25 and hidden_resource mountains
                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.12   1  0  requires factions { hre, france, }  and region_religion catholic 25 and hidden_resource grasland
                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.09   1  0  requires factions { hre, france, }  and region_religion catholic 25 and hidden_resource forest or hidden_resource desert

to:

                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.18   2  0  requires factions { hre, }  and region_religion catholic 25 and hidden_resource mountains
                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.12   1  0  requires factions { hre, }  and region_religion catholic 25 and hidden_resource grasland
                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.09   1  0  requires factions { hre, }  and region_religion catholic 25 and hidden_resource forest or hidden_resource desert
                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.18   2  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion sarumansbeard 25 and hidden_resource mountains
                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.12   1  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion sarumansbeard 25 and hidden_resource grasland
                recruit_pool "Snaga Skirmishers"  1   0.09   1  0  requires factions { france, }  and region_religion sarumansbeard 25 and hidden_resource forest or hidden_resource desert

You've changed the religion for france in desc_sm_factions.txt? Otherwise you'll face religious unrest.
Also, you need a building for conversion to the new religion, if you have not made one already. See this; http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...add-a-religion

[aetiusaetius]

Thankyou for the answer Ngugi! Jajajaja sarumansbeard shall be a convincing religion xd Yes, i've already created the buildings for conversion and tested changing the faction relition, but the thing is that if isengard has its own religion start, then they wont be able to join crusades right? So I want them to start as catholic and after dime event become sarumansbeard. So I need them to recruit both when they're catholic and sarumansbeard. how do I do this?

[Ngugi]

No, only catholic factions can join crusades, that's hard coded.
There are tutorials on how to add scripts that change religion ingame, google for it.

To be able to recruit the unit as france, having either religion as your own, you'll have to duplicate every entry for the unit then, so there's both a one for "catholic" and one for "sarumansbeard". The entries should be tied to an event [a.k.a the religion changing script]. The catholic entries can not be the same catholic entries as other faction uses, mind you.
So that france recruit unit A with religion catholic during event X (non-converted), but recruit unit A with religion sarumansbeard during event Y (converted).
It's not worth spending time on until the conversion script is done, though.

[Ngugi]

About Orc horns, for the public record:

Hey man, I was hoping you could help me. I starting playing MOS 1.7 again, and I've run into an old issue that I swear I had solved already. I'm playing an Isengard campaign and Rohan charges into battle blowing Isengard's horn. And Isengard blows a Mordor horn. I tried to change it back to their own horns, but I can't seem to find the file that actually dictates which horn each faction uses. I just reinstalled TATW AND MOS 1.7 and that fixed the issue with Rohan, but Isengard still doesnt use their own horn. I'd really appreciate any help you could give me.

Thanks.

Hello cmasonw0070,


First, good a reinstall solved the bug with Rohan getting the Isengard horn. As for giving Isengard that horn, it's a more complicated matter.

Horn sounds are tied to cultures - meaning culture in technical terms, not the ingame "cultures" called 'Northmen', 'Followers of Sauron' etc. which actually are religions.
Cultures decides what UI to use, 2D like event images, how the faction settlements look, certain sounds and so on. There are only 7 cultures in M2. For a time MOS used the 7th culture for Isengard, it's from that period its horn was originally in use. However, that caused problems with custom battles, and people long ago prefered to be able to use custom settlements in custom battles, rather than having a visuals for Isengard alone.
Therefore Isengard share the culture with other Orc factions, including the horn. If you want to enable the Isengard horn, yes, it can be done, but then it will be used by Mordor and OotMM too, so that you know.

cheers

Thanks. I really appreciate you getting back to me. I've asked the MOS forum several times over the last few months and haven't gotten a reply.

How could I change it so that the orc factions use Isengard's horn? I've tried editing the descr_sounds_unit_anim.txt file, but that doesn't seem to change anything. Is that just a file for one to reference? I would imagine I need to do some sort of computer sorcery within the sounds folder. Could you tell me what I need to do?

Or better yet, how do I allow the orc factions to use the isengard horn as well as the orc horn?

Yes, the latter can be done quite easy, the former would be a far more complicated matter.

First, yes, descr_sounds_unit_anim.txt is the place to prepare the change.
Add, as I presume you done, the horn to eastern_european (the culture used by Orc factions):

    culture eastern_european
        event
            folder data/sounds/SFX/Individual/War_Horns
            horn_orc
            IsengardWarHorn
        end

Save.
(If you are to play/are playing an Isengard camapign you can change it from horn_orc to only IsengardWarHorn, thinking of it, since you can always change it back later in other campaigns, when you might encounter other Orc factions on the battle fields more often).

Secondly, time for the "sorcery"
There are presumably slightly smoother ways, but I present it as I always done it.
Go here and download the IDX extractor: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...?do=file&id=32
When you've downloaded the .idx extractor, you've to extract it and place all the files into your modname\data\sounds folder, in our case the Third_Age_3\data\sounds folder (or MOS\data\sounds folder, or whatever you named it).

To add new sounds to your accent, you've to extract the .idx soundfiles in your sounds-folder. In this case, you should only hve to update the SFX-idx (that contain sound effects).
Select the extract_sounds.bat and open it with Notepad or Notepad++. Change it from:

.\xidx.exe -x music voice1 voice2 voice3 sfx

into

.\xidx.exe -x sfx

Save your changes and doubleclick the extract_sounds.bat. The SFX will now be extracted into Third_Age\data\sounds\data\sounds\SFX folder (a.k.a, you got a new data folder in your sounds folder).
After the extracting process is done, cut the whole SFX folder and paste it into your Third_Age_3\data\sounds folder in order that it looks like this: Third_Age_3\data\sounds\SFX.
Delete the Third_Age_3\data\sounds\data folder (because there is nothing left in it now).
Since we only want to add a new accent and thus only need the SFX.idx extracted, we're done with the .idx extractor.
(credits to dear ol' Aikanár for most of above IDX instructions)

Now, in Third_Age_3\data\sounds, back up and then delete SFX.dat and SFX.idx. They will be recreated so no worry (but only properly if you unpacked the SFX-folder first, as you done above).
Restart the game, and see; perhaps in some custom battle for instant test.

Good luck

[orclover]

Modding Crusades: Is there anyway for me to change when the "crusades" occur in the game. I would like to move them back to turn 120 so the don't disrupt the balance of the game before all factions are fully upgraded.

[Ngugi]

Go to Third_Age_3/data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign and open campaign_script.txt (rememebr that if you use MOS or DaC or other big mod, use Notepad++ instead of regular NOtepad, or there's risk of problems).
Look up this:

;#########################Pope Sauron
declare_counter go_pope


monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType papal_states
	create_unit Sauron, Mordor Orcs Mercs, num 3, exp 6, arm 0, wep 
terminate_monitor
end_monitor


monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType papal_states
	and I_TurnNumber >= 46
	and RandomPercent <= 8

46 means that from turn 46, there's up to 8% chance every turn (more or less, Withwnar usually make some small correction on my counting, IIRC, hehe) that "pope Sauron" returns. To move it later into the campaign, change 46 to 100 or 120 or something that fit your taste. Save.
Not save game compatible.

[Withwnar]

and RandomPercent <= 8

...up to 8% chance

7.9207%

I would describe that as an 8% chance too. It's easier.

RandomPercent generates a random number between 0 and 100 and compares the argument number against it. It's a chance of 8 in 101, not 8 in 100 (8%).

[orclover]

Go to Third_Age_3/data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign and open campaign_script.txt (rememebr that if you use MOS or DaC or other big mod, use Notepad++ instead of regular NOtepad, or there's risk of problems).
Look up this:

;#########################Pope Sauron
declare_counter go_pope


monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType papal_states
    create_unit Sauron, Mordor Orcs Mercs, num 3, exp 6, arm 0, wep 
terminate_monitor
end_monitor


monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType papal_states
    and I_TurnNumber >= 46
    and RandomPercent <= 8

46 means that from turn 46, there's up to 8% chance every turn (more or less, Withwnar usually make some small correction on my counting, IIRC, hehe) that "pope Sauron" returns. To move it later into the campaign, change 46 to 100 or 120 or something that fit your taste. Save.
Not save game compatible.

Strangely there is not a single monitor in the DAC campaign script that contains the factions papal_states. I wonder if they just settled for the hardcoded version. Can I add:

monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType papal_states
and I_TurnNumber >= 100
and RandomPercent <= 8
end_monitor

Thanks

[Ngugi]

Ah, no, DaC begins with the pope in place from scratch, in difference to TATW.
To add that would not suffice, no. The script as longer and would have to be added, but also the starting papcy would have to be removed, and sicne I've not attempted that myself, I can't describe hwo to do it, nor deduce what effects on DaC it would have, I'm afraid

[Nimble]

Hi all, I'm hoping someone can help me. How hard would it be to create a mini sub mod for DaC to make Gandalf a general for Bree and change his BG to Dunedain rangers? Likewise I would like to make Aragorn's BG Dunedain Rangers.

I have Notepad ++ and I'm not a complete novice at modding, having edited mods for the Stalker series and SW: EaW (XML files). Is this relatively achievable in a night or two? Pointers in the right direction would be great!