How to assign a pre-selected set of portraits to a specific faction?

[Gen. Edward]

Hello! A few days ago, I was looking inside "ui.pack" to see if I could find anything interesting, and then I found "portraits". As I was going through those many .tga and .jpeg files, I found quite nice pictures for generals and admirals there, many of which I rarely ever see in-game, and some I've never seen at all, despite all my years playing countless grand campaigns as Great Britain. Those pictures were so remarkable and diverse that I got to make a whole library of them; as I made it, I couldn't help thinking, "Gosh, wouldn't it be wonderful should those pictures have been included more often in-game?".

Then an idea came to mind: "What if it was possible to make a mod that, in a grand campaign of Great Britain, every time you assigned a commander to a fleet or an army, from a pre-selected set of pictures one would be randomly chosen by the game and, 'voilà!', there you have a new commander wearing a bright, red uniform, with a 'most honourable' white wig to show his troops how dignified and noble he is, or a deep-blue suit with gold-trimmed epaulettes, and a bicorne with its typical, Royal-Navy-like straight button-trim. What a wonderful assignment, His/Her Majesty would be very much pleased!"

Instead, what one actually has couldn't be more disappointing; green uniforms for a British Army's general, what on earth?! The French used green for their high-ranking military commanders on the field, but no fine Englishman would go to battle wearing green! And what about those admirals wearing monarch to fight a naval engagement under the colours of His/Her Majesty's Navy, wouldn't they rather pass for a Danish or Polish? Those things always boggled me, but I've never given them much attention, because I didn't know of those pictures, and that at least until I found about their very existence!

Sadly, I lack the skills to make such a mod without the most fortuitous assistance from you gentlemen; whereas I may have a slight idea on the "whats" and "wheres" of things with this game, I couldn't be more confused about the "hows" of their execution. Should any of you fine fellows decide to embark on this journey with me, I'd be very much glad indeed! As always, my earnest thanks for any assistance!

[Quintus Hortensius Hortalus]

Hello! A few days ago, I was looking inside "ui.pack" to see if I could find anything interesting, and then I found "portraits". As I was going through those many .tga and .jpeg files, I found quite nice pictures for generals and admirals there, many of which I rarely ever see in-game, and some I've never seen at all, despite all my years playing countless grand campaigns as Great Britain. Those pictures were so remarkable and diverse that I got to make a whole library of them; as I made it, I couldn't help thinking, "Gosh, wouldn't it be wonderful should those pictures have been included more often in-game?".

Then an idea came to mind: "What if it was possible to make a mod that, in a grand campaign of Great Britain, every time you assigned a commander to a fleet or an army, from a pre-selected set of pictures one would be randomly chosen by the game and, 'voilà!', there you have a new commander wearing a bright, red uniform, with a 'most honourable' white wig to show his troops how dignified and noble he is, or a deep-blue suit with gold-trimmed epaulettes, and a bicorne with its typical, Royal-Navy-like straight button-trim. What a wonderful assignment, His/Her Majesty would be very much pleased!"

Instead, what one actually has couldn't be more disappointing; green uniforms for a British Army's general, what on earth?! The French used green for their high-ranking military commanders on the field, but no fine Englishman would go to battle wearing green! And what about those admirals wearing monarch to fight a naval engagement under the colours of His/Her Majesty's Navy, wouldn't they rather pass for a Danish or Polish? Those things always boggled me, but I've never given them much attention, because I didn't know of those pictures, and that at least until I found about their very existence!

Sadly, I lack the skills to make such a mod without the most fortuitous assistance from you gentlemen; whereas I may have a slight idea on the "whats" and "wheres" of things with this game, I couldn't be more confused about the "hows" of their execution. Should any of you fine fellows decide to embark on this journey with me, I'd be very much glad indeed! As always, my earnest thanks for any assistance!

To create your own mod you need to create a new culture in the DB-Files and assign GB to it. Then you have to create a new portrait allocator set in the startpos for your new culture. Furthermore portraits are not chosen randomly but from a row of predifined image files for old and young characters. To access them you have to convert the startpos to .xml files.

So long story cut short, it's relativly complicated.

Furthermore I part of a mod team which more or less has done this, you can find your ideas represented in the newest version of our mod which is soon to be released.
Visit us here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...rial-Splendour