Mercenary captains' voices and portraits.

[Cyricist]

Hey guys, I have a question regarding the campaign/battle map portraits for some of the mercenary captains you can recruit, as well as their voices. Been running into some weird things with them.

For example, playing as Chaos Dwarves, I got Mudat the orc mercenary captain to join me. However, his portrait was that of a dwarf, as was his voice.

Another example, playing as Reikland, Golfang the Ogre joined me, and his portrait was a Human, as was his voice.

Why is that? And can I change it? I'd like them to have the appropriate faces/voices... the other units they come with (not their bodyguard) have the appropriate portraits/voices.

Thanks in advance for any help.

EDIT: Created a new campaign until I got something. Just got Ruglud Bonechewer as Chaos Dwarves, and he has the appropriate portrait, but has a Dwarven voice instead of an Ork one.

[Kahvipannu]

Only one voice-set possible for example for Dwarves, so it's a hard-coded problem which as my knowledge has not been able to go around yet. For same reason f.ex. female generals have been almost non-existent in M2 mods since the engine can't represent own voices for them. Portraits should work, they are tied to the names of the characters, or I can't remeber any missing since last time I played.

There might have been this "liutenant of character X" or other description with some characters with the newest version, so that the actual avatar at campaign map isn't the hero itself, for the reasons explained above. Can't really remember if this was the case with some of them.

[Cyricist]

Ahh, okay, hard-coded limit on voices. That makes sense.

Also, I found the custom_portraits folder, and I guess there just isn't a custom portrait for the ogre guy. Ruglud has a folder, and the portrait worked for him, so... yeah.

Thanks for the info. This can be closed whenever, unless anyone else has any insight on how to make a custom portrait for an ogre.

[Kahvipannu]

He doesn't? If he is a named general. I think just making a picture (.tga format) and dropping it to the folder should do the trick I think.

[Cyricist]

Ehh... I have no idea how to make a .tga picture. :/

[Cyricist]

I have another mercenary captain question, and didn't want to clutter up the forum by making a new thread to ask it. Is there a way to change a mounted general to a dismounted general? Specifically not the generic faction generals (like Empire generals), but rather an actual general with a unique model. The person I have in mind is Sasha Kajetan, the guy who comes with the Droyashki units. His whole story is about how badass he is when fighting on foot, but his bodyguard unit is another unit of the Winged Lancers riding on bears. Which is cool, but I feel he'd be much cooler on foot.

So. I think the reason he's mounted is because his battle model, kislev_kojetan, must be rendered as him riding on a bear, right? Is there a way to change that? I don't have any programs involved in doing so. Could I give him a regular droyashki model instead? I'd love it if I could keep his unique character skin, but change the model from a mounted winged lancer, to a droyashki. Can anyone help with this? Is such a thing possible?

EDIT: Nevermind! I figured it out, sort of. I fond the
merc_kislev_kojetan_sprite.spr
merc_kislev_kojetan_sprite_000.texture
merc_kislev_kojetan_sprite_001.texture
russia_kislev_kojetan_sprite.spr
russia_kislev_kojetan_sprite_000.texture
russia_kislev_kojetan_sprite_001.texture

files, and then looked and found three other files,

russia_kislev_droyshki_sprite.spr
russia_kislev_droyshki_sprite_000.texture
russia_kislev_droyshki_sprite_001.texture

so I copied the droyshki files twice, renamed them all to the kojetan files, and overwrote the kojetan files with the new fake-kojetan-really-droyshki files. Now Sasha fights on foot with giant wings on his back! It looks hilarious and absolutely badass. I love it. It's his same special unique model, just works flawlessly on foot, since he simply adopts the Droyashki animations. Beautiful.

Sorry to clutter the forum up with questions I'm able to figure out the answers to myself, but I didn't really think this would work. It worked beautifully, though.

[Kahvipannu]

If he has all bones rigged (legs more so), I see no reason why you could not just assign new onfoot unit for him. Mounts are separate models from the riders. Tought I'm not very familiar with mounted units, I'm not sure if you need to change the comment of the mesh file too... Don't take that as 100% fool proof answer, you could try it.

[Cyricist]

Is there any way to see a crash log if the game errors out?

EDIT: Nevermind, found it in the Medieval II general logs folder. Lol... the error wasn't even related to editing battle models. It was related to me editing something else before, and putting in a typo, so the game couldn't find what unit I was looking for on the campaign script.

Also, simply assigning Sasha a new infantry bodyguard, while not changing his battle_model, caused the game to instantly crash whenever he spawned in. Changing his batte_model the way I did above got it to work perfectly. He does look a little weird with large decorative wings on his back, but I personally love the look. Makes him easy to spot in battle too.

[Kahvipannu]

So you got him working on foot? If so, cool.

Here you can find all you need to tweek mods more to your liking, and usually asking there is best bet of getting good answers if needed, in general modding problems.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=273

Ehh... I have no idea how to make a .tga picture. :/

If you have picture you want to use, post it here, I can make you one.