IWTE - World editing - (General Discussion)

[leo.civil.uefs]

WILDDOG

Could you please in simples words, explain WHERE is the settlement, scenarios and textures in the M2TW folder so I can find it and load it in IWTE and then in MILKSHAPE?

I would be very grateful.

[Ishan]

WILDDOG

Could you please in simples words, explain WHERE is the settlement, scenarios and textures in the M2TW folder so I can find it and load it in IWTE and then in MILKSHAPE?

I would be very grateful.

wilddog doesn't explains anything in simple words, technical guy technical answers nothing in plain English.

Anyways for loading settlements you don't need textures which are btw in the blockset folder.
data\bockset, arranged culture wise.

For loading settlements in the tool you need world files that are inside the:-
data\settlements folder again arranged culture wise. For buildings that are displayed on battle map inside a settlement you need to go inside:-
data\settlements\techtree folder again arranged culture wise.

For loading settlements in the IWTE tool you need 3 files for that settlement or building tpye:-

1. .world
2. .worldcollision
3. .animinstances

files these are the extensions of the same filename.

So say you wanna open a citadel for the north european culture so you go in:-
in the IWTE tool and click on WorldFiles tab and then click on the Read Binary Files button. Then go to the right path for the citadel:-
data\settlements\north_european\castles\fortress<---It's citadel in game.

Then you give the tool the 3 files it needs:-

• north_european_fortress_a.world
• north_european_fortress_a.worldcollision
• north_european_fortress_a.animinstances

It will ask you to save the files with a diffrent filename just in case you don't screw up the original ones while fiddling which one always does.

Hope this helps.

[wilddog]

wilddog doesn't explains anything in simple words, technical guy technical answers nothing in plain English.

Also, to reassign the textures to any animations you need to do this to all the relevant mesh files in the folder blockset\north_european\animations\"animationtype" (only do it to the versions held within your mod folder).

You can change the reference to the "animationtype" folder by changing the text version of the .world file and reloading that. I hadn't added that bit into the tool but its relatively straight forward.

[leo.civil.uefs]

wilddog doesn't explains anything in simple words, technical guy technical answers nothing in plain English.

Anyways for loading settlements you don't need textures which are btw in the blockset folder.
data\bockset, arranged culture wise.

For loading settlements in the tool you need world files that are inside the:-
data\settlements folder again arranged culture wise. For buildings that are displayed on battle map inside a settlement you need to go inside:-
data\settlements\techtree folder again arranged culture wise.

For loading settlements in the IWTE tool you need 3 files for that settlement or building tpye:-

1. .world
2. .worldcollision
3. .animinstances
   
   Many thanks.
   
   One new question.
   What about customizing field terrains? You know, the land, before placinf the settlement.
   I read on KK manual's that you shoul edit the terrain in MILKSHAPE but I really would prefer to edit it in the game editor. So can I edit it in the game editor and then bring it to IWTE? If so, how?

files these are the extensions of the same filename.

So say you wanna open a citadel for the north european culture so you go in:-
in the IWTE tool and click on WorldFiles tab and then click on the Read Binary Files button. Then go to the right path for the citadel:-
data\settlements\north_european\castles\fortress<---It's citadel in game.

Then you give the tool the 3 files it needs:-

• north_european_fortress_a.world
• north_european_fortress_a.worldcollision
• north_european_fortress_a.animinstances

It will ask you to save the files with a diffrent filename just in case you don't screw up the original ones while fiddling which one always does.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

There is something more that I dont understand.

The terrain itself, shoul I first create and edit it GAME EDITOR inside the game right? To put tress etc, and then after bring it to IWTE to put the edited settlement.

Or not? I really dont know.

Third Age Total War mod seems to have messed up my M2TW directories and now the only "settlements" folder In M2TW folder is the one inside the Mod's folder. I cant even acess midle eastern, weird.

There is no data\settlements folder in M2TW like you said.

[Ishan]

There is no data\settlements folder in M2TW like you said.

That's coz you haven't unpacked the game. See here please.

[leo.civil.uefs]

That's coz you haven't unpacked the game. See here please.

Yep man. You are great.

But there was another question.


I WANT TO CREATE A NEW TERRAIN FROM SCRATCH. I mean, with no objects placed and no heights. Just a plane face wich I can edit by my will.

Should I do this on GAME EDITOR inside the game? I need to edit, heights, place some objects like tress and then place the textures. In this case, how can I load a new terrain from scratch?

Or should I do this on MILKSHAPE? If its so, where can I find a clean terrain to start over?

[kaiser1993]

Excellent work Wilddog and Makanyane, loving the tool. Its not as complicated as I thought it would be.
Great work on pushing the boundaries of M2TW modding.

[King Kong]

Yep man. You are great.

But there was another question.


I WANT TO CREATE A NEW TERRAIN FROM SCRATCH. I mean, with no objects placed and no heights. Just a plane face wich I can edit by my will.

Should I do this on GAME EDITOR inside the game? I need to edit, heights, place some objects like tress and then place the textures. In this case, how can I load a new terrain from scratch?

Or should I do this on MILKSHAPE? If its so, where can I find a clean terrain to start over?

You can edit the terrain only in Milkshape. Trees and grass can be edited via a normal 2d texture (see tutorial). If you want to have a flat terrain, load the terrain of your base-settlement with Milkshape, select the whole terrain and make it flat (scale y-axis with 0.0). Pretty simple.

If you want to have no trees or grass on your terrain, load the xxx_WVeg.tga and make it completely black.

[nessj999]

King Kong ..

could you add a specific thing to your tutorial ?
something like that :

you choose a building, which you show us how to add...
for example a wall with stakes on it or something easy, but
just ,
so that you can follow you.

( ich meine damit : damit man deinen schritten folgen kannst, an einem genauen beispiel, und nicht selbst rausfinden muss,
sondern deine schritte nachmachen sozusagen...)

[leo.civil.uefs]

KONG OR WILDDOG.


I saw KK did some vertex changes in the wall connection parts and also in the wall itself, for isengard, he itself says to not do anything with the vertexes if we want the effects working ok. For connection parts, I suppose he did it because he knows that that parts has no effects. But what about the wall itself?

Well, Im not right, can wall concection parts be destroyed?

[wilddog]

KONG OR WILDDOG.


I saw KK did some vertex changes in the wall connection parts and also in the wall itself, for isengard, he itself says to not do anything with the vertexes if we want the effects working ok. For connection parts, I suppose he did it because he knows that that parts has no effects. But what about the wall itself?

Well, Im not right, can wall concection parts be destroyed?

First please stop using capitols its frankly annoying. It gives the impression of someone shouting to get attention.

In vanilla certain things are identified as walls. Not all parts of a wall just the significant animation bits ie the strecth of wall which can be shot a and breached, scaled with ladders etc These show up if you open a vanilla settlement. Anything else may be part of a wall but are just named default in the tool as they aren't significant. If you change these bits in milkshape then they won't match to the actual animations any more as the animations have separate models and the tool has no capability of updating those animation models (I don't understand the link between animation meshes (which are separate files) and the animations).

So put simple if you consider the wall as a brick and the animation is based on the same brick. If you change the size, shape or add in more bits to the brick... it simply won't match to the animation.

[leo.civil.uefs]

First please stop using capitols its frankly annoying. It gives the impression of someone shouting to get attention.

In vanilla certain things are identified as walls. Not all parts of a wall just the significant animation bits ie the strecth of wall which can be shot a and breached, scaled with ladders etc These show up if you open a vanilla settlement. Anything else may be part of a wall but are just named default in the tool as they aren't significant. If you change these bits in milkshape then they won't match to the actual animations any more as the animations have separate models and the tool has no capability of updating those animation models (I don't understand the link between animation meshes (which are separate files) and the animations).

So put simple if you consider the wall as a brick and the animation is based on the same brick. If you change the size, shape or add in more bits to the brick... it simply won't match to the animation.

Sorry about the apitols, It was not purposeful.

Im my english is'n that good, so I did not understood must of what you sayd. sorry.

But lets pu simple.

walls: that strecth of wall which can be shot a and breached, scaled with ladders etc.

This one I cannot do nothinf because of the animations.

Wall conections: that small part that links one strecth of wall to another.

This one I can do anything I want since there is no nimations related with it.

Right?


One more question, how can I load an entire city to MS3D? I mean, I just know how to load it in parts, piece by piece, and there are so many...

[makanyane]

But lets pu simple.

walls: that strecth of wall which can be shot a and breached, scaled with ladders etc.

This one I cannot do nothinf because of the animations.

Wall conections: that small part that links one strecth of wall to another.

This one I can do anything I want since there is no nimations related with it.

Right?

yes - you can also have larger 'connections' than in the original cities - so you can have long structures that look like wall - but only some parts that are copies of "stretch of wall which can be shot at and breached, scaled with ladders etc."

One more question, how can I load an entire city to MS3D? I mean, I just know how to load it in parts, piece by piece, and there are so many...

no you can't do that - MS3D files aren't even big enough to load some of the individual structures! there's no way you could get entire original city into milkshape....

if you want to make a very different city than the original it's best to start by deleting entirely most of the structures then adding your own simpler ones (the type of structure CA used with many 100 groups isn't practical to alter....)

[Pat89]

Is there a way to manually add a comment via text editing if it's gone? (ie without MilkShape)

I already found in the MilkShape file which part is responsible for the comment by comparing it with a file without this comment, and here it is:

Attachment 127704

The red bit is the comment itself and It wasn't a problem to copy this over to the ms3d file without comment. However I can't copy the bit in blue (using Notepad++) which is also missing. So my question is if it's somehow possible to do this with text editing or via IWTE (and if so, then how)?

Thanks

(It's about a terrain file btw)

[leo.civil.uefs]

Anyone knows a easy way to find a specific structure, like a house or a church, in the data folders, wich does not involves importing millions of files to IWTE and then import one by one to MS3D to see if it is the one you want?

[makanyane]

Is there a way to manually add a comment via text editing if it's gone? (ie without MilkShape)

I already found in the MilkShape file which part is responsible for the comment by comparing it with a file without this comment, and here it is:

Attachment 127704

The red bit is the comment itself and It wasn't a problem to copy this over to the ms3d file without comment. However I can't copy the bit in blue (using Notepad++) which is also missing. So my question is if it's somehow possible to do this with text editing or via IWTE (and if so, then how)?

Thanks

(It's about a terrain file btw)

No there isn't a text representation of the terrain file sorry....
The good news is that Wilddog is proposing to remove the need for IWTE to read that comment in next update to the tool (its not really needed as the tool loads the old .worldterrain file first and should be using the info from there).

Note meanwhile there are other ways of changing the terrain - I've ended up using the convert to tga option because I've resized my terrain to a size larger than either ms3d or the 'amend terrain in 2d window' option will cope with...

Anyone knows a easy way to find a specific structure, like a house or a church, in the data folders, wich does not involves importing millions of files to IWTE and then import one by one to MS3D to see if it is the one you want?

use the view functions - go to 'views' tab and use View World 2d - then structures tab and View Table 1 blocks - you'll get display that looks a bit like
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
the complex number in the block will give you an idea of where to start looking for a specific structure - make a note of the ones you think it might be, clear the view, then use the Views>View Complex 2d or View Structure 2d bit to confirm you've found right one before writing the file...

Note that CA split up their structures mid building to tie up with the Table 1 block borders so some buildings will be split between multiple structures. Whilst we recomend keeping structure roughly positioned in / near the location of the complex's table 1 block, it doesn't seem necessary to be that strict about it...

If you can't see the building you're looking for on the View World 2d at all - then it's probably actually a tech tree slot - so you need to look in data/settlements/techtree/ folders for the .world file (that's where the churches, barracks etc come from)

[leo.civil.uefs]

use the view functions - go to 'views' tab and use View World 2d - then structures tab and View Table 1 blocks - you'll get display that looks a bit like
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
the complex number in the block will give you an idea of where to start looking for a specific structure - make a note of the ones you think it might be, clear the view, then use the Views>View Complex 2d or View Structure 2d bit to confirm you've found right one before writing the file...

Note that CA split up their structures mid building to tie up with the Table 1 block borders so some buildings will be split between multiple structures. Whilst we recomend keeping structure roughly positioned in / near the location of the complex's table 1 block, it doesn't seem necessary to be that strict about it...

If you can't see the building you're looking for on the View World 2d at all - then it's probably actually a tech tree slot - so you need to look in data/settlements/techtree/ folders for the .world file (that's where the churches, barracks etc come from)

I guess you forgot to mention the button "view upper middle T1 blocks". Wich allow to see alot more blocks in the map. I dont know why and how, but its like that.

Thank you!



I dont intend to be repetitive about the wall stuff, but I think it could be helpful for another people, let me say. That's what I noticed anout wall, please correct me if Im wrong.

For huge walls, there is 3 types of pieces:

1 - The catwalk: Long stretch of wall which can be shot at and breached, scaled with ladders etc. It should not be modified since if so we will lost the animations.

2 - Conection part 1: Same Stretch of wall but much shorter, connects one long Stretch of wall to another one. I dont know if it can be modified.

3 - Conection part 2: Short stretch of wall with counterforts (pillars), connects one long Stretch of wall to another one. CAN be modded once there is no animations for this part.

[Devils_Advocate]

I probably haven´t fully figured out the tool yet, but is it possible to create/open a tga hight map in photoshop, edit it, load it back into the tool, and then generate an ms3d terrain file according to the tga hight map values?

I know I can get an output tga from the worldterrain, but don´t really know what to do with it in order to manipulate the hight values.

The conventional method of creating the terrain in an ms3d file is just an ass full of work...

[Pat89]

I made a PDF file for easy take away from King Kong's manual here. hope it comes handy. Had to compress it due to the size limit for PDF files.

That's very useful mate

I was actually planning to do this myself as well, but this is a lot easier!

[wilddog]

I guess you forgot to mention the button "view upper middle T1 blocks". Wich allow to see alot more blocks in the map. I dont know why and how, but its like that.

Its like that because it was quite hard to represent 4 layers in a 2D view. The blocks can be thought of a s a cube. Depednign on which height the complex is at it will show on one of the levels.

I dont intend to be repetitive about the wall stuff, but I think it could be helpful for another people, let me say. That's what I noticed anout wall, please correct me if Im wrong.

For huge walls, there is 3 types of pieces:

1 - The catwalk: Long stretch of wall which can be shot at and breached, scaled with ladders etc. It should not be modified since if so we will lost the animations.

2 - Conection part 1: Same Stretch of wall but much shorter, connects one long Stretch of wall to another one. I dont know if it can be modified.

3 - Conection part 2: Short stretch of wall with counterforts (pillars), connects one long Stretch of wall to another one. CAN be modded once there is no animations for this part.

To be honest this is mostly irrelevant. The bit of the wall that is important is the bit which uses the animation (or equivalent if you don't use an animation). Its made up of 5 squares length. That's the bit that needs to be called a wall. The rest you can make ito as many shapes as you like but should basically be called default.

I probably haven´t fully figured out the tool yet, but is it possible to create/open a tga hight map in photoshop, edit it, load it back into the tool, and then generate an ms3d terrain file according to the tga hight map values?

I know I can get an output tga from the worldterrain, but don´t really know what to do with it in order to manipulate the hight values.

The conventional method of creating the terrain in an ms3d file is just an ass full of work...

Basically yes there are three ways to manipulate a terrain. Create an MS3d, create a TGA or load into the 2d window and change the individual points there. For very large terrains that exceed the ms3d options then only the last two options are available and depending on memory maybe only the middle one.

To manipulate the height it uses greyscale values set to the scales you use when exporting inputing based around a fixed value which is set on import or export.