How to make new info cards

[headsh0ts]

This is how ive made my new info cards for The Long Road. I hope this can inspire some people to improve on the dire cards CA made Its very time consuming, but effective when theyre all done.

First i record a battle of the faction i want, and then open it in cin-ed.. I set the cin-ed settings to high, and simply breeze through hitting print screen for each unit, and pasting the image into photoshop... (if you have a decent pc this should be okay, with an older machine, cin-ed can be quite slow and sluggish to use at high settings. I found turning off bloom made a big difference to me).

With all the images for a faction done, i copy them onto a new document to make editing easier.....





I hit auto contrast, then maybe saturate it, bring out highlights, emphasise shadows a bit etc nothing fancy. (i hanvt chosen the best example to show this im afraid...)



I then take any one of the cards used for any fleet in the game, erase the picture, then resize the image to 432, 196 pixels (at this size, when you view any cavalry in the campaign, the stats dont overlap a bit of the UI and look rubbish )





Then, select the inside of the frame, copy the the first image youll be using, and select "paste into" on the frame"...



Resize it, sharpen it, then add an "inner glow" to that layer with the settings shown, and your done!!

Just save the final image as a .tga file, and put it in the correct faction folder found in C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\data\ui\unit_info.

Remember the file must have "_info" at the end "dismounted_byzantine_lancers_info". And the unit name must be identical to the one found in the EDU and MODEL DB file.





An example of one af my favourite cards Ive made so far used in game



Thats it from start to finish.

Hope someone finds it useful.

[Spartan_Shame]

Thanks for this headsh0ts, Good tut.

[=NF= Vasileios_the2nd]

And the unit name must be identical to the one found in the EDU and MODEL DB file.

This line saved me from many headaches! Thanks for info and insight! Very nice!

[=NF= Vasileios_the2nd]

I have a problem. When I try to put 2 different faction's unit_info pics to the same unit, I get this in the log file:

"00:02:17.171 [script.err] [error] Script Error in my mod/data/export_descr_unit.txt, at line 2002, column 1
Unknown identifier when new type expected.
00:02:17.171 [data.invalid] [error] DATABASE_TABLE error found : error reading record from file my mod/data/export_descr_unit.txt."

For example, trying to give GBodyguard of Venice a new unit_info picture, and GBodyguard of Milan a new, different one.
I create this new entry in the EDU:

type SE Bodyguard
dictionary SE_Bodyguard ; General's Bodyguard
category cavalry
class heavy
voice_type General
banner faction main_cavalry
banner holy crusade_cavalry
soldier SE_Bodyguard, 16, 0, 1
mount barded horse
mount_effect elephant -4, camel -4
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, very_hardy, can_withdraw, general_unit
formation 2, 4.4, 3, 6, 2, square
stat_health 2, 0
stat_pri 13, 8, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, spear, 25, 1
;stat_pri_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 14, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
;stat_sec_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 7, 5, 4, metal
;stat_armour_ex 7, 8, 0, 0, 5, 4, 4, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 3
stat_ground 0, 0, -4, 0
stat_mental 11, normal, trained
stat_charge_dist 45
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 820, 250, 120, 95, 820, 1, 200
armour_ug_levels 3, 4
armour_ug_models SE_Bodyguard, SE_Bodyguard_ug1
ownership spain, portugal, milan, venice, papal_states, sicily
era 0 spain, portugal, milan, venice, papal_states, sicily
era 1 spain, portugal, milan, venice, papal_states, sicily
info_pic_dir data\ui\unit_info\milan\SE_Bodyguard_info.tga
info_pic_dir data\ui\unit_info\venice\SE_Bodyguard_info.tga
;unit_info 13, 0, 32

and then when I load the game it ctd. Can you tell me what I make wrong? And is there any other way to give a unit a new unit_info picture?

[Krieg_Boy]

In that gothic knights card, that unit is back flipping to avoid theyre lances!!

[Mythic_Commodore]

You shouldn't be editing the EDU file. You should just copy the unit card and put it in the folders of both factions. Oh, and by the way, nice tutorial!

[Praetorian1]

Great work is there a way to give 2 hitpoints to a unit????