Idea for a Tiny Sub-Mod : Interactive Barrow-Downs

[Mank]

EDIT: Thread closed as glamdringfh has released his ideas as a submod found here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...leased!-(v1-0)
/Ngugi



So after playing through the MOS + expanded map campaign a few times I thought of a small addition I am planning on implementing and I was hoping to get some community feedback on the idea. I love the unique buildings added in MOS, and noticed that the downs had a town happiness penalty associated with the barrows being nearby. My idea is this:

- Add a Moral penalty of -2 to troops trained while the barrows remain haunted

- Add a possibility (5-10% chance per-turn) of any General stationed in the barrows to receive a "Haunted" ancillary with appropriate negative
consequences -this will not be transferrable

- When the villiage grows enough to upgrade (either the small_town or large_town, not sure) have the option to "purge" the downs of their curse
by making a new unique building over-write the old one (Restored Crypts or some such)

- Once purged the negative ancillary for generals will disappear and if a general is stationed in the settlement when the "new barrows" are built he
will receive an appropriate positive ancillary

-Once purged the negative moral penalty for troops will invert to a +1 bonus (for being trained in the presence of their honored fallen)

-Re-name settlement (or building, not sure on lore) from "Barrow-Downs" to "Tyrn Gorthad" upon the construction of the restored crypts.

Ok those are the broad strokes. Any feedback from balancing, ancillary ideas, to whether or not Tyrn Gorthad is lore-appropriate will be most appreciated. This idea could also easily be added to the Divide and Conquer map in the current "Minas Malloth" settlement. Thanks and look forward to hearing from you.

-Glam

[Lord_Helmchen]

Really like your idea!

[Kiliç Alì]

- Once purged the negative ancillary for generals will disappear and if a general is stationed in the settlement when the "new barrows" are built he
will receive an appropriate positive ancillary

In general, you can't remove ancillaries But you can get the same effect with a trait, after all.

In general I like the idea

[paradamed]

Yes, that is an interesting idea?

[Mank]

Ok then, glad a couple people like it

Well so far I have...

All the 2d art done:

-The 2 new buildings (Barrow-Downs and Restored Crypts)
-Both New Ancillaries ("Haunted by Barrow Weights" and "Honored Dead")

The 2 Ancillaries added and scripted to occur correctly

- Haunted by Barrow Weights (10% chance per turn while in the downs): -1 from your general's hit points, -1 troop morale
- Honored Dead (given to general if he completes the restored crypts): +1 troop morale, +1 popularity

The 2 Building capabilities coded

-Barrow-Downs: happiness bonus -2, recruits morale bonus -2
-Restored Crypts: law bonus 1, recruits morale bonus 1

So Kilic what I was thinking was making a campaign script that monitored when the Restored Crypt went up. That was the only way I could think of successfully getting rid of the "haunted by weights" ancillary from a character who might be long gone from the province ("console_command remove_ancillary this haunted by weights" ). I'll see if I can get the script running, but will definitely keep the trait idea in mind as another road to take.

Anyway before I get too far ahead of myself on the campaign scripting I actually have run into a bump in adding the new buildings. When I get to the faction selection page in single player I press start and then crash back to main menu. Looking at the log file I find this:

descr_strat.txt, at line 6381, column 4 Building level id not found as a level of type hinterland_barrow_downs_restored in building database

So yeah don't know what I'm missing here, in descr_strat the building is added as:

building
{
type hinterland_barrow_downs_restored
}

and in the export_desc_buildings I have it coded as this:

building hinterland_barrow_downs_restored
{
levels barrow_downs_restored
{
barrow_downs_restored requires factions { slave, } and hidden_resource hr_none
{
capability
{
}
material wooden
construction 6
cost 12500
settlement_min village
upgrades
{
}
}
}
plugins
{
}
}


Sooooo not really sure how I goofed on adding the correct building level but I'll tinker with this again tomorrow. Also I'll give a pre-emptive apology if it isn't good taste to post code like this, new to the forum so still learning the etiquette. Anyway, marching right along and once the buildings both go in it will just be the campaign script left, so not too far off seeing this little guy off the ground! Again if anyone has ideas on better names/bonuses for the ancillaries or the restored building, feel free to share!

-Glam

[Mank]

Eureka!

Ok got the crash figured out and the buildings in-game (forgot a string in the export_buildings.txt). Now I just need to get the UI to recognize the correct building instead of going for those green books and all that's left will be the settlement name chage and ancillary add/remove script.

[Araval]

Good work! Maybe it could also be a condition to restore Arnor?

[Mank]

Yes, that was an idea I was certainly pondering too Araval. The plus to that if this is made exculsivley for Eriador/Arnor it will make the restored kingdom have one more really neat feature and feel a bit more fleshed out. I also like to think this option would be a bit more realistic in terms of the world (I mean I really can't imagine the dwarves going to the trouble). That said the down side is that unless people are playing MOS and using the insta-arnor feature I imagine most people would never really see this mod in action (same goes for anyone who wanted to cleanse the crypts without playing Eriador).
For the moment I'm going to go with coding solely for the incorporation into Eriador/Arnor after the reunification. That said if enough people want to play the mod without rolling Eriador or waiting for reunification it will take 2 shakes to open it up to all factions.

Progress Update:

-All 2d artwork (including buildings) are now fully functional and work in-game
-All in-game text is finished
-All ancillary triggers are created and fully functional

Left to do:

-get the barrow-downs building to upgrade correctly to the restored crypts (still not popping up when the settlement reaches correct size...so either I'm missing
something in export_desc_buildings or I'm missing something in export_buildings. Looking at the rebuilt gwaith_i_mirdain (jewelsmith's guild in Ost-in-Edhil) in hopes of
finding the code I need.

-Campaign Scripting for the new settlement name and removed negative ancillary (in progress and mostly finished but waiting on building upgrade before testable)

[Mank]

Ok I'm pretty close to sewing this project up at this point....

Update:

-Building's upgrade correctly (only after Arnor reunion and correct building size reached)
-All Campaign Scripts work perfectly (both the settlement name-change and the removal of the negative barrow-weight ancillary)

Left to do:

-get the files correctly prepared for distribution

At this point the only snag I'm still trying to iron out is when I try and install the modified files into a fresh game. Right now when I drag and drop the data file into a fresh install it CTD's on me without leaving a log file to examine so I'm not sure if it's an issue with file time-stamps or what. Anyway I'm looking into it but I imagine (fingers crossed) this is a small fix. Other than that this mod is now fully functional (works when I edit the files on an already-installed game) so I hope to be able to share it with you guys soon!

[Araval]

I can't really understand why is this only for Arnor, you can still build the house of kings after you reunite Arnor in the beginning in MOS to recruit Annuminas knights, if I'm wrong correct me, and some people don't even want to reunite Arnor.

[Mank]

Ah right you are Araval. I jotted off my last post as I was going out the door so I think I got that a bit tangled up. It will be re-buildable by Eriador the same way the King's Halls will be, and after that it is now a part of the conditions to re-unite Arnor (if you so choose).

[Mank]

Ok hopefully this will be the last update before release. I'm kind of hoping the TW Center website will start behaving itself soon as I just spent over half an hour trying to upload images/ finished files but continually lost them due to 403 and 500, and other un-identified site errors.

That said, on a fresh install the mod is now 100% ready for: MoS 1.41, MoS 1.41 + Director's Cut, and the Divide and Conquer 1.0 map.

For some reason if it isn't a fresh install (fresh as in not booting the game before adding the files) all versions CTD without leaving an error log...so that's got me totally stumped, but as long as they are added to a fresh game install before booting all is peachy. If anyone knows what the deal is with that please say something before final release and I'll be able to make the mod just that little bit more accessible for people who aren't keen on a full re-install of TATW.

As of right now the mod isn't ready for either PcP or TATW Realism, but those are next on my list.

Cheers,

- Glam

[Lord_Helmchen]

Good news! Had you ask the MOS-Team or Firefreak if they would add your minimod into their work?
So the player and other modders (like dIRECTOR) could work with it and are sure that it is compatible.

[knight of meh]

he could ask MOS but FireFreak isn't big on adding scripts to his map because the map was just a favor to the community before he added the DaC scripts and stuff too it .

Edit it can't be hard to add this to FireFreaks work yourself s he has very little scripts involved

@glamdringfh have you tried deleting map.rwm , the .string.bin files in datatext (particularly export_buildings.txt.string.bin)

and maybe the geography new files

[Mank]

Ah of course! Thanks for the suggestion Meh I completely forgot about the .bin's. Tested it out with all 3 versions and as long as those bin's get deleted there is no need for a fresh install.

@Helmchen Yes I sent a PM to Hero of the West asking him about it. And I think Meh is right, I'm not planning on asking Firefreak to add it to his base-map as that really is just an underlying resource for DaC. That said I will be PM'ing Emporer of Hell to see if he would like to incorporate this into the full DaC 4.0 release that is up and coming. Until then when the files are released you will be able to just to drag and drop this mod over either MOS or the DaC map to be able to play with it.



EDIT: Thread closed as glamdringfh has released his ideas as a submod found here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...leased!-(v1-0)
/Ngugi