How do I make my own named characters?

**shinderhizzle84** · September 22, 2009, 09:08 PM

Hello. I tried searching this, but only found one topic that wasn't really what I was looking for. Maybe I didn't search hard enough.

Nevertheless, I run a hockey video game forum, and I'm making a "dynasty"--which I guess is similar to an AAR--of Medieval 2 total war. Here's the catch: I want to put those who sign up for it in the game as my generals or named characters.

How do I add names in to the game, and how do I create new characters? I can do it in Rome: Total War...is it the same concept?

Also, whenever I tried it with Rome: Total War, it never worked when I gave the new character any traits or armies. The armies I would give him would be these incredibly advanced armies, though. Is it possible that you can't mod in units at the beginning of the game that your faction doesn't have access to at that time?

I know, I'm a cheater...

Anyways, if anyone knows if creating new names, as well as named characters (generals) in Medieval 2 is any different from R:TW, please, let me know, and if it is, is there a tut anywhere on it?

**Augustus Lucifer** · September 22, 2009, 11:09 PM

Try reading this thread, it explains placing armies. You can modify names by following the tutorial in this thread. As for units, you can spawn any unit in a faction army they have ownership of, it doesn't matter if they can't recruit it from a building yet as that's not connected.

**shinderhizzle84** · September 23, 2009, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by Augustus Lucifer

Try reading this thread, it explains placing armies. You can modify names by following the tutorial in this thread. As for units, you can spawn any unit in a faction army they have ownership of, it doesn't matter if they can't recruit it from a building yet as that's not connected.

thanks for the links. So far, I have only read the one about names, but that was very confusing and slightly unnecessary. I only wish to add about six or seven first names, surnames, and female names to the faction of Poland. I don't want to make my own "Custom names.txt file" and so on and so forth.

As for the armies thread, I've only glanced over it, but that seemed very confusing to me, as well. Is that for spawning armies to your faction at a certain date in time? I wanted to put these named characters in the family tree.

My storyline is that Poland has had a revolution, and a new King (your's truly) has taken the throne, with his newly-adopted sons (some of the members that are partaking in this) Therefore, they need to be in the family tree. How would I go about doing that? I couldn't care less about their armies, for I could just recruit some stuff from my cities/castles. I'm assuming what I have to mod is in the descr_strat.txt file, but I'm not sure.

Do you understand what I'm getting at? Or am I sounding incredibly complicated?

**Augustus Lucifer** · September 23, 2009, 01:19 PM

The names adding isn't that complicated. If you want to just add individual names for Poland then in descr_names.txt find this line:

Code:

faction: poland

Beneath that it lists all the names for that faction, sorted by given name, surname, woman's given name. The format is pretty obvious, just add a new name on a new line to any of the sections(preserve the tabbed spacing). Then open up names.txt(you need the strings.bin converter to edit the data/text/ files) and add a new string for the name you added at the bottom of the file, like so:

Code:

{Shinder}Shinder
{Hizzle}Hizzle

The words in the brackets need to match the name you added to the first file, as it references it based on that. The text outside the brackets can be changed at leisure. If you want to add spaces to names, you need to do it outside the brackets in the names.txt file, because the first file won't read spaces so replace it with either _ or -.

Once you have the names entered you can add characters with those names in the descr_strat using the format of the other character entries. For more information on the editing of families in the descr_strat see this family trees tutorial. You should be able to discern how a new character entry can be added with units, based on the pre-existing entries listed under poland.

As I said in the other thread you want to do this in a mod folder, otherwise the game won't read the changes.

**shinderhizzle84** · September 24, 2009, 05:02 PM

Alright so I did everything you and the tutorials you linked said, and when I run "modbasics.bat" it loads up the window for M2TW for like, 5 seconds, and then it automatically exits out. It doesn't say there was a warning.

I copied over the three files I modified (Desc_names, Desc_strat, and names.txt) into the regular m2tw, making sure to back up the original files first, and loaded the regular m2tw. It worked, but when I started up a campaign as Poland, the faction that I edited, it CTD's and says "Medieval 2 total war has encountered an unspecified error and has shut down."

Here is my error log from modbasics.bat:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

And here is my coding for descr_strat, descr_names, and names.txt. I know, the names are ridiculous, but the people signing up are mainly teenage American/Canadian boys who think everything remotely innapropriate is funny (but then again, so do i

)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Am I supposed to add in last names to the names.txt as well?

Anyways:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**Augustus Lucifer** · September 24, 2009, 06:28 PM

Well the modbasics log won't reflect any problems running it on the base files. Upload the mod folder + cfg + bat files to somewhere like Sendspace and I'll take a look at them. It could just be a typo somewhere or a file missing, or practically anything.

**Swagger** · September 26, 2009, 01:46 PM

that's a problem with the .sd files

make sure you have: shared.sd, battle.sd and strategy.sd files inside data/ui

**shinderhizzle84** · September 26, 2009, 01:59 PM

Originally Posted by Swagger

that's a problem with the .sd files

make sure you have: shared.sd, battle.sd and strategy.sd files inside data/ui

thanks for chipping in.

My explorer says that I do.

Anything else I should be checking?

**Augustus Lucifer** · September 26, 2009, 03:41 PM

That's weird, I added the .sd files and it fixed that problem, and they were included in the DL link. You also should have strat.txt, battle.txt, and shared.txt in the data/text folder which I believe I also included. You could try deleting the map.rwm file and see if that fixes it, though I'm not sure that has anything to do with the .sd files. Alternatively you could try porting over the vanilla .sd files and see if that fixes it.

**shinderhizzle84** · September 26, 2009, 05:31 PM

I figured out the problem my self, thanks so much to all who have been helping me, it's finally working (although I haven't tested actual battles yet, so we'll see