Mod Versions - Checklist

[Augustus Lucifer]

This thread will be used for making checklists and deciding when to "patch" in-team versions. Since anyone who has access here can edit others posts, we only need one checklist in one post for each version, and to link to it from this first post for organizational purposes.

Index

Internal Alpha 0.01

[Augustus Lucifer]

Internal Alpha 0.01 - Checklist

Graphics

- Resolve faction symbols. (Most are already done, we just need them in all the formats and in-game)
- Fix the cities on invalid tiles. (This might or might not be the cause of the persistent CTD, but it's the prime suspect right now)
- If possible, remove the team list from the Main Menu, as it is obsolete and unnecessary.
- Find better border colors for the factions that have white borders.
- Seek and destroy any pink pixels on the map.
- Change the splash screen to that map with our logo on it.
- Create one AUH Load Screen for temporary usage, so we don't have to see the medieval ones.
- Replace the faction maps on the faction select screen with blank pictures, or make the ones that correspond to our mod. Mainly just make it so the european map isn't leftover.
- (Optional) Pretty up the Song map area. (This is needed for the first preview anyways, which will likely happen around the same time as the alpha)

Animations
- Intregrate Niko's flag animnations, (edit descr_skeleton, rebuild animations)
- Intregrate Rusichi's horse and axe animnations (waiting on request to release them!)

Units
- Covert all milita units over to new model, insert additional ones Dao Militia, Spear Militia,Fire Lancers,Repeating Crossbow militia , Song Light Cav)
- Insert battle map Song general
- Add Song medium cavalry
- Add Song siege weapons: catapult & flamethrower

Mapping
- Prepare and place strat map wonder (Altars of Heaven & Earth, White Deer Grotto Academy, Liu He Pagoda, Beisi Pagoda)
- Create spy and assassin models (Optional for preview)
- Balance terrain around Lin'an

UI
- Insert new small_faction_logo onto to shared.tga

Coding

- Comment out WIP scripts that aren't fully functional, tie up loose ends to make functional where possible.
- Resolve expanded.txt entries for buildings to represent their building status and if possible modify Cog card.
- Remove orange building pics so there's visual integrity of unrepresented buildings.
- Add units for Song Dynasty, rest of Mongols, and Monks from Japan.
- Array units into respective buildings and set up recruitment tree for Song.
- Do more extensive descr_character tests to check strat map building limits.
- Structure the export_descr_ancillaries file and add a couple basic ancs to insure its integrity.
- Get rid of NE_Bodyguard from the export_descr_unit file.
- Decide whether or not to remove the smith building set from the EDB.
- Pretty up any descr_strat entries that served for testing or display purposes.
- Figure out why the strat buildings seem to be showing up as ships now.
- Fix the EDCT
- Resolve any and all leftover errors that come up in a Song Dynasty campaign or throughout game load in the log. (Do this last)

Other

- Dance a jig
- Create batch file, cfgfixer, and header file so that the preferences of the individual user are modified rather than replaced.
- Create Readme file.
- Set up Bug Report thread and issue disclaimer about what should be expected from the Alpha.
- Set up Code Submissions thread and policies for making changes to the files.
- (Optional) Compile with self-installer program.

[Augustus Lucifer]

I've replaced the faction maps with transparent images, so we don't have that european map there anymore. I've also changed the Song "Special Unit" to Zhamadao infantry and used one of the screenshots of them to fill in that area. Once we have the new symbols all worked out and get a faction description for Song, the faction select screen will look clean.

I noticed we're getting a pink box for a portrait of one of our admirals, not sure what that is but would be nice to resolve it. Also, seems like the strat models are showing as ships now for whatever reason.

Added item to list: Create one loading screen for temporary replace of medieval ones.

EDIT: I found why the buildings aren't showing, but not how to fix it yet. Something in the EDCT is making the file not read traits, but the lovely logging mechanism is telling me every error except the one that seems to be invalidating the file. Triggers are still firing but traits don't want to register.

This might be the solution to the pink image for the admiral as well:

19:42:40.406 [data.missing] [warning] Missing unit card data/ui/units/song/#cog.tga
19:42:44.515 [data.missing] [warning] Missing unit image data/ui/unit_info/song/cog_info.tga

[Augustus Lucifer]

Getting a weird error with the campaign script now. Seems they like to come in droves, don't even recall editing that file recently. :doh:

[Augustus Lucifer]

Fixed the EDCT problems. Had one trait with the wrong order for the optional sections. Really a terrible error to have since it doesn't specify any lines. Now I know what this error set means though, at least.

Still the campaign script one though, tried everything I could think of, and nothing came up during a forum search for the error, which is unusual. Gonna ask GED about it. At the moment I can load to the map, but it will always CTD on the first turn end.

As if that weren't enough, having some weird problem with my mouse. Have to click 7 times to double-click or so, and it keeps dragging things on click. Hopefully it is resolved by a restart.

EDIT: I made some changes to strat.txt, expanded.txt and shared.txt for the Strat Buildings. It no longer says Navy on the details scroll, it no longer says Admiral in front of the person's name. So there's nothing to indicate the building is an admiral, unless the cog starts showing up in the details area, but that is showing as a question mark that can't be clicked on. Only thing left to do in order to complete the illusion is modify the names file so the admiral can be called "Wonder". Then it will show wonder and in the mouseover the name of the building.

[Augustus Lucifer]

Some updates.

Got rid of NE_Bodyguard from EDU and BMDB.

Removed the smith buildings. Going to have this handled by the 8th level upgrades of military buildings. There's a few reasons for this. First of all, we aren't making armor upgrade models anyways, so it isn't significant in that department. Secondly, units weren't largely "upgraded" historically, the historical equipment division lies in large part with the unit division. A T1 unit might be nearly the same stock as a T3, they just have worse equipment and worse training. Allowing upgrades to fully bridge that gap makes the tiers system useless. So for those reasons, armor/weapon upgrades will be hard to get, and will signify a factionwide development in military technology that allows them to better outfit their units.

Perhaps most importantly, I finally got around to testing the descr_character since I had determined before that we didn't test it extensively enough. The results were as I feared, but expected, which is that we can only have 10 upgrades to each agent entry in the descr_character. The file doesn't seem to care if you add 200 lines, but the limitation is in the traits system. You need to use level traits to get those models(base is considered 0). The level effect will only read values up to 10. To test this I input a value of 25 for the effect, and put 25 lines in the descr_character with alternating models. Then I gave this new trait to a character at the start, and what happened was it showed the model for the Level 10 along with the missing string for Level 10, conclusively showing it maxes at 10.

What does this mean? It means we can only have 10 strat map buildings for each agent type and faction. If we only intend to use admirals, that means we only get 10 period, unless we add more factions to function like scripting does. If we branch out to other agents and find a way to make them work as well as admirals, then we can have somewhere between 70-90 per faction designated for the purpose of holding these agents(necessary since the faction needs to be frozen). So we will want to make a decision about if we want to branch into other agent types and explore that possibility. We will also want to decide, after finding the results of other agent types, if we want to add more factions for the purpose of holding strat buildings. If we get two factions for this purpose, and can make all the agents work, that caps us a little over 150+ to a max of 180. That should still be more than enough, but it will require more testing and diligence on our part than limitless admirals and one faction would have.

It's largely my fault for not looking into this sooner. Back when we first tested it, I was about to test 25 when you said you'd tested 99. Coder that I am, I should have known to proceed with my test anyways, and later I determined it was likely you didn't test it as was necessary. But for some reason I guess I thought if I put if off then it would magically not be a problem. So much for that. On the bright side it isn't as though we've commissioned insignificant strat map buildings or more than 100 of them, and it isn't as though we can't find an alternative solution, it will just take a bit more labor.

EDIT: I added an ancillary to verify the integrity of that file. Will get around to adding the rest of the mongols and the monk unit later today(assuming I still have it around here somewhere). Can't add the Song units until I receive them, obviously. Also can't really test much of anything as far as recruiting is concerned since it crashes every turn end until I figure out this campaign script problem. Sent GED a PM about it, the error is just plain weird.

[Augustus Lucifer]

Fixed my new CTD friend. Turned out it was a problem no one had before, but thankfully I had a good hunch after ruling out the obvious.

[Augustus Lucifer]

The ethnicity traits seem to be working swimmingly. Might be a gap somewhere in them but that will have to come up in extensive testing by people who are not me. :tongue:

Also, I found out why my unit adding roll ended with the Dismounted Keshik Guard. The bmdb entry I was sent was inexplicably faulty :(. Not only was it missing some line count numbers(which I easily caught), it also referenced improper texture names, and was missing two lines from the end of it. I found the one with all the -0.9324529 -5385 nonsense pretty easily, but it took WinMerge and a prayer to determine an animation line was missing, since I still have no idea how that section works.

I didn't add the Ba'atut Camel Archers because you said to "forget the camel guys for now" on MSN when we discussed it. I also didn't add the Ba'atur Warriors, because you told me to "use the medium one", but none of the textures or models had anything about medium in them, so I wasn't sure what you meant.

In the process of adding the General and Captain, as well as the armored horse. It doesn't really say anywhere which unit is supposed to use the armored horse, so I'll leave it just as a bmdb entry for now. We're gonna need a more efficient way of determining this sort of thing so I'm not trying to piece it together, hopefully the unit index I need to get working on will help with that.

In other news, I think we need to have naming conventions for some of these files. I thought I didn't have the mongol faction heir strat texture, but it was just called something weird compared to the others. I think:

faction_agentname.cas
faction_agentname.tga
faction_agentname.tga.dds

Should be the standard for strat map models, with multi-name agents being separated by _ (such as mongol_faction_heir.tga). I didn't add the heir in yet, because I only have one version of the texture with just .dds, and that file is notoriously picky if it doesn't get its names right.

EDIT: Hit a little speed bump, but the Custom Battles seem to be working now. Horses and the Daikyu Bushi for all except taira are alien colored, but I know why that is so it's just a matter of adding those entries. Going through a process of renaming all of the mongol CAS and Texture files because I like a bit less organized chaos. Each unit has a different CAS and Texture/Normal even if it is used by multiple, this should enable us to change them separately if we want, but also it isn't any real trouble to change it on 1 and just rename it to the other as well. The exception being dismounted units, which use the same as their mounted brethren, and attachment sets, which still have their wacky names for now.

EDIT #2: The Dismounted Keshik Guard animation is really :wub:ed up or something. The spears they should be holding are floating above their heads. We will want a different animation for them, here's the entry:

23 dismounted_keshik_guard 
1 1 
49 unit_models/_Units/mongols/keshik_guard_lod0.mesh 6400 
1 
7 mongols 
56 unit_models/_Units/mongols/textures/keshik_guard.texture 
63 unit_models/_Units/mongols/textures/keshik_guard_normal.texture 
52 unit_sprites/mongols_Mongol_Heavy_Lancers_sprite.spr 
1 
7 mongols 
59 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Asian_mingols_diff.texture 
59 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Asian_mingols_norm.texture 0  
1 
4 None 
11 MTW2_Bowman 
9 MTW2_Mace 2 
19 MTW2_Bowman_Primary 
14 fs_test_shield 2 
17 MTW2_Mace_Primary 
14 fs_test_shield 
16 -0.090000004 0 0 -0.34999999 0.80000001 0.60000002

Or maybe it's the attachmentset, I have no idea. It doesn't say Horse in there anywhere so I can't see why it looks like they think they are on horses.

EDIT #3: Okay some weird things happening in the custom battles. I got a CTD about 5 minutes in and I'm not entirely sure why, the log was uninformative. Additionally, when I charged the enemy the unit stopped like 10m short of engaging and just stood there. Additionally, the captain unit seemed to run out in front. Not a clue what could be causing this, maybe something to do with mass but I haven't really messed with those values at all. Also could be the BAI.

EDIT #4: On the bright side, the Mongol General and Mongol Captain battle map models are working now. I think the CTD and the weird animation or whatever on the Dismounted Keshik Guard are related, as well as them stopping short. When I clicked them and told them to attack after they stopped, it CTDed once they got within a certain range. Another possibility is the sprites. We are using invalid sprites for most of the units, and that is listed as a possible reason for CTD, so getting sprites would be advantageous.

[Yelü Dashi]

thats all very odd. the dismounted keshik don't possess spears, they have bows and maces.

this is the entry I am using for them and it works fine, albeit in SS:

24 dismounted_heavy_archers
1 4
71 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/dismounted_heavy_archers_lod0.mesh 121
71 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/dismounted_heavy_archers_lod0.mesh 900
71 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/dismounted_heavy_archers_lod0.mesh 2500
71 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/dismounted_heavy_archers_lod0.mesh 6400
3
7 mongols
73 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/textures/AS_Lamellar_mingols.texture
73 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/textures/AS_Lamellar_nirmal2.texture
52 unit_sprites/mongols_Mongol_Heavy_Lancers_sprite.spr
7 kwarezm
73 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/textures/AS_Lamellar_kwarezm.texture
73 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/textures/AS_Lamellar_normal3.texture
56 unit_sprites/mongols_Dismounted_Heavy_Archers_sprite.spr
8 timurids
74 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/textures/AS_Lamellar_timurids.texture
72 unit_models/_Units/AS_Lamellar_Heavy/textures/AS_Lamellar_normal.texture
57 unit_sprites/timurids_Dismounted_Heavy_Archers_sprite.spr
3
7 mongols
59 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Asian_mungols_diff.texture
59 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Asian_mxngols_norm.texture 0
7 kwarezm
59 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Asian_mongols_diff.texture
59 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Asian_mongols_norm.texture 0
8 timurids
60 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Asian_timurids_diff.texture
60 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Asian_timurids_norm.texture 0
1
4 None
11 MTW2_Bowman
9 MTW2_Mace 2
19 MTW2_Bowman_Primary
14 fs_test_shield 2
17 MTW2_Mace_Primary
14 fs_test_shield
16 -0.090000004 0 0 -0.34999999 0.80000001 0.60000002

So it could be the lods ? maybe post a screenshot ?

[Augustus Lucifer]

I doubt it's the LODs, I recall one person mentioning that being a problem years ago, but since then I've heard conflicting accounts about it. Having four LODs with the same poly mesh only increases load as it switches between them. It might have something to do with the attachment set since it looks like our attachments are different.

I've attached the model, texture, and attachments to this post so you can look at it in 3DS Max if you want. The names used are just renames, as stated above. The attachment might be the wrong one, I'm not sure. Animations are also a contributing factor, since when I spoke with Aradan he mentioned that animations are tied into damage dealing, a faulty system but how it is.

He said it could be a shield problem as well. They were attacking horse archers so they might have been trying to call an invalid shield raising animation. This is a possibility since like I stated, the entry from Strelac or whoever on BC for the dismounted was cut off and faulty, so some of it is ad-libbed(though when I compare it to yours it matches).

[Augustus Lucifer]

I've created the Readme. I'm quite pleased with it, much more comprehensive than I had initially intended for it to be. It is attached to this post and will be included in the install. With regards to the installer, it will be definitely utilized, and I have already done a test compilation and install to my local drive with the NSIS software.

[Yelü Dashi]

Updated Checklist.

[Augustus Lucifer]

This is a note to self. After setting the log to trace(catches all), the Turn 1 CTD seems to happen after it looks for a folder which doesn't exist containing something about a rebel captain and dying. It's curious in that it should look in the vanilla directories for it, but it doesn't for some reason I guess. May or may not be the problem, writing this down so I can reference this next time it happens and compare the log.

Things to do that don't necessarily need to be in 0.05:

• Find a way to stop the "Defeat Imminent" event from popping up on Turn 1 due to the way the victory conditions script works.
• Fix the problem of the "Victory!" message firing every turn. Fixed

[Yelü Dashi]

I'm pretty much done as far as my bits are concerned. There does seem to something odd happening on the battlemap, that you've referred to before in terms of unit responsivenes, but it seems unrelated to the models themselves. I'm happy to upload and let you add in anything you've progressed on and create the installer. Keith's gonna take a look at the map after that.

My changes are pretty vast, especially where siege weapsons and animations are concerned so it makes sense for me to upload the whole lot.Sound ok ?

[Augustus Lucifer]

Here's the exact log for the Turn 1 CTD:

00:42:16.735 [system.io] [trace] file open,,39459688,217308
00:42:16.735 [system.io] [info] open: found auh/data/ui/east_asian/eventpics/end_of_turn.tga (from: E:\Modding Files\Calm Before The Storm)
00:42:16.766 [system.io] [trace] exists: 4109: caching directory: auh/data/ui/captain banners/dead
00:42:16.766 [system.io] [info] exists: directory non-existant: auh/data/ui/captain banners/dead
00:42:16.766 [system.io] [info] exists: missing auh/data/ui/captain banners/dead/captain_card_slave.tga
00:42:16.781 [system.io] [info] exists: missing auh/data/ui/captain banners/dead/captain_card_slave.tga
00:42:16.813 [system.io] [info] exists: missing auh/data/ui/captain banners/dead/captain_card_slave.tga
00:42:16.813 [system.io] [info] exists: missing auh/data/ui/captain banners/dead/captain_card_slave.tga
00:42:16.828 [system.io] [info] exists: missing auh/data/ui/captain banners/dead/captain_card_slave.tga
00:42:17.031 [system.rpt] [error] Uh oh. This isn't good. No idea why, but exiting now. Sorry pal.