what? gap in building unavailable at level zero??

[Spartan 666]

so it's all fine but it still crashes..

[CaesarVincens]

Are you working with the latest released version of DTW? If so, I can try out the EDB myself.

[Spartan 666]

Yes, latest version. We made minor changes to campaign files, but it doesn't matter, right?

I think one the few differences is the colonies system (native ureachable and a 4th level added)...

[Spartan 666]

Never mind Caesar, I deleted EVERYTHING and started remaking that changes from the beginning. Now I have this EDB and it works!! ...but I don't see many differences with the non-working versions I posted before...

Now the problem will be making egypt and thrace choose between one of the two kind of barracks without crashing...

[CaesarVincens]

Never mind Caesar, I deleted EVERYTHING and started remaking that changes from the beginning. Now I have this EDB and it works!! ...but I don't see many differences with the non-working versions I posted before...

Now the problem will be making egypt and thrace choose between one of the two kind of barracks without crashing...

As long as your file is working, I think we can work out getting both Thrace and Egypt to work.

[Squid]

The problem may have been a stray invisible character, those sometimes appear in files . . . they're irritating.

[Ramashan]

Glad to hear you got it working.

Regarding the barracks choices, have you thought about using a branched building tree? So, at the start those factions have the choice of which barracks to build and then they're either on one branch of the tree or another?

[Spartan 666]

@Squid: what do you mean with "stray invisible characters"?

@Ramashan: no, I didn't consider that...the idea is quite good actually! Something like the first level is in common, and then the tree splits in two. But this would also mean that, for example, if seleucids capture an egyptian city, they have to smash the barracks down and build their own before recruiting troops. I'll think about it, thanks for the idea!

@Caesar: I hope so, to be sure I backed up the whole mod folder, to avoid strange jokes. So for egypt it should be something like this, right?

barracks_1_greek requires factions { greek, } and building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 or factions { egyptian, } and building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 and not building_present_min_level barracks_eastern

+rep to all of you for help (except Caesar who has disabled rep...)

[CaesarVincens]

@Caesar: I hope so, to be sure I backed up the whole mod folder, to avoid strange jokes. So for egypt it should be something like this, right?

barracks_1_greek requires factions { greek, } and building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 or factions { egyptian, } and building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 and not building_present_min_level barracks_eastern

+rep to all of you for help (except Caesar who has disabled rep...)

Actually, you want:

barracks_1_greek requires building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 and factions { greek, } or factions { egyptian, } and building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 and not building_present_min_level barracks_eastern barracks_1_eastern

I've found duel requirements are more likely to work when you keep like objects next to each other with an "or", if that makes sense. Like I said before, if you want, I can help with making both Egypt and Thrace duel culture. Also, I have experience working with split trees that interweave (they go back and forth, no need to remove any but the last level).

I'm glad you've got this working now. I've had my own experiences with annoying, almost untraceable bugs.


P.S. Just 'cause someone has rep disabled doesn't mean you can't still give it.

[Squid]

Not all characters are visible when you open a file (e.g. think about spaces and tabs) sometimes the game inserts these characters as well as other non-standard characters into files in the text directory. It's really annoying because you need to remove all those characters for every entry to work correctly. The easiest thing to do is make the files read-only when you're done editing them, then no abnormal characters can be inserted by the game.

[Spartan 666]

@ Squid: so, the game invents characters because there are wrong entries? Sorry but it's a bit confusing...

@ Caesar: so you say CTDs can be caused also by these tiny errors?

Anyway, I managed to get working both the choice for egypt and for thrace, and I think I finally found out what was wrong with those EDBs, but only regarding thrace!! Stupid me…thrace is a greek faction, but I used a line like this:

barracks_1_greek requires factions { greek, } and building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 or factions { egyptian, } and building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 and not building_present barracks_eastern or factions { thrace, } and building_present_min_level hinterland_culture_west west_colony_1 and not building_present barracks_barbarian

so, Thracians were able to build the barracks with both the two sections, the first for being a greek faction, the second for having a special condition. And I think this caused the CTDs when EDB was supposed to be all right, maybe because the game reads “little” errors (which cause CTD with error message) before “critical” errors (CTD with no message), so leaving a “little” error allowed the game to start, fixing it made it crash.

Now, instead of greek I specified all the greek factions (seleucid, greek_cities,…) all but thrace, which has separate conditions. This MAY explain everything, why everytime I followed your instructions and fixed “little” CTDs, then I got “critical” CTDs, caused by the “critical” error of thrace having a double group of requirements.

Now I use this EDB (quite complicate with some barracks requirements but it works!).

Thanks for your offer of helping me making duel culture, but I hope this won't cause any more trouble. I was really going insane for these (almost) unexplainable bugs and CTDs.



Oh, now I have a problem with walls (text only, decr_walls and EDB), do you guys have any experience with it? Maybe we can solve this here without opening a new thread..

[CaesarVincens]

Glad you've figured it out.
And that EDB works out fine, Thrace and Egypt can build each type of barracks?

We can't help your problem with walls if you don't explain it.

[Spartan 666]

mmm...I still have to try but I think yes!

The problem is this: in DTW uses new wooden walls, similar to those in M2TW (taller and soldiers can walk on them). Wooden walls are level 1 (level 0 is the palisade), so the only siege equipment allowed are rams. A possible solution was to recruit units with ladders, smaller than normal ladders for stone walls (level 2). This caused terrible bugs because the AI does not know how to utilize them.

We thought to do this. Replace the vanilla ladders for stone walls with the smaller ladders for wooden walls, moving wooden walls to level 2 (so it’s possible to build ladders) and stone walls to level 3, instead of large stone walls, so it’s not possible to build ladders anymore.

The game, however, does not allow to “skip” a wall level. If in descr_walls.txt (attached) I change the level for the walls and put wooden walls to 2 and stone walls to 3, and then I edit EDB.txt (attached) to match the new levels, nothing happens. I tried to look on the campaign map: settlements which have stone walls actually have the new wooden walls, and settlements that should have the new wooden walls get the default palisade. I think it's all a matter of wrong entries in these 2 files.

[makanyane]

mmm...I still have to try but I think yes!

The problem is this: in DTW uses new wooden walls, similar to those in M2TW (taller and soldiers can walk on them). Wooden walls are level 1 (level 0 is the palisade), so the only siege equipment allowed are rams. A possible solution was to recruit units with ladders, smaller than normal ladders for stone walls (level 2). This caused terrible bugs because the AI does not know how to utilize them.

We thought to do this. Replace the vanilla ladders for stone walls with the smaller ladders for wooden walls, moving wooden walls to level 2 (so it’s possible to build ladders) and stone walls to level 3, instead of large stone walls, so it’s not possible to build ladders anymore.

The game, however, does not allow to “skip” a wall level. If in descr_walls.txt (attached) I change the level for the walls and put wooden walls to 2 and stone walls to 3, and then I edit EDB.txt (attached) to match the new levels, nothing happens. I tried to look on the campaign map: settlements which have stone walls actually have the new wooden walls, and settlements that should have the new wooden walls get the default palisade. I think it's all a matter of wrong entries in these 2 files.

Not quite clear on problem with this - are all cultures 2nd tier walls the new wooden ones?

If so to sort the ram / ladder problem try leaving the wall levels as they were in original, just change the models its using for that level (strat and battlemap) and change simply the line
siege_tower_size too_small
to
siege_tower_size small
etc... for the relevant entry
eg don't try changing the number of the wall level - just re-assign the equipment one level down and re-size it to suit the wall heights.

(found when testing in M2TW that the relationship between the settlement / wall level seems to ignore any wall_level you specify in EDB and just uses the descr_walls.txt entries in order instead, suspect this is similar)

[dvk901]

Another 'tip' about editing 'export_descr_buildings.txt' that I'm not sure a lot of people are aware of. NEVER use the 'Tab' key in this file unless you use a text editor that you can customize so that 'tabs' are actually 'spaces'. I occasionally (just to be safe) use a text editor that is able to show 'hidden characters' in a text file, and then remove any 'tab' key charcters I've accidently put in there. They look like long 'arrows' pointing to the right. Each 'arrow' represents 4 spaces with the space bar key. Why is this important? Well, RTW has trouble reading a 'tab' key ONLY in this file, for some stupid reason. You can use the tab key in any other file, but not this one. The game seems to 'tolerate' a tab key for a while, but you will notice over time that the more 'tab' keys there are, the slower the game will load. (I have actually tested and proven this is so.) However, 'getting slower' is one thing.....CTD'ing with no error is another. And that's exactly what will happen when the number of 'tab' key characters in this file reaches a point where RTW decides "I can't read this file anymore".

Some time ago I thought I had completely lost RS1.5 because it started crashing with no error, and I could find NOTHING wrong with it. I checked every single line visually is EDB.txt (which I suspected was the problem), but there was NOTHING WRONG....that I could see. So I completely rebuilt the entire mod from scratch, got it all working again, and then it started doing the same thing again!! Finally, I downloaded 'Notepad++'...a free text editor, and enabled 'show all characters'. I looked at the Vanilla file and compared it to mine, and the Vanilla file had NO tab key characters in it. Mine was full of them. So I replaced all of them with spaces, and low and behold, the mod not only WORKED again, it loaded a lot faster.

[Spartan 666]

that's really interesting dvk!

I will check it immediately, since I also lost my copy of RS 1.5 with nearly 2 years of personal changes... and maybe that could be the problem!

[Spartan 666]

Yes, all factions should use the new wooden walls.

So the files I have to edit are these:
-descr_engines.txt
-descr_walls.txt
-export_descr_buildings.txt

Is this enough or are there more files to edit?

EDIT: I tried to return the level walls as they were originally, but I can't find a way to make ladders buildable against level 1 walls (wooden walls). All I can do is editing descr_engines.txt and change the ladders\towers height and a few more things..

[makanyane]

EDIT: I tried to return the level walls as they were originally, but I can't find a way to make ladders buildable against level 1 walls (wooden walls). All I can do is editing descr_engines.txt and change the ladders\towers height and a few more things..

Ugh sorry, the thing I suggested before (just changing the siege_tower_size too_small line in descr_walls) - works like a charm in M2TW - just double checked in RTW and you're right it doesn't help.... sorry - oops

[Ramashan]

Two things I can think of, and this may not be your problem. It all depends on whether I understand what your writing or not.

I'm going off the assumption that your adding new wall models and walls to the game. In which case they are coded into desc_walls.txt and the type of ladder that they use is determined by this bit of code:

culture any ; roman
    level 0 ; 4
    siege_tower_size small

Which allows that wall to be used by 'any' culture for wall level 0 and that the siege_tower variant is 'small'

This variant also applies to ladders. It could also say, siege_tower_size too_small, in which case no siege equipment can be used.

The variant reference is found in the file descr_engines.txt

type                town_ladder
culture                all
class                ladder
variant                small

Now that's one thought. The other is, if they are new walls, do they have siege points at all in their collision file? Without collision points no matter what coding you do, ladders wont work.

Don't know if this is remotely close to helping but its what popped into my mind when reading your post.

[CaesarVincens]

I think the new walls have siege points, you can knock them down with rams and elephants, and when you can build ladders and siege towers, you can push them to the wall, and they connect. I don't think there is anything wrong with the walls themselves, just the fact that they are shorter than stone walls and ladders can't seem to be built for second level walls.

(Just fyi, I am familiar with this project, so I'm not just making random speculation.)