Replacing the "core" MTW2 culture

[SigniferOne]

Has anyone had success with replacing all 6 of the game cultures? More particularly, with removing southern_european and completely replacing it with something else?

I am experiencing an extremely weird CTD in the campaign map: the "core" culture in our mod is 'hellenic', and all references and names have been appropriately renamed as such. The game loads fine. Images for all buildings (from /hellenic/ui/buildings) show up fine. Smaller images show up fine. Right-clicking on an already-built building, to show its larger image, is fine. Right-clicking on one of the possible buildings to construct, in the Construction window, CTDs the game.

This is extremely pecular, for multiple reasons. First, the game loads up, without any hiccups. Secondly there shouldn't even be hiccups, when for instance building images are missing, and all of my building image names are formatted properly anyway ([culture]_[building_name].tga). How do I know they're formatted properly? When I right-click on an existing building, its large image shows up properly.

What's more, this problem completely doesn't exist for any of the other cultures, i.e. for any of the cultures other than the first one listed in descr_cultures.txt, which in effect always acts like a default culture for everyone else. So this problem doesn't exist for other cultures listed below. I can right-click on an existing building, on a potential building, and all of their windows come up. I right-click on an existing building in a "hellenic" culture, it comes up fine. But if I right-click on one of the potential buildings to construct, it crashes.

[uanime5]

This guide explains how to add a new culture and may provide you with something you've missed out.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=84736

[Quark]

uanime5
Well that answers my early question

SigniferOne
Well the BC people added an africian culture, so they might be the best ones to query. Can you actually build possible buildings, and then right click on them Ok?

[Miraj]

Hmmm, strange. Never had that happen before. So basically it's CTDing when you want to see a building option's description, right?

You may want to check if you have added any building properties in your mod that was in RTW but not in M2TW. It's a wild guess, but all I can think of right now.

[SigniferOne]

Thanks guys (Quark etc) I'll look into it and get back to you.

Hey Miraj, yes it crashes in the description, but only for the core culture, and only if clicked from the build menu (not from settlement's existing buildings).

It's not some RTW issue, for this reason: I'm basically re-doing buildings from scratch on an MTW2 base, so there's not even a hint of RTW buildings. Secondly, I added a building from one of the other cultures to the core culture, which worked in the previous culture, but again crashed within the core one.

In a sense you're blessed, having to only modify an already existing base. I'm concerned about what this might mean for full-conversion mods.

[Miraj]

In a sense you're blessed, having to only modify an already existing base. I'm concerned about what this might mean for full-conversion mods.

Ummm, BC is a total/full conversion mod.

Anyways, we added a "African" culture. And the "Indian" culture is a simply a conversion of the existing mesoamerican culture into a middle-eastern like one.

So the basic mechanics of what you're doing is the same as us. Just make sure the issue is not with the "core_" buildings like the castle/city walls. Those may have critical hardcoded issues with it.

[Gigantus]

My guess is that all the interfaces are in the southern european folder and that somehow this messes things up when you want to replace this culture. Why don't you use the culture name and change everything else?

[SigniferOne]

That's my fall-back solution if nothing else ends up working. I'll still try a few more things.

[Gigantus]

I had tried once to use the mesoamerican culture but ended up with with having pyramids in my sieges, no matter what I did. Guess it is somehow related.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Sig do you happen to have a list of all the files required to do this?

[SigniferOne]

To do what exactly? Replacing a culture? That's trivial, you add a new culture, then replace all the references from the old culture to the new.

[GrnEyedDvl]

There are a few more files involved to do it right than are listed in that thread at the .org, music files stuff like that. I think I found what I was looking for and soon I will post a list of every file that references culture.

[SigniferOne]

Yes but here's the thing: I mainly used the ORG thread, and my own experimentation. And new cultures work just fine. But, it's the right-clicking on the 'main' core culture, which is listed first, that causes error. All other newly made cultures work just fine.

[GrnEyedDvl]

I thought the core culture problem got solved.

[SigniferOne]

Not yet... I haven't touched it recently and just left it in the background, but right-clicking still crashes the game, when you play the campaign with a new core culture.

[GrnEyedDvl]

I solved this Sig. Well at least I renamed southern_european and I dont get that crash. I started from scratch and ignored every other tutorial out there on this. I started with doing a search for the words "southern_european" and "culture" in every .txt and .xml file. I am writing a Tutorial for it now, but I will post the rough version here so you can see what I did and which files I changed.



Renaming Cultures
The goal here is to replace all cultures with new cultures, including the default southern_european culture. SignifierOne has reported that he successfully replaced all cultures but gets a CTD when right clicking on an item belonging to the default culture.


List of files:

date folder:
descr_cultures
descr_offmap_models
descr_sm_factions
descr_sounds
descr_sounds_music
descr_sounds_units_ambient
export_descr_ancillaries
export_descr_buildings
export_descr_unit

data\text folder:
expanded
export_buildings
shared

data\world\maps\base folder:
descr_sounds_music_types

First we are going to edit the entries in every text file listed above. The default culture is southern_european, the other cultures default to the settings for southern_european if they do not have specific entries set for that culture. Make sure you delete the .strings.bin files when you make changes in the text folder.

descr_cultures.txt
Replace all southern_european entries with the name of your new culture. Make sure you get them all as several other cultures use southern_european for portrait_mapping. Also make sure you replace all the paths that have folders named southern_european. I am using Notepad++, and I used the Replace All feature. Make sure you have the "Match whole word only" option checked. There are 48 entries that should be replaced.

Now would be a good time to copy some stuff over. Go to the vanilla\data\ui folder and copy the entire southern_european folder into your mod folder, and then rename it to your new culture name. Note that there is a folder inside the buildings folder named "bacck up", note the incorrect spelling. This folder may be deleted to save space. You should end up with a folder size of 141 MB. Also note that unless you take the time to rename all these buildings now, you will get the default building picture, RTW Barracks, when you run the game.


descr_offmap_models
Replace 2 entries


descr_sm_factions
Replace 8 entries


descr_sounds
Replace 1 entry


descr_sounds_music
Replace 1 entry


descr_sounds_units_ambient
Replace 1 entry


export_descr_ancillaries
I replaced 20 entries here, but I had already made some previous changes. You might have a few more.


export_descr_buildings
I already had my EDB file stripped of factions and cultures. Just do a replace all.


export_descr_unit
I replaced 7 entries but I might have already changed a few.


expanded
Replace 5 entries, make sure you match case. Do a search for southern with the Match whole world only unchecked so you are sure not to miss any.


export_buildings
I had 569 entries using the Replace feature. Do a search to make sure you get them all.


shared
Replace 2 entries.


event_strings
Replace 218 entries.


descr_sounds_music_types
Replace 1 entry.

I will get the details for each file finished tomorrow but you are probably familiar enough with them to take this and run with it.

[SigniferOne]

This proved helpful GED, thanks a lot

[GrnEyedDvl]

Welcome.