Changing Names, Stats & Portraits - descr_strat

[Ruprecht]

Hi there,


I am in the process of changing one of my starting General's Name, stats and hopefully Portrait, but i don't know enough about it to know if there is a risk of it effecting something else.


Would someone be kind enough to answer a few simple questions, i would be most grateful.


Would it cause any problems if i changed who is faction heir in my starting family tree ? by simply erasing "traits Factionheir 1" and applying it to my custom General ?

Also what implications would i encounter if i changed the name of the General to another name. Is it safe to use Names already in the Names lookup file ?

What dictates which Portrait each General gets. I noticed they are the same each campaign, how would i go about changing the Portrait of my faction Heir ?


Any help appreciated.

[Ruprecht]

I have had success in changing the General's stats and Heir status. Everything appears to be working in that regard. Though i am having trouble with changing his name and the campaign would refuse to load after i did the following:

Changed name in descr_strat
Changed name in descr_names
changed name in Names.txt

Also i cannot seem to find where my General is getting his Portrait from. After searching the main directory with no relevant matches, i am thinking they must be from the Pak files.

PS: This is for SS-6.2, though most of the Portraits seem to be using the vanilla resources. I will unpack the vanilla UI.pak and see what there is.

[Withwnar]

For changing his name you could just change names.txt. i.e. Keep his internal name (descr_names and descr_strat) but just change what appears in game (names.txt).

You can use the "portrait" parameter in descr_strat to give him a custom one, as explained here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=117566

[Ruprecht]

For changing his name you could just change names.txt. i.e. Keep his internal name (descr_names and descr_strat) but just change what appears in game (names.txt).

You can use the "portrait" parameter in descr_strat to give him a custom one, as explained here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=117566

That worked like a charm, thank you kind sir.


I extracted all the Pak files to get access to all the portraits, and put a select few inside the following directory: F:\Games\Medieval 2TW\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data\ui\eastern_european\portraits\portraits\young\Generals


Is there a way to get the game to randomly select these for future Generals/Family instead of the vanilla ones ? ... To my knowledge my mod directory takes priority, but how will the game do a random selection when i don't have the Full number of portraits in my mod folder ?


I guess my next step is to create Old and Dead directories for my custom selection.

[Withwnar]

You're welcome.

I could be completely wrong but I think to prevent it using vanilla ones you need to replace all that currently exist in vanilla. e.g. If there are 201 E.Eur. general portraits in vanilla (and there are) then create 201 under SS as well. If you only have five then duplicate them many times, all up numbered 000..200.

[Ruprecht]

I was afraid you were going to say that.


Thanks again.

[King William the Conqueror]

here is what you need to do for the faction heir.
You do want to remove the trait but it has absolutely no affect on whether or not he is the heir. That is drawn from on his character line and there is a little heir tag up there. Control+C it and move it to who you want your heir to be.
As for portraits if you want your guy to have a specific portrait, then you need to create a folder in your UI directory called custom_portraits. Inside there your create a folder. If your guys name is henry, then create a folder inside custom_portraits called "henry". Then inside their you need three portraits. Young, Old, Dead. If you are in SS already then you should see some example ones already. Then the very last step, go to your character and add this to the end of his line:

, portrait henry

I hope that helps!
King William the Conqueror