Curiosity in descr_cultures

[Augustus Lucifer]

Hey all,

I've been playing around with descr_cultures recently, exploring what I thought might be some possibilities as far as differentiation on model used within each culture. Have not achieved a lot of success in this respect. The first thing I tried was adding a different entry after the normal like this:

village
{
	normal				data/models_strat/residences/southern_european_village.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	song				data/models_strat/residences/chinese_large_town.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}

That got me a lovely error which said "expected } found song", implying that it can't have more than the "normal" line within the brackets, as is possible in some of the other files.

The second thing I tried was adding a second bracketed area to the village entry, with the same faction deviation, like this:

village
{
	normal				data/models_strat/residences/southern_european_village.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}
{
	song				data/models_strat/residences/chinese_large_town.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}

This time the error told me it expected another settlement level name, which implies there can't be two bracketed areas attached to one settlement level either. Next thing I tried was adding a new settlement level name and calling it village2, like this:

village
{
	normal				data/models_strat/residences/southern_european_village.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}
village2
{
	normal				data/models_strat/residences/chinese_large_town.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}

But again, a nice little error. This time it didn't recognize the settlement level, implying that you need to use the regular levels that are specified. The next thing I tried was using the same entry again, like this:

village
{
	normal				data/models_strat/residences/southern_european_village.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}
village
{
	song				data/models_strat/residences/chinese_large_town.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}

This time it didn't have a problem with most of it, but it said that it expected 'normal' and found 'song'. The last thing I tried was duplicating the original entry and adding a new model line. Like this:

village
{
	normal				data/models_strat/residences/southern_european_village.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}
village
{
	normal				data/models_strat/residences/chinese_large_town.CAS,		settlement_eastern_level_1
	card				data/ui/southern_european/cities/graeco-roman_village.tga
}

The result was it worked, to an extent. When I added the second village entry, it didn't seem to have problems with there being two village entries. Instead, it used the last read village entry for the in-game representation, so when I loaded the game, my villages were using the chinese_large_town.CAS model from our mod.

Right now I'm exploring different things, such as trying new lines and variables in different files in the hopes of querying a specific entry from the file, since it seems obvious you can specify as many "village" lines as you like with all different models within one culture, but default it will only read the last one.

The line "normal" is what struck me the most about the file. If the line is normal that implies that it should accept something which is abnormal, but that doesn't seem to be the case. This obviously isn't the faction name, but it could be something else. At any rate I'm having fun playing with it even if the end result is it can't be salvaged.

Cheers,
Augustus

[Azim]

The line "normal" is what struck me the most about the file. If the line is normal that implies that it should accept something which is abnormal, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I think that in terms of modeling, a normal is the 3D mesh of an object. That would explain the .CAS files. I'm not a modeler, so please tell me if I am wrong.

[Augustus Lucifer]

I think that in terms of modeling, a normal is the 3D mesh of an object. That would explain the .CAS files. I'm not a modeler, so please tell me if I am wrong.

Well the "normal map" isn't the entire model but an extent of the model to my knowledge, in a similar way to a UV Map, which adds on to the base model. I'm not a modeler either so this may not be the case, and that definition of normal did cross my mind as far as the file is concerned, but didn't seem likely to be what they were referring to.

The problem with the cultures file it would seem, is in the files that use it. The sm_factions is the file that really uses it, because it specifies which culture that faction takes models from, which is then used in the descr_strat in the faction_creator line to have the model show up in-game. The problem here is that the sm_factions doesn't seem to specify any subsets of the cultures file within the culture, which would point it to a specific entry for "village" rather than the last read entry.

Cheers,
Augustus