Custom Settlements

**Peltast** · September 07, 2010, 12:43 PM

Comrades,

With the marvellous progress made by and comrades Coffeepot and Kolwen, I believe many of our minds have been turned to the direction of custom settlements. While the two do absolutely sterling work, one feels that perhaps if one were able to make some adjustments to the battle maps their jobs will be ever so much easier.

As such I'd like to consolidate all ideas regarding any sort of custom battlemap ideas in one thread.

I'll start.

-Islendil mentioned that there is a battlemap converter in alpha stage
-Kahvipannu have very decently pointed us this thread.
-The All Under Heaven mod apparently has done work in that direction.

I quote:

Q: Will you change the battle map models for the cities/castles?
A: Yes, eventually. At current, KnightErrant and Argantonio are still progressing on the tools to more easily edit these aspects of the game. We have plenty to do in the meantime, so we're letting them work their magic into more refined versions.

**Kahvipannu** · September 07, 2010, 12:51 PM

Making custom settlements hasn't been done before, I mean with custom models. I don't know if it is possible, recent activity here TWC says maybe, becouse of the new tools.. Kolwen and I are just giving already existing models new textures (we don't create anything new, we edit allready excisting files), and the thread I was pointing, was about changing factions already existing models to another culture, not creating them.

**Peltast** · September 07, 2010, 01:09 PM

I know. I only mentioned your work because it turns one's thoughts to that direction. Yes, it hadn't been done before, but apparently there is now some sort of progress made. Specifically, AUH has managed to put cannons on walls, and suggested that they have managed to change settlements somewhat.

However we may still never be able to crack the problem with their generate settlement mechanism, still, e might be able to edit the component modules.

I made this thread as a way of putting all ideas and news on custom settlements in one place, that's all.

**UberGrunt** · September 07, 2010, 02:44 PM

There might be progress... but I think it's next to never that we'll ever see a huge Orc city or "Camp" complete with huts and all the assorted stuff that the orcs put in their "cities"

**Peltast** · September 08, 2010, 10:28 AM

http://img839.imageshack.us/f/castleviewtwo.jpg/

I have good news and bad news.

Good news is custom settlements appears quite possible.

Bad news is...

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=264419&page=7

Sorry, this is developed for the mod and so will be released with the mod... when we get to that stage.

They are not releasing until their mods is. And that could be a while.

Still, there is a tutorial...

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=323503

**Kahvipannu** · September 08, 2010, 10:59 AM

Yes, that's the tool I mentioned, but still there isn't any new models in-game, but KK has hinted that it's quite possible. But my doubt's are that this won't happen anytime soon, there's more things to consider than just getting own models ingame, like pathfinding and etc.. World edited thread (from same guys) has lots of interesting reading regarding this matter.

**Peltast** · September 08, 2010, 11:08 AM

Yes, and I think Germanicus mentioned that the AI will be, well, more of a pain when castles aren't perfect squares... Still, the purpose of this thread is just to be a clearing house of information on progress in custom settlements. You never know, maybe it'll get somebody interested.

**Karnil Vark Khaitan** · September 08, 2010, 01:12 PM

Yeah when I was reading this tread, I was thinking on the pathfinding, it will be a pain in the ass to fix, after making a new city/castle.
But you do hav most of your facts right, so why dont you do it, becouse I can live with the new skins, as long there is a bug free and balance gameplay.
The only mod that I know of there made there own castle is Rome total war: Medieval( not sure about the name).
But keep your hopes up ^^

**Peltast** · September 12, 2010, 05:55 AM

Quoting comrade Coffeepot on the matter of assigning settlements. Useful tidbit for custom settlements.

Originally Posted by Kahvipannu

Could you do that, I would but I really don't even know how to do "hex-edit", or what it even means.. Or could you PM me what I need (programs, or if there is tutorials) to try it, so I could try if I get anything out of it.

EDIT:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...&highlight=hex
Here's how to edit forts in HEX, maybe this could be applied to settlements

.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

HEX-editor
The only thing that is left for us to do now, is to somehow match the default buildable fort with a specific faction and a specific battle map model. Many different versions of fort battle map models have been made, and it would be nice to have some diversification (i.e. middle eastern typed buildings for Islamic factions, for instance).

As I have said before, the battle map models have nothing to do with the all the .txt-files you can find in the map ‘data’. In the beginning this appeared slightly odd to me, and I have spent a lot of time searching for some kind of solution in the .txt-files. One would or could, for instance, expect to assign forts the same way as models on the battle map. However, in the end, it appeared to be a little more complex than that.

First you will have to browse to your fort folder(s). You will find your stone fort models at the location we assigned them in the ‘placement’-section of this tutorial. Every fort’s battle map model is accompanied by a bunch of files, most of which are texture files. One of these files we are going to edit with an HEX-editor: “[fort_name].worldpkgdesc”, where [name] is the name of the fort model (e.g., ‘stone_fort_a’, ‘knightly_order_fort_b’ or ‘me_fort_a’). What we are going to do now is edit this file, so the game knows which forts to use. Before we can do so, you must download an HEX-editor; I would recommend this one (XVI32), a version that is widely used as you can see on the webpage.

Open the HEX-editor and browse to the “[fort_name].worldpkgdesc”-file, by default found at the following location:
“C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\[my_mod_name]\data\settlements\[culture]\ambient_settlements\[fort_name]\[fort_name].worldpkgdesc”

You will see two separate windows. On the left side, the HEX-code will be shown; every cell represents one character (either a letter or a number). On the right side, you can have a closer look at which character each HEX-code represents. In this right window, you can relatively easily add numbers and letters, for instance altering the system path of the fort file. In order to get our stone fort ingame, we are going to alter the system-path string (“settlements/north_european/…/stone_fort_h.world”) and the culture string (“greek”).

Now, let us look at an example I made. As can be seen below (image), the HEX-code is on the left screen and the corresponding information we are going to edit is on the right screen. Between every two bits of strings, there is a blank space: always a minimum of 3 spaces (represented by 00 on the left screen). Yet, between every readable bit of information displayed on the right screen, there is invisible information as well. These are the blank spaces, sometimes represented with a square-like symbol as can be seen in the image. This ‘invisible’ information (which is very important!) can be ‘seen’ on the left part of the screen. I highlighted the character of interest.

As you can see, there are 2 blank spaces after the word ‘settlement’ and 3 blank spaces before the string ‘settlements/north_european/…/stone_fort_h.world”. Between them, you can see the letter ‘N’ (right screen), corresponding with the HEX-code ‘4E’ (left screen). This code corresponds with the number of characters the next string has.

As highlighted in the screen above, this HEX-code ‘4E’ corresponds with the decimal number ‘78’. This represents the number of characters the system path has.

If we want to alter the system path (which can be easily done in the right screen by editing letters), we also have to alter the HEX-code (in this example: ‘4E’). Click on ‘edit’, then on ‘overwrite string’, as depicted in the screen below.

Then, select ‘HEX string’ and fill in the HEX-code which corresponds with the number of characters. To acquire the appropriate HEX-code, go to this website, enter the decimal value (i.e. the number of characters the new system-path string has) and copy the HEX-code into the HEX-string box, as depicted below.

Now, click op ‘ok’ and you are done J. Repeat these steps for the culture string as well. When you are short on characters in the right screen (i.e. you need more before the square-like symbols), you could also add these by selecting ‘edit’ and clicking on ‘insert string’.

HEX-editor: only one fort model
Let me, once again, be very clear: when you want the same bmm for each culture you need to copy the model and place them in the corresponding culture folders. Simply altering the “[fort_name].worldpkgdesc”-file by only editing the culture string will not work. Hence, you need to copy the fort folder to every culture folder and subsequently edit both the culture string and system-path string.

HEX-editor: buildable fort vs. non-buildable fort
If you want this fort to be the standard buildable fort for the culture you added the fort folder for, make sure the HEX-strings end with the phrase “wooden_fort”, as shown at the bottom of the right screen (see picture below). When this is done, the fort the .worldpkgdesc file belongs to indicates that this fort is the default fort, which can be build.

If you do not want this fort to be the default buildable fort, the file should end with the phrase “[stone_fort_name]”, where “[stone_fort_name]” represents the name of your fort. In case of our example shown in the screenshots, the name of the fort would be “stone_fort_h” (without the quotation marks).

And here's similar tutorial, how to change castle types to factions:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...&highlight=hex

I'll try to look into this too, tought no promises of success

**Kahvipannu** · September 12, 2010, 07:01 AM

Originally Posted by Peltast

Quoting comrade Coffeepot on the matter of assigning settlements. Useful tidbit for custom settlements.

Yes, it seems to work:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**wassabi** · September 12, 2010, 07:08 AM

check it out
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=385978&page=5

**Peltast** · September 14, 2010, 09:24 AM

And that one uses the same tools as " Princes, Kings and Heroes" - so the good news is it has been independently confirmed, and the bad news is we are no closer to getting the tool without independently developing it ourselves...

**Kahvipannu** · September 14, 2010, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by Peltast

And that one uses the same tools as " Princes, Kings and Heroes" - so the good news is it has been independently confirmed, and the bad news is we are no closer to getting the tool without independently developing it ourselves...

Here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...highlight=iwte

It seems very complicated tought, and it's on beta-stage. Neverthless, Wilddog have made awesome job making it.