Modding Third Age

[PaulH]

Since downloading the Third Age: Total War 3.1, I have been seriously mulling over an idea for a mod in order to edit a couple of parts of the mod that wind me up rather alot, to put it simply I want to split the Dwarves and Silvan Elves factions. I used a bunch of tutorials and to be honest it did not go so well to begin with, so I am aiming to restart afresh and am looking for a little bit of help.

I have successfully renamed the Silvan Elves to Mirkwood, and wish to turn the defunct Aztec faction into Lothlorien, whilst having both factions using the same units and buildings. I want to basically clone the Silvan Elves.

Does anyone have any tips for a new modder to do this, or any preferred tutorials that would adequately explain how to clone one faction's "stuff" into the place of another faction? All help is appreciated!

Oh, and by the way, please do not point me in the direction of a Sub-mod I could already download to do the job for me. I used to mod Warcraft 3 in the past, and am wanting to make a transition to modding this.


Cheers in advance!

[Lazy]

The place to be: Mod Workshop - Total War Center Forums!
My favourite thread [M2TW] Index of Modding Tutorials, Resources & Tools

Some links inside this one:

Adding a new Faction

Adding New Faction from Nothing – Step by Step

How to create an emerging faction

Adding Factions

How to create an emerging faction with Barons Alliance script


good luck

[PaulH]

Hmm.

I tried the "Adding New Faction From Nothing - Step by Step" and it didn't work too well for me. I'll give one of the others a go. Hopefully they'll work better than the last one.

Edit: Part of the reason I asked is because it almost feels more difficult to mod a mod, than to mod the standard Medieval game, mostly because you have to seek out what faction is named what in the coding and so forth. I suppose I kinda hope this thread will help others with modding this mod too. Thanks for the help so far guys.

[Ngugi]

Think this one might be helpfull http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=225194
You are able to dig that up, as well as many other tutorials, here http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=273
Its the tutorial section of the Modders workshop: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=272
Always handy ^^ Good luck!

Edit: Ah, ninjad by Lazy ^^

[StealthFox]

I've been wanting to play with the Silvans split too. I'm actually working on my own submod to do this. So, if you can't get yours to work you can download mine. The submod is still in development, so it might be awhile before it is released though.

[PaulH]

Thanks for the offer!

I tried out Gigantus' "Creating a World - Adding a new Faction" tutorial which was very informative and useful, however I have ran into a problem which I am struggling to resolve. An unspecified error (with a black screen) happens on start up, and I would look at the log file but nothing I do will create one. I have made a thread http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=517881 which explains the situation, but currently my modding experiment of Third Age has a brick wall before it. Any help with that will be more than appreciated.

[Dutch-Balrog]

Welcome to modding, 70% of your time will consist of bug fixing and testing.

[David93]

lol true, its likely a bmdb error count my friend.

[PaulH]

More like 80% in my case!

By bmdb I take it that you mean the battle_model file? Bugger, that's a hefty file to go through!

[David93]

am yeah lol
theres a checker in the mod workshop though, made by gracul, makes life much easier.
if you think of what you changed, its just one of the numbers are wrong, if you added or took away units make sure you changed the serial.

[Generalpatton334]

Loo they already have mod like this but I think it is still in beta stage

[PaulH]

True there are other mods that do that but there is nothing like doing it yourself, that and I have grander schemes in mind, my hopes for modding extend further than just splitting two factions