How To set up Medieval II for Modding - Updated December 2014

[King William the Conqueror]

Hello!
This tutorial is for people who are new to modding and would like to know a few things before they start. With that said, this tutorial actually has very little to do with modding itself, rather what to do before you mod and how to do it.

The location of the modding files varies depending on where you installed the game on the hard drive, but typically it is installed in: C Drive/Program Files/SEGA/Medieval II. For Windows 7/Vista users, go to Program Files (x86) instead of Program Files. There are also some files stored at Local Disk C:/Users/[YOUR WINDOWS USER]/AppData/Local/VirtualStore/ProgramFiles (x86)/SEGA/Medieval II for Windows Vista/7 users. Technically, you could completely destroy your copy of Medieval II in the process of modding, but you would almost have to be trying to do that. Also, it is impossible to destroy the game if you mod completely from a mod folder.

If you don't mind completely reinstalling the game, and you have a secondary hard drive, I suggest installing to that drive for Windows 7/Vista users. It will avoid all issues with Virtual Store.

Refer to this tutorial to unpack the files that you will need for advanced modding. Unpacking: The very first steps & simplest method for new modders
I highly recommend unpacking the game. If you don't, you will be limited to very basic modding such as changing character coords in descr_strat.

Now we need to create your mod folder. Go to your medieval II folder, then to the mods folder. If you have Kingdoms, this will contain four folders: americas, british_isles, crusades, and teutonic. If you have the original game, this will be empty and/or you may have to create the mods folder. To get a basic mod folder, I recommend downloading The Unspoken Knight's : Retrofit Mod or Gigantus' Bare Geomod. Both of these are the vanilla game with a few bug fixes and minor tweaks. Now copy the mod from your downloads folder to the mods folder. So now, I want to make a mod called France Total War. I then rename the modfolder to: france_total_war. The name must not have special characters and must use underscores for spaces. Now, go to the cfg file, and you will notice it says the old mod name on one of the first few lines. The important part is the name of the mod at the end of that line. Change that to say: france_total_war. Save that file and close it. Now open up the .bat file, and change where it says the old mod name, to france_total_war. Save and close. Now, duplicate your modfolder.

Do not try to launch the backup folder as that will cause errors. Its purpose is to back up your files in case you mess up with your modding. The main folder is now ready to mod!

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. I will probably get back to you in a matter of days.

Hope I helped!

USEFUL LINKS
How To Fix UAC and VirtualStore Problems A good guide to VirtualStore and the User Account Controls

[King William the Conqueror]

Updated the tutorial significantly with more concise wording and to include instructions for unpacking. I also made the tutorial less noob-ish. I originally made this tutorial in my first week of being a member!

[Gigantus]

Nice detailed explanation. So far the various parts have been all over the forums.

Are you aware that my Bare Geomod installation saves you all that folder setup work (except the unpacking for more in depth modding)? The VirtualStore issue is described a bit more in detail here.

[King William the Conqueror]

I am aware of Bare Geomod although I had forgotten about it at the time of this writing. Bare Geomod however, correct me if I am wrong, does not back up the modfolder. Although I will add Bare Geomod as an alternative to Retrofit!

[Gigantus]

Bare Geomod IS the mod folder. Combine it with my unpacking method (into a separate location) and then the only thing you need to back up is your work which you will have to do anyhow.

Bare Geomod only contains the essential files necessary to run the game plus some non essential files to run the Geomod Tool (and a little vain self advertising). If you want it more minimalistic (1.7MB) then you could use Bare Kingdoms, although I have stopped support for it when I released Bare Geomod.

[King William the Conqueror]

Okay thanks!

[Malcolm]

I am at a loss, after following these steps with the British Isles campaign using the cfg and BAT files from retrofit everything seems to be working until I go into battle and it crashes with an unspecified error?

Somebody please help, spent a whole day trying to fix it!

EDIT: I am using Windows 7, everything is updated, I am running MTW II and Kingdoms on Windows 7 compatibility... Why does simply making a mod folder and adding only a cfg and Bat file make the game crash going into battle?

[Gigantus]

Did you unpack the campaign? Then delete the two files with geography in their name in the data folder of the campaign.

[Malcolm]

That was it thanks. AWSOME MOD! Another question, Is there a quicker way to make a brand new map than opening the old one and bit by bit deleting the land, agriculture etc? I intend on making a much bigger British Isles map but it is taking a long time.

[danny X]

Any mapping, any modding for that matter, will take up a huge amount of time and need massive amounts dedication and determination!!

Gigantus's "Basic Mapping From Scratch" is a good place to start, also more things to try here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-Tools#mapping

[LordJax]

Nice one, I have been trying to mod my main install folder and repeatedly breaking the game plus filling my hard drive with backed up unpacked installs thanks a lot, my hair and fingernails might even grow back now

[King William the Conqueror]

Updated once again to fix grammatical errors and to clarify the tutorial.

[Spitfire -WONDERBOLT!]

Hey, I am trying to install for king or contry, but there was no .Exe file at all, I wonder, does anyone know how one would set this up?

[King William the Conqueror]

Hey, I am trying to install for king or contry, but there was no .Exe file at all, I wonder, does anyone know how one would set this up?

That just means you have to copy the modfolder into Medieval II/mods


Not all mods come with a professional installer.

[Spitfire -WONDERBOLT!]

That just means you have to copy the modfolder into Medieval II/mods


Not all mods come with a professional installer.

This one is supposed to, when I click the shortcut to the bat file however, nothing happens, I thought for sure I must have done something worng!

[Gigantus]

Follow up the link by right clicking the short cut, check the path and then choose 'open file location'
If the BAT file is in the mod folder (...\Medieval II Total War\mods\mod)name) then open it by right clicking and choosing 'edit'
Copy the content here so we can have a look at it.

[Knightforger]

At the moment, I simply want to make a copy of the Americas campaign mod; so I can modify it. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as it would seem that it should be.

So, please bare with me and walk me through the steps to I should take to accomplish this task; keeping in mind that I'm running a Steam version on Windows 10.

Also, rest assured that the mods I have acquired from here, (such as Bare Geomod, KGCM, Rule Britannia, etc.), seem to work just fine. It's only when I try to copy and rename a mod that I encounter problems.

[Gigantus]

The original mods (americas. crusade etc) need to retain their name otherwise they will not use their pack files. Alternatively make a simple copy of the mod folder, then unpack the original folder and give it a name of your choice.
After that copy the BAT\CFG files from Bare Geomod and edit the CFG file to match your copied mod's directory name. Start the mod now with the bat file.

[Knightforger]

New question: This is in regards to the "data/loading_screen/symbols" folder. While one does exist in the main game, I've noticed that it tends NOT to exist within the mods file paths. The file I am looking for, in particular, is "loading_screen/symbols/symbol128_ireland.tga"; as I want to add Ireland as a faction in my Grand Campaign.

Is there a reason that directory does not get extracted when unpacking the "british_isles" packs?

[Gigantus]

No reason at all - do try my method of unpacking outside the mod folder. It also explains how to unpack individual files.