Modding Disasters (floods, storms, etc.) in RTW

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Has anyone had *any* luck at all with this? I deleted the whole descr_disasters.txt file and saw no changes or error messages. Been discussing it over at the org and am wondering if any mods over here have had even the slightest luck in it.

You can add "historical" volcano eruptions and plagues via descr_events.txt, but not storms, floods, earthquakes, or anything else. A lot of mods could benefit greatly if anyone knew of anything and shared it btw.

[Poliocratos]

I saw your discussion at the org. You all seemed to be moving toward the consensus that the file isn't loaded. This isn't true, but everything in it is heavily bugged, and in fact, the vanilla file won't activate most of the events.

To start from the beginning with the parameters listed in descr_disasters.txt, the event frequency can't be less than 2, or else the event won't activate. Of the events listed, earthquake, flood, and volcano definitely work in the imperial campaign (ignoring the reported flood movement bug). I haven't tested plague, but my guess would be that it probably works.

The trick with the file is that each event is picky about whether position, region, or climate is used to specify it. Volcano only works with the position statement (and will only do the full eruption if you set warning to false, otherwise the volcano just makes puffs of smoke). Earthquake will take climate or region IIRC. Flood will work best (flooding most often) with the region statement, but there will be occasional floods if you use climate.

The storm event does not seem to work in the imperial campaign, but does work in the prolog campaign. Whether any of the disaster events work in a provincial campaign, I don't know.

Regarding the disasters.tga file, I checked my Sysinternals Process Monitor logfile for RTW and it wasn't listed as loading, but I am not sure at this point if that logfile is complete or not. It should probably be redone to confirm.

If you really want to know how to mod this file, you should ask The Border Reiver, he has actually released mods for it.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Awesome. I'll PM him as I don't see a link to the files to analyze the changes. Thanks! Terrific first post by the way!

[The Border Reiver]

Thanks for the PM Teleklos. I've done a lot of work on this disaster file in RTW & BI, and now MTW2....literally until it drove me mad. I tried modifying all files such as event titles, event strings, descr_event images none have any effect

In RTW1.5 & BI1.6 disasters are bugged as below:

storms - no longer work
floods - yes
earthquakes - yes
volcanoes - yes
plagues - yes
fires - 1/2 work - triggers smoke but has no negative effect
famines - do not work
hordes - do not work
locusts - never implemented
dustbowl - never implemented
brigands - does not work from here

I would suggest not using climates (you'll never see them due to the map size, and don't look for your disasters with toggle_fow, you'll never see them. Minimum event time is 2, 1 does not work. Can work in both seasons. Warning does not work. The descr_disaters txt file in the data folder is redundant and does not work. The disasters.tga file, is redundant and has no bearing.

In MTW 2 Storms work again, very well

Floods - works either by region name, climate or strat coords. Min scale is better at 5, max scale should never be more than 10 (10 is a 2 region size flood). Does not work in descr_events file. It takes a while, but it is better to name by region. Don't forget the Nile Delta and swampy areas. Does not look good on islands (alaria, sardinia, crete etc)

Volcanoes-works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. Works better and is more dynamic set to an odd number for some reason....19 works really well. I found by actually naming the regions (Campania and Sicilia_Romanus) it is better. By setting at 19 years, sometimes it puffs away with smoke and does not kill or destroy, and sometimes you have a large eruption. Minimum should be 5 and maximum should be 10.

Earthquakes - works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. I actually created a file and never released which drew from earthquake websites based on historical accounts and modern accounts and straart coorded prime earthquake zones (gave up it was a huge job). I did this for the Arthurian Total War mod though. Minimum event here should be 2 for a tremor and 10 maximum. Realistically think of this as the Rictor scale, 1 for small and 10 for huge. Every two years is good, that means if your mod is 400 years, and depending on your region amount (198) each region will have this event twice.

Plagues- works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. I cannot stress underusing this. Set it to 2 years, but make the minimum 2 and the maximum 10. Works without summer or winter tags.

I hope this helps, if I remember anything else I'll let you know. Also please please correct me if I have got something wrong.

Also if there is a mod out there that needs a hand let me know!

cheers
BR

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Really awesome stuff there. I'll let the folks know to come look over here. This is exactly what everyone needs to know about those files. Many thanks!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Oh, by the way, do you know of any restrictions or hardcoded limits? Like how many places can you list as possible coordinates for things like earthquakes? Do they have to be only on certain types of terrain? Is the format for them (since there are no examples):

position       104, 56

With a 'tab' coming after the word "position"?

Just trying this out and still having an unsuccessful go of it so far. I also assume that no graphics will occur - is that right? Have you ever seen these random ones have 'shaking' graphics or anything?

Oh, how do you set earthquakes by the descr_events file? I tried making my own there (by coordinates), but it didn't work. Can you give an example of one you tried that did work?

Thanks again!! This has got me excited!

[Poliocratos]

Sorry, I don't know anything about restrictions or hardcode limits in the descr_disaster file. In that file, position should have 2 tabs after it, but be otherwise exactly as you have done it.

For the random earthquakes in the descr_disaster file, the ground shaking animation doesn't play unless a player army (or possibly an agent, I am not sure about them) is in the affected region and you hit the "locate position of event" button in the notification scroll that shows up at the beginning of the turn.

Also, the frequency number isn't absolute. You don't always seem to get the event happening exactly every x number of years. It seems more like the frequency of doing a random check to see if the disaster has occured. (Either that or I am incapable of correctly keeping track of elapsed years during testing). So if you give up after 2 years because you set the event frequency to 2 for your test, you won't see anything due to lack of patience.

There's one more side thing I forgot. I remember seeing a post by someone who claimed his shipborne army was destroyed in a storm when he was playing the alexander expansion. Someone who has it might want to test and see if they fixed the storm problem in that exe. Because they work in the prolog, I have suspected the problem with them is somehow map related, like wrong color sea pixels in one of the map tgas or something. If storms do work in alexander, it could be because they fixed the hardcode, or because they simply didn't repeat the map problem that's causing the issue in the imperial campaign.

[Marcus Camillus]

Thanks for mentioning the Alexander expansion. I have it. I too have been thinking it might have something to due with the RGB color of the sea areas. I've been suspecting it to be with the "map_ground_types.tga" file, but have not achieved any success yet. I have archive copies of the older RTW files and guess I need to recheck them for differences.

Is there any other map files than the "map_ground_types.tga" file that you think might be involved?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I assume you can only have one "set" of a disaster. It would be good to have one set of coordinates for floods that occur in winter (certain areas), and one set for floods that appear in summer (i.e, spring, summer, fall for 4ypt). Make one group 'true' for summer only, the other 'true' for winter only. Anyone know if that is possible?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I would add that floods are still bugged from what I see now testing (RTW 1.5 -mod folder build). That stinks. They look cool after all, and I had already researched where they needed to occur on our map: lots of coordinates.

Anyway, they do make it impossible to build watchtowers or forts anywhere in a province that has had a flood at any time in the past. Plus they negate movement bonuses roads give you it appears. For the entire province. Seems like the benefits aren't quite good enough considering the problems. BUT upon exiting the game and reloading it, those problems do go away. I can build the towers and forts and get movement bonuses back upon reloading the campaign (*after* the flood still).

edit: After trying it a second time, the problems don't go away. Gah. This thing is crazy. Would really like to add them, but if this is the case then I'll probably drop them.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Ok, another post on the matter.

Plagues can be historically set - I get that. But when it comes to them happening in any given city, does this "random" plague that can be set here by region/coordinates/terraintype work *in addition* to the types of plagues that can just "naturally" occur in a city if it is overcrowded? If plagues here are set to 'false', then would they not ever occur in overcrowded and unsanitary cities? It seems odd not to be able to just make them occur occasionally in overcrowded and unsanitary places instead of this random type of plague, which is set by region/coordinates/terraintype.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Finally...it looks like the reason that floods are causing these problems is this: they damage the roads structures in the province. These are hinterland buildings, so they should not be damaged, but they get hurt most times there are floods. If you delete map.rwm, then repair the roads, or if you repair the roads, and delete map.rwm, then you will have the movement benefits back, and you will also be able to build forts/towers again in the province. So you could probably play with floods and every few decades delete your map.rwm and "wipe" the bugs out of the provinces that have had floods.

I can understand the movement stuff, but not why building forts/towers is dependent upon that. Oh well. But I tried reloading a few times after floods - that alone isn't doing the trick. It takes deleting map.rwm, and repairing the damage. Before that action you couldn't build forts/towers, but afterwards you can. That's all I can figure out.

edit: Oh, by the way, for volcanoes - you can have "inactive" ones if you want. Just put the red dots on your features map, and they will appear, but then don't put their coordinates or regions into the descr_disasters.txt file. They will just sit there and not erupt, which is nice if you are wanting extinct volcanoes (there are some huge ones in Iran and Ethiopia and Turkey and the Sahara that are extinct, but look nice when included on the map).

[Poliocratos]

@Marcus Camillus: My suspect was the map_heights files. The code for handling them had changed twice, from 1.2 to 1.3 and then 1.3 to 1.5. Plenty of opportunities for odd effects to work into the system. I never got very far with it though, mostly due to a lack of a rigorous or scientific approach. This was an aside thing to play with occasionally for me, but outside of dumb luck, I think it would require fairly careful thinking and test documenting to get it to work.

[Solon de Atenas]

So... is imposible that the storm disaster apear in RTR PE???

[SigniferOne]

I'm having a great deal of trouble getting disasters to occur. Literally none of the events I've tried -- flood, volcano, earthquake -- really fire, after 20-30 turns going by. The closest I've gotten is have the volcano sometimes issue puffs of smoke during the Rebels' turn, and begin to issue lava, but return to normal texture as soon as my turn begins.

Any ideas on why this might be? Is there some "no disasters" switch that can be turned off somewhere?

[Finch]

I'm having a great deal of trouble getting disasters to occur. Literally none of the events I've tried -- flood, volcano, earthquake -- really fire, after 20-30 turns going by. The closest I've gotten is have the volcano sometimes issue puffs of smoke during the Rebels' turn, and begin to issue lava, but return to normal texture as soon as my turn begins.

Any ideas on why this might be? Is there some "no disasters" switch that can be turned off somewhere?

i have the same problem with the volcano it ends after the Ai's turn, how about increasing the frequency like maybe 200 years, in that way it will not be activated.

[BiggBudd]

Is it possible to just remove the plague feature from the game?

[Aradan]

The one that occurs when there's too much overpopulation? I don't think so. But it's easy to make sure squalor never gets high enough for it to appear.