Steam Compatibility + Hotseat Questions

[Augustus Lucifer]

I'm putting this question here as it's generally the coders who would look into possible OS or distribution differences and fixes. Someone in our preview thread asked if the mod will eventually work with Steam, so what I'd like to know from those of you who've distributed mods to a large number of people, is are there any complications? Does the CFG save somewhere else? Are the files themselves identical? I imagine there should be no difference but I try not to take that sort of thing for granted.

The other thing I'm curious about is approaches to CFG files. Currently I'm using the "fixer" method of appending a header and generating a new file. I know some mods just include CFG files along with the mod instead. Testimonials on the most effective way to handle that from personal experience are appreciated.

And no, I don't plan to release anything any time soon, but I do distribute test builds obviously between devs, so would just like to get that squared away sooner than later.

(See post 3 for hotseat question)

[Killerbee]

Not sure if this is helpfull , but RTW mods don't need to do anything extra afaik . i know RTW is not MTW2 , but they use pretty much the same engine , right ?

[Augustus Lucifer]

That's good to know.

The other thing I'd like to know, is how hotseat campaigns work. I've never ran one and I don't imagine I ever will unless it's to find this out, but I do have to try and make a bunch of scripts work with them ideally.

Do players select factions somehow before it starts? Can players change factions in the middle of the game? And particularly, how do commands such as I_LocalFaction respond to hotseat campaigns?

Answers to those questions and any other light that could be shed on hotseat games is appreciated and let's me know which things are worthwhile to make work in a hotseat game, and which I should just disable.

[Gigantus]

Currently I'm using the "fixer" method of appending a header and generating a new file

This is largely outdated (RTW times and early M2). If you are using a mod folder then all you need is a small CFG file in there with the following lines:

[features]
editor = true
mod = mods/Last_Kingdom

[io]
file_first = true

[game]
allusers = 1
unlimited_men_on_battlefield = 1

[multiplayer]
playable = true
## faction mask for setting default starting factions in hotseat campaign
factions = 1 #1 = england, 2 = france, 4 = hre, 3 = england+france, etc

[hotseat]
scroll = false ## disable start turn scroll in hotseat campaign
turns = false ## disable forced separate human faction turns (including diplomacy) in hotseat campaign
disable_console = false ## enable cheat console in hotseat campaign.
admin_password = password ## specify password for administrator access to the dev console when console disabled. Change 'password' to a suitable password
update_ai_camera = true ## enable camera updates during ai turn in hotseat campaign
disable_papal_elections = false ## enable voting in papal elections in hotseat campaign (only first valid human faction votes)
autoresolve_battles = false ## disable forced autoresolve all battles in hotseat campaign
validate_diplomacy = false ## disable diplomacy validation for incoming propositions
save_prefs = true ## disable forced relevant hotseat options to be saved with game.
autosave = true ## autosave hotseat game at start of players turn
save_config = true ## save config file in save dir containing information about next players turn
close_after_save = false ## close medieval II directly after a hotseat autosave
gamename = hotseat_gamename ## sub directory name for hotseat save games
validate_data = true ## ensure game data files used in previous save match current campaign data files.
allow_validation_failures = false ## prevent game to load if savegame or data validations fail

I usually add the multiplayer entries in case they are not present.
The [game] entries are for Vista and "always reinforcements".

All other entries will be read from the default cfg file in the med2 root directory.