You know what is really annoying...

[spanish_emperor]

...Spending hours trying to find one problem!
Ok, i have this problem concerning export_descr_character_traits. i wanted to put a new trait that realistically represents the negative impacts on the economy and social life in each settlement when at war. I thought that considering the console commands doesn't give you much to work with then scripting was out of the equation. Traits however, have effects which can be manipulated.

So making the story shorter...i placed these in export_descr_character_traits:

; Section: NEW
; New Traits added by TTO for Cherry Vanilla Pack

;------------------------------------------
; Trait: WarStatus
; Many

Trait WarStatus
    Characters family
    AntiTraits PeaceStatus

    Level War
        Description War_desc
        EffectsDescription War_effects_desc
        Threshold  1

    Effect Unrest  1
     Effect Trading  -1    
    Effect Farming  -2
    Effect TaxCollection  -20


;------------------------------------------
; Trait: PeaceStatus
; Many

Trait PeaceStatus
    Characters family
    AntiTraits WarStatus

    Level Peace
        Description Peace_desc
        EffectsDescription Peace_effects_desc
        Threshold  1


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And i placed Triggers at the bottom:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
;Trigger: war_declared
Trigger war_declared
  WhenToTest CharacterTurnStart

    Condition IsGeneral
          and OnAWarFooting
      and Trait WarStatus < 1

  Affects WarStatus  1  Chance  100

;------------------------------------------
;Trigger: peace_declared
Trigger peace_declared
  WhenToTest CharacterTurnStart

    Condition IsGeneral
      and not OnAWarFooting
      and Trait PeaceStatus < 1

  Affects PeaceStatus  1  Chance  100

so, can anyone tell me what i am doing wrong. (i know its in this file because when i put the un modded file the game runs without a problem.) I seem to be getting a CTD every time i try to enter the campaign mode and up comes a message saying "Rome Total War doesn't seem to be working" and it gives me a choice to close the program, but thats it. Yes, i do have -show_err on.

Edit. I changed some of the aspects which might have influenced the CTD(mainly because Squid could be correct), however, it seems to be redundant. I don't know what could be causing the CTD and the failure in contributing to any error message afterwards brings my desire back to modding M2TW. It seems i am missing something big and important or otherwise there wouldn't be such a CTD but i have revised all the coding, copied all the relevant material and pasted it on a file which without that coding works fine, and repeated until i have to set my mind on something else or risk becoming a mindless zombie. Can my problem solving be so ineffective that i am missing/overlooking an important contributor in this @#$!%^ crash?
Anyways i have downloaded that program which you suggested, makanyane, but lack information on how to use it properly. Nothing showed up when i used it...if i used it right.
I did find some wierd material in the export_descr_character_traits file; many traits had an anti trait called badcommander. However, i could never find neither a badcommander trait or a trigger for the trait. it was really strange and it was on the back up file which worked normally regardless of the missing trait (which i would have suspected would have caused a crash). But, when i add two traits and two triggers - nothing more, it crashes
If it helps in any way i am trying to mod EB's export_descr_character_traits.txt and i have vista. I have successfully modded the EDB file without any problems so i doubt vista has anything to do with it.
Anyways thank you all

[makanyane]

try downloading this
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=142568
and running it on your modified files..

those bits look OK to me - assuming you also added the relevant text entries to
data/text/export_VnVs.txt
(that'll crash later if you haven't)

I have had problem with a modified traits file before that wasn't related to a change I deliberately made, but was obviously some error made whilst scrolling through the rest which made whole game crash... in case you have similar if the above program doesn't supply the answer, try going back to working version and making same changes again.

[Squid]

First thing I notice is that the event you're firing on is FactionTurnStart, which doesn't export character_record, but you're also using the condition IsGeneral which requires an event which exports character_record. This shouldn't cause a CTD, but it will make your code return true for that condition whether or not the condition is actually true. Make sure you have a look at the docudemon files as this will tell you what is exported by which events, and what conditions require which exports.

Also I have never tested which character will get a trait under the event FactionTurnStart event, but my guess is that the leader and possibly the heir would be the only one who would get the traits.

[spanish_emperor]

edit: placed above

[spanish_emperor]

well, i ran a test just out of pure speculation and came with surprising and undesirable conclusion. the test consisted of opening the back up file and then saving it without touching anything. i got a CTD whereas i wouldn't have got it if i had not saved it. It brings up the question of whether vista is the problem after all. i don't know where to go from here and so the road has ended for now.

if you have any ideas to why this occurred and more importantly, have a solution i would appreciate anyone reading this to post it.

[Squid]

If you're using vista it can cause all sorts of problems, as it has something called User Account Control (UAC) activated by default, which has various nasty problems associated with it that far outweight the meager benefits it might provide. There's a thread in the M2TW Technical help forum that discusses Vista related issues. If nothing else shut of UAC.

[spanish_emperor]

Thanks for the help guys but even shutting off UAC does nothing.

[makanyane]

what program are you using to open it - and what exactly are you saving it as?

(.txt files can be in a variety of different types of coding, I can't remember which one is right one, off hand - hopefully someone will chip in with that information)

[spanish_emperor]

what program are you using to open it - and what exactly are you saving it as?

(.txt files can be in a variety of different types of coding, I can't remember which one is right one, off hand - hopefully someone will chip in with that information)

Notepad. As export_descr_character_traits.txt

[Aradan]

Yes, .txt, but with Unicode encoding, ANSI, or?

[Squid]

Don't use notepad, use another text editor like notepad++ or textpad or something else, export_descr_character_traits.txt needs to be saved as an ascii file, while export_VnVs.txt needs to be saved as a unicode.

[Killerbee]

Why shouldn't you use notepad ? I use notepad for all my modding , including scripting and all other "basic coding files (DMB , EDU , EDB , ...) , and all works fine for me ...

[Kylan271]

Don't use notepad, use another text editor like notepad++ or textpad or something else, export_descr_character_traits.txt needs to be saved as an ascii file, while export_VnVs.txt needs to be saved as a unicode.

Oh stress mode,I did not know this,lol. Thanks Squid I have to keep track of this and double check WIKI and Tutorials at what else I missed????

How can you tell what file has to be saved in which format?

[Squid]

Because with notepad you can't guarantee that the format you open the file from is the one it will be saved back to. Also the extra features of most other text editing programs make them far superior.

[Squid]

All text files in the /text directory need to be unicode, this is in order to support the non-english characters of other languages. All other text files should be ascii.

[HouseOfHam]

All text files in the /text directory need to be unicode, this is in order to support the non-english characters of other languages. All other text files should be ascii.

credits.txt needs to be unicode, too

[Flavius Alberticus]

Wow! I never knew that about the formats! I have had weird and hard to fix problems before, which only went away when I completely replaced the file with Vanilla! Can you tell what format notepad is saving to?

[makanyane]

If you do 'save as' and not just 'save' in Notepad you can select the file type in the drop down box at the bottom of the window.

[spanish_emperor]

Hey, guys. i tried three tests using notepad + +
1) i got the original file unmodded from EB. i saved it using notepad ++ and loaded the game. unlike most other times where it would just CTD this time everything ran smoothly. this got my hopes high so i did another step

2) i got the same file which i had saved, opened it with notepad and just to go one step at a time i deleted a word, and then wrote down the same word again. i did not place any new sentence i just touched something that was already there. i saved it using notepad ++ once more. Then i loaded and it worked. no CTD.

3) lastly i could finally go and place the new lines which i wanted, making sure that everything was 100% perfect i saved once more with notepad ++ and loaded the game. However, it CTD again. There was a difference believe it or not. Firstly, before it would CTD and come up with a message saying "Rome Total War has stopped working" and it gave me the option to close RTW or the go online and recieve help from microsoft. Luckly i never went with the last option cause i would have not known the problem till i was 30. This time, the was a CTD but there was no message of the like so i am thinking that notepad ++ did help and i believe there was more than just one problem.

Edit: oh and i was using ANSI encoding.

I have been looking for that problem and luckly somebody has gone through exactly the same i went through. i found it using the search engine and you can find pretty much the same thing on this thread. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...UILDINGS_ENUMS

According to him he figured out a way. He said it only worked if he had the original game, M2TW vanilla in this case, unpacked. Considering i don't have my RTW vanilla unpacked i am going to try it and report back here afterwards.

Edit: does anyone know where i can find RTW unpacker?

[Killerbee]

Afaik , everything except the UI files in vanilla are "open" and don't need to be unpacked ..