Creating new starting characters

[Johnniecash]

I´m having quite som difficulties creating new starting characters.

Even if I copy an existing starting character in the desc_strat file, change his name to a a proper one (one in the names.txt), give him proper age (so it match the fathers) and limit the offsprings to maximum 4 the game still won´t accept it and start the campaign.
Is there something I´m missing? The only clue is I´ve noticed the starting portraits are always the same so there could be another file I need to change.

So is there anyone who could give me a good explanation on how to create a starting character? I´ve looked in the wiki but that only covered for rome and didn´t make things work and could´t fint anything good enough here. Or if anyone could refer to a manual/description on how to do it I would be very glad.

Many thanks for help!

[cankles]

I've been doing this myself recently, and there is a couple thingsyou have to check. Make sure his starting coordinates are in an unobstructed area. Also, I can't get the family thing to work without my game crashing so I just don't bother to try to add him to the family tree.

[Johnniecash]

Well the thing is I would like to have him in the family tree. After all, it´s the starting dynasty I´m trying to change/redo. And I presume this is where my main problem is because as I see it my character "info" looks exactly the same as other character "infos" in the desc.strat.txt.

Are there any rules on what kind of characters must start? For now I´ve set up so there´s on faction leader, with a wife, and 4 children, where one is a male adult (17yo) and three of them are premature (10,5,4yo, 2 girls one boy). Something wrong with that?

I also tested to add the surname in the relative line for all except the wife, but didn´t do anything.

[Johnniecash]

This is the log over my characters that I´ve worked with. Can anyone spot an error?
notes: The surname Lavard is not an original danish name, but I put it in the desc_names.txt and in the names.txt and deleted the existing names.txt.bin.
notes2: This is the character part of the danish section in the desc_strat for the mod Deus Lo Vult.

character Valdemar Lavard, named character, male, leader, age 49, x 244, y 296
traits Factionleader 1 , GoodCommander 2 , NaturalMilitarySkill 1 , GoodRiskyAttacker 2 , PublicFaith 1 , GoodAdministrator 1 , ReligionStarter 1, CharacterAges 1, TurnsAlive 2, PresentAtGameStart 1
ancillaries crown_denmark, shieldbearer
army
unit NE Bodyguard exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Peasants exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Norse Archers exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Peasant Archers exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0

character Knud Lavard, named character, male, heir, age 16, x 260, y 293
traits Factionheir 1 , LoyaltyStarter 1 , NaturalMilitarySkill 2 , ReligionStarter 1 , CharacterAges 1, TurnsAlive 1, PresentAtGameStart 1
army
unit NE Bodyguard exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Norse Archers exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Norse Archers exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Norse Archers exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Norse Archers exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0

character Svend, spy, male, age 20, x 238, y 281
traits GoodSpy 2, CharacterAges 1, SpyTurnsAlive 1

character Jon Arneborg, admiral, male, age 24, x 228, y 286
traits sailor 1
army
unit longboat exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0

character Harald, priest, male, age 40, x 235, y 295
traits NaturalPriestSkill 2 , GoodDenouncer 2 , PriestLevel 1, CharacterAges 1, PriestTurnsAlive 2

character Toke, merchant, male, age 30, x 235, y 292
traits NaturalMerchantSkill 2 , GoodMerchant 1, CharacterAges 1, MerchantTurnsAlive 1


character_record Sophie, female, age 40, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Valdemar, male, age 10, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Ingeborg, female, age 5, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Helena, female, age 4, alive, never_a_leader

relative Valdemar Lavard, Sophie, Knud Lavard, Valdemar Lavard, Helena Lavard, Ingeborg Lavard, end


edit: I got it workning now but only my faction leader shows up. And if I delete all surnames except the first Valdemars (the faction leader) it doesn´t start up at all.

[Aedan2812]

I don't know too much about modding but i think i might be able to help.

go to this section:

character_record Sophie, female, age 40, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Valdemar, male, age 10, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Ingeborg, female, age 5, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Helena, female, age 4, alive, never_a_leader

relative Valdemar Lavard, Sophie, Knud Lavard, Valdemar Lavard, Helena Lavard, Ingeborg Lavard, end

now see hoe in the relative bit Helena comes before Ingeborg, but in the character_record part Ingeborg is older than Helena. This may be causing the problem.

Try changing the order of these two sections around so that they correspond to each other.

[Johnniecash]

Good point, however that didn´t solve it. I changed to:

character_record Sophie, female, age 40, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Hans, male, age 10, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Ingeborg, female, age 5, alive, never_a_leader
character_record Helena, female, age 4, alive, never_a_leader

relative Valdemar Lavard, Sophie, Knud Lavard, Hans, Ingeborg, Helena, end

but no change. To me this looks exactly the same as the usual setup for relative character. Strange enough it seems to accept if I give all the characters the Lavard surname, but then only the king (Valdemar) appears in the family tree.
After reading somewhere the file could be space sensitive (?!) I even copied a relative line from another faction to the current line and just changed the names to those of my faction. But with no luck.

edit: Tested to remove the surname completely, no luck. Another test with all having the surname knudsen, no luck (doublechecked that all lines containing the names were changed on both tests).

What the hell is wrong!?!?

[Aedan2812]

What if there is another file that needs to be changed maybe in the data folder or the text folder. Changing descr_names.txt to read-only wouldn't help would it?

If everything is correct in the descr_strat file then logically the problem would be in a different files. Maybe find out which files contain data relevant to the family tree and see if you can change anything there.

Sorry i can't look this up, M2 isnt installed on the computer im using =[

Edit: try using a faction that has the same amount of children as a base. If the relative line is space sensitive maybe it needs to be something like spouse seperated by one space then offspring seperated from parents by tab then offspring seperated from offspring by one space. its just a thought

[Johnniecash]

Yeah, I´ve started to think of another file being the cause. As for the notes, so far I´ve managed, before this attempt of changes, to create new prematures as well as completely remove characters. So it might be the changes in specific characters and their relations to things around them that cause the problem.
As I mentioned I also noticed that the same portrait always appear for a starting character, no matter what changes you make to him.
This got me thinking there´s a another file containg info on the character, such as his specific portrait, that conflict with the changes. However I haven´t even managed to locate the folder containing portraits (except for the one with prematures and wifes) so don´t know much on that subject.

I´ve also tried the space sensitive approach, using the relation file of some greek/byzantine family which contained 6 relatives (man, wife, adult/premature children) and only changing the names of theirs to mine. No luck with that however.

About the read only thing it seems not applied on the files (no question when I saved the files) so I presume they were not read only before and therefor should work after the changes without read only.

So out of ideas and no idea where/how to look for other folder/files containing family info I don´t know what to do really.
No one else on the forum that have had this problem, I mean quite many on the forum modding must have made attempts to change the family tree?

[Lusted]

You must make sure you use tab to create the correct space between each name, don't use spaces. So after each name and it's comma, press tab to create the correct gap between that name and the next one.

[Johnniecash]

You must make sure you use tab to create the correct space between each name, don't use spaces. So after each name and it's comma, press tab to create the correct gap between that name and the next one.

So to be sure the relative line is correct it should be

Relative*one klick on tab*Valdemar Knudsen,*one klick on tab*Sophie,*klick*Knud...and so on and it should not be a problem with at least that line?

edit: Testet the above way with no luck No it looks like this:

relative Valdemar Knudsen, Sophie, Knud Knudsen, Hans, Ingeborg, Helena, end

No spaces, only a tab after relative and comma

edit2: I looked on the other relative lines in the desc_strat and found that in some there are two tabs, some there are none and some is a mix of one or two tabs... strange. Also, just to make sure, there are no gameengine rules telling there must be at least one princess or any such things?

[Lusted]

Then it would suggest your problem is somewhere else. What does the last line of your system.log.txt say?

[Johnniecash]

Arghhh, someone kill me, or at leat cut of my modding hands!

Or in other words, problem found... and it wasn´t the characters who were wrong. Instead, I had totally forgotten I had switched a settlement to a castle settlement by simply copying a similiar settlement to the place... without changing province! Stupid stupid me.

On the other hand, this was a change I made while trying to figure out the character problem so my guess is the initial problem was the space sensitive thing (no/to many tabs) which where the last thing I changed. So after all I got helped by you guys and now I know A LOT more about modding characters And by the way, the log exposed the problem, thanks for the advice looking there as it gave good information on exactly what was the problem and where it was located.


Thanks for your patience and help!