Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 21 to 40 of 40

Thread: Warscape Modding Primer

  1. #21

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    The pack you can't open with PFM anymore.
    It contains a data entry which isn't exactly valid (which is why PFM rejects it), but has been advised to us by CA to use for the time being.
    Tools: PFM 4.1 - EditSF 1.2.0
    (Download PFM - Download EditSF)
    Warscape Modding Guide
    Join the PFM User Group on Steam to receive PackFileManager update notifications.

    Respecto Patronum

  2. #22
    Hmmm's Avatar Senator
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Sweden
    Posts
    1,320

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    I did (I moved New Stats to the data folder and land_Units to the db/land_units_table folder). It did not work. I however just get an update which changed the stats on all the elite units, so I suppose I have to start over again anyway. I'll keep trying, thanks for the help.
    I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

    Samuel Goldwyn

  3. #23

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Quote Originally Posted by Hmmm View Post
    I did (I moved New Stats to the data folder and land_Units to the db/land_units_table folder). It did not work. I however just get an update which changed the stats on all the elite units, so I suppose I have to start over again anyway. I'll keep trying, thanks for the help.
    Did you get it going?
    You really only need to move your pack to the R2\data folder; the db/land_units_tables one is only used temporarily by the PFM.

    In fact, with the new PFM version (3.1), you don't even need to extract files at all anymore; you can just "Import from Pack", then select the data pack file, then double-click the files contained in it you want to include in your mod.
    Tools: PFM 4.1 - EditSF 1.2.0
    (Download PFM - Download EditSF)
    Warscape Modding Guide
    Join the PFM User Group on Steam to receive PackFileManager update notifications.

    Respecto Patronum

  4. #24
    Hmmm's Avatar Senator
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Sweden
    Posts
    1,320

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Sorry for the late answer.

    I did not try it yet since the last time it took me a couple of hours to get the hang of PFM, and I am busy with my legal studies as well. I will likely have the time to do it today, so I will try your solution then. Thanks for the information.
    I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

    Samuel Goldwyn

  5. #25
    crzyrndm's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Location
    New Zealand
    Posts
    2,576

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Here's the updated step-wise instructions for creating a mod Daniu

    Quote Originally Posted by CrzyRndm
    Instructions using PFM Step 1: Add a new personal mod in PFM
    File -> MyMods -> New. Enter the name and location that you want to store it.
    -- When you have a mod selected under MyMods, extracted files are automatically added to the specified mod pack

    Step 2: Import required files into your mod
    The next step after naming and locating your mod, is to choose what it contains. Open the relevant official pack (more than likely: data_rome2.pack) and PFM will pop out a new window for you to choose the files from. Double click on the files you want to include in your mod, and hit OK when you are done.

    Step 3: Make your changes

    Step 4: Install your mod
    PFM has a great feature where it can manage the user.script.txt entries and add your mod.pack to the Rome2 data folder for you.
    File -> MyMods -> Install ____ (depending on which of your mods you have selected)
    It’s better to excite some and offend others than be bland and acceptable to all
    Creating a mod.pack with PFM - Database Table Fragments

  6. #26
    Hmmm's Avatar Senator
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Sweden
    Posts
    1,320

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Alright, I fixed it. Turns out I was an idiot because there were two mods interfering with another (I had uninstalled one but apparently it was not removed from the userscript, or maybe I just forgot to uninstall it and deleted it at which point it is still there in the userscript file) so I had to fix the script manually. Now it works fine. Again, thanks for the help.
    I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

    Samuel Goldwyn

  7. #27

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Great tool good guide. I've made a mod which works to my satisfaction.

    However what I don't see explain anywhere is how mod compatibility works in this game, ie what happens if you have 2 packfile mods which both alter the same area of rome2data.

    does 1 simply get prioty over the other (if so which), or both effects stack, changes merged, etc?

  8. #28

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Quote Originally Posted by jupsto View Post
    However what I don't see explain anywhere is how mod compatibility works in this game, ie what happens if you have 2 packfile mods which both alter the same area of rome2data.
    does 1 simply get prioty over the other (if so which), or both effects stack, changes merged, etc?
    One simply gets priority.
    AFAIK, the one getting loaded later overwrites the earlier one.

    That is only true for rows in tables with unique keys though.
    For instance, the _kv tables have those: in _kv_rules for instance, the "accuracy_modifier_fog" is assigned a value (-10 in vanilla patch 6).
    As opposed to the building_level_required_technology_junctions_tables where the rom_BARBARIAN_artisans_major_bronze_3 needs one out of four technologies (rom_<culture>_military_warrior_code_headhunt).
    There are also tables where a key is mapped to several conditions that always have to be met.

    I don't know how new rows are handled in those cases, you'll have to try it out for yourself; the results might even differ from table to table.
    Tools: PFM 4.1 - EditSF 1.2.0
    (Download PFM - Download EditSF)
    Warscape Modding Guide
    Join the PFM User Group on Steam to receive PackFileManager update notifications.

    Respecto Patronum

  9. #29
    crzyrndm's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Location
    New Zealand
    Posts
    2,576

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Quote Originally Posted by daniu View Post
    One simply gets priority.
    AFAIK, the one getting loaded later overwrites the earlier one.
    To add to this:

    The overwrite is done first by table name, and then by individual entries. If in land_units_tables I include the table land_units (CA name) with only a single entry, the game will crash because CA's land_units got overwritten and now there's a bunch of floating references to other units. Using vanilla names for tables should be restricted to removing existing entries (to my knowledge the only way to entirely remove a db entry without editing a CA pack is to include the CA named table and remove the offending rows).

    Thankfully, we dont always have to deal with tables with hundreds or thousands of entries because we can rename the table and just include entries for additional effects. These "table fragments" run alongside CA's tables, and overwrite any conflicts entry by entry. This is the preferable way to add to or modify existing entries. It's also good for compatibility with other mods because again, changes are checked line by line so long as each mod uses a different fragment name (which is why you should never rename a table something generic like <name>_MODDED).
    It’s better to excite some and offend others than be bland and acceptable to all
    Creating a mod.pack with PFM - Database Table Fragments

  10. #30

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Hey deathsticks!!! I really don't understand the most of this tutorial but can you teach me a few Things about how you adjust a unit to your liking??? I want to change some units appearances soooo bad!!!!! Best regards BrutalViking22

  11. #31

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Okay, in dire need of help. Spent hours attempting to make a new Thracian unit and used Thracian nobles as my template. Went through all off the steps and, at the end of the process when I needed to rename all and minimize DB, it essentially deleted everything within, as now when I attempt to edit my mod (it was causing rome to close), there's nothing in my DB files except a scarce word or two. Anyone know why this is happening?

  12. #32

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Minimize DB function problem.

    So I edited a single field in the faction tables - faction db and then I ran the Minimize db files function and it got rid of all rows expect the one containing my one change. I saved this pack and tried loading it in the game. The game hangs on loading, but if I don't use the minimize db files function it loads fine and the change works perfect.

    Are some db's unable to be minimized successfully? Sorry if this is a super newb question. Thanks for the help.

  13. #33
    crzyrndm's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Location
    New Zealand
    Posts
    2,576

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Does it also rename the table when it minimises it?

    http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...able-Fragments
    It’s better to excite some and offend others than be bland and acceptable to all
    Creating a mod.pack with PFM - Database Table Fragments

  14. #34

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Quote Originally Posted by crzyrndm View Post
    Does it also rename the table when it minimises it?

    http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...able-Fragments
    Ahhh, that was really helpful to read. So yeah I needed to make the name different so it would not replace the whole vanilla data table, and crash with my one entry. I named it factions_astrocat and then it loaded the vanilla and only over wrote my one change. A much better way to do things and can help a lot with patches from CA. Thanks!

  15. #35

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    can you tell me how to download empire total war mods on mac? thank you -jollyjosh

  16. #36

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Hi,

    Can I change a .pack mod into a .movie? I have just 1 mod I use, and with a .movie appearently it will always load, so my question is: the .pack mod that I downloaded, can I convert it by changing its name from .pack in to .movie and will it still work? I do I need to convert i using another program?

  17. #37

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Quote Originally Posted by daniu View Post
    Warscape Modding Primer

    This is a short introduction into Warscape modding. This should be valid for all Warscape files, i.e. ETW, NTW, TW:S2 and TW:R2.
    I'll start with some fundamental concepts of the engine; that is knowledge the modders gained soon after the release of Empire, but I've rarely seen it explained again so my guess is most people's understanding of it is at best fuzzy.

    Beyond the foundations, I'll lose some words on the db files because that's about all I have any experience in.



    Warscape's virtual file system

    Like every piece of software, WS games are divided into the actual software - i.e. executable code - and data. If you browse to your game installation directory (somewhere along steam/steamapps/common/), you'll see Rome2.exe file; this is the executable; no modding takes place there. What you can also see is the data/ subfolder, which is where the magic happens.
    Open it and you will see a number of .pack files - these contain the actual data. To open them, you'll need the PackFileManager; assuming you have downloaded it, use it to open any .pack file.
    What you see on the left is what looks like a folder structure in the Windows Explorer - because that's what it is: it creates virtual subfolders of the installation's data/ directory.
    Each pack contains a subset of the complete game configuration data, like movie, sound, music, and finally data; you can tell by the file name most of the time.

    Additionally, each pack has a certain type: Boot, Release, Patch, Mod, Movie. This is used by the game to determine the order in which they are loaded: namely in exactly that order, first Boot, last Movie. CA's packs are of type Boot, Release, Patch and Movie.
    For files that appear in two .pack files, the one that is last loaded is the one that will be used by the game. This is how CA patches their games: they replace data from the original pack by uploading one containing the same file in a Patch .pack which will overwrite the old one in the Release pack.

    If you want to replace data from the vanilla game (like UI icons), you do that in exactly the same way: create a pack loaded after the Patch files containing the files overwriting the old ones.

    Now, if you want to add data to the game (for instance, new units) what you can do is just create a pack containing the file you want to add, and the game will load it.
    You do have to follow certain rules or the game won't know what to do with it; a good guess is to create the file in a folder within the pack that already exists. Make sure to not use the name of a file that is already contained in one of the existing packs or you will overwrite it.



    Example Browsing data_rome2.pack, you find entries in ui/units/icons/

    In your mod pack, you would also create that directory structure and then put your icons there.
    Say you don't like the Pretorians', you can replace the existing one by adding your png as rom_praetorians.png; if you created a new unit and want it to have a unit icon of its own, you might add it as my_little_pony.png.


    Your own virtual files

    So in general, to make managing your mod easier, you also want to work on a virtual file structure. PFM allows you to do that by using the File->MyMod feature.
    When you select “New”, the program will ask you for a root directory of your new mod; this is where it saves your pack and stores (and retrieves from) all your working data.



    To continue the example above:

    Example You create a new MyMod “Icons” in c:\Me\Mods\Icons.

    You can then open data_rome2.pack (it asks you for a pack to open when creating the new pack), select the rom_praetorians.png, and then Files->Export.

    You will find that your mod folder now contains the whole directory structure ui\units\icons containing the exported png you can now edit. Here, you also can now create your my_little_pony.png icons.

    Once you're finished with the icons, you want to create your own pack file with File->New (or open one you already created; you have to close rome_data2.pack is the point), then select Files->Import->Add and choose your pngs which will add them to your pack you can now save.
    You can always open the Windows Explorer at your Mod directory by selecting MyMod->Open Data Path.


    Installing your Mod and more about pack types

    To install your mod, you'll still have to copy your pack into the game's data/ directory (Game->Open Data Directory will give you a Windows Explorer there). If you followed the steps above, you will not see the new icon even if you do copy the file and start the game.

    The reason for that is that when creating a new pack with PFM, it is of type “Mod”. These will not be loaded automatically by the game, but need an entry in a file called user.script.txt which is located below your user directory (depending on Windows version; you can open an Explorer there via Game->Open Script Directory). This script file is needed by the game to determine the order in which Mod packs are loaded.

    To register your mod, you need to create or open “user.script.txt” and enter a line
    mod MyIcons.pack;

    then save it with Unicode encoding. The last point is very important or the game will not read the file! To save in Unicode, you can select the “Advanced” option in Notepad and then select the encoding.

    Alternatively, you can also use My Mods->Install MyIcons which will both copy the pack and add the required entry to the script file.

    Also, to play the game with a certain set of mods you can use the ModManager by Mitch which will list all Mod-type packs in your data directory and lets you select the ones you want to run; it will then create the appropriate entries.

    Then, there exists the possibility to make your mod of type Movie; these mods are always loaded by the game and don't require a script file entry. I view this as somewhat as the Dark Side because it's easier and faster, but will later on create problems with data dependencies and pack file load order.

    There are new pack types for Sound and Music files too, but those are new with Rome 2 and I don't have any experience with them; I'd assume they're loaded like Movie files. If someone figures it out, let me know.

    A word of warning: technically, you can also edit the CA packs directly, despite the stern warning from PFM that you shouldn't.
    This is a very bad idea for a reason you should be able to figure out by yourself from what I've already written.
    As a hint, think about what will happen when CA next patches their game.


    On DB files

    As promised, here some details on the db files; for Rome 2, these can be found in data_rome2.pack.

    The DB files you'll find in the CA packs like

    db/<table_name>_tables/<table_name>

    If you select one of those files, a table view of the contained data opens on the right side; those table contain most if not all of the configuration data for the game.
    However, it is not entirely clear for all tables how they work and interact with each other; some of the modders have experience with many of them, but there are few tutorials around to explain them in detail.
    If you're looking for one, it's probably a good idea to search in the modding subforums for all the warscape games because the structure stayed more or less similar.

    BTW, the data is decoded from binary data contained in the pack; the fields (i.e. columns) that are displayed and their type are configured in so-called “schemas”. These configurations are user-generated and not guaranteed to be correct; if you find a mistake, let me know.
    Also, these are updated from time to time to account for identified issues that were fixed. Check DB Descriptions->Search for Update from time to time; you can also choose to have PFM do this regularly upon startup in the Options menu.

    For DB tables, there are additional rules to adding and overwriting data from vanilla files. Most tables contain fields considered “primary keys”, meaning that those are uniquely identifying an entry. If you add a row with the same primary key as a vanilla entry to a db table, it will overwrite the vanilla one.



    Example The table _kv_experience_bonuses in db/_kv_experience_bonuses_tables/_kv_experience_bonuses contains an entry (first_to_enter_enemy_fort=200) . If you were to add a file db/_kv_experience_bonuses_tables/_my_bonuses, containing the entry (first_to_enter_enemy_fort=500).

    On a file level, it will be added side-by-side as described above; but the value of the database entry with the primary key first_to_enter_enemy_fort from the original file will be replaced by the content of the new file, i.e. 500.



    The common workflow to edit DB data is to first export the files you want to edit, then create your file, then import them into your file – pretty much as described in the second example above. After you have changed the values you want, you can then use the PFM feature “Postprocess->Minimize DB Files” which will remove all entries that have not been changed from the original files. You can also export a table to a .TSV file and edit it in a Spreadsheet program like OpenOffice or MS Excel.

    There also are restrictions to what values can be contained in some fields, because they are bound to data in another table. Some of those are know in the schemas, and you can make use of that by selecting the checkbox “Use Combobox Cells” when you have a db table open. This will replace the editor for text in the fields by drop-down comboboxes containing only the allowed data which prevents you from typos and gives you a better overview of the relations between tables.



    Example If you open the table agent_to_agent_attributes, you can see a column “attribute” which is a reference into the agent_attributes table's field “key”; the column “agent” references agents:key.

    If you select “Use Combobox Cells”, you'll see the drop-down controls for those columns appearing.

    If you right-click the header of a table with a reference, you can see the name of the referenced table in the context menu (Remove reference to <X>).




    That's All Folks...

    So there you have your Warscape Modding Primer, hope it gives you a bit of orientation on Warscape modding.
    I'm sorry I can't answer any questions about “How do I mod X” because my knowledge of what most tables do is pretty superficial; I've stumbled over a lot in the tables but I've not tried out a lot whether they do what I suspect.

    I'd love to see a lot more people who know what they're doing put up tutorials, but all of our time's limited I guess.

    Have fun modding



    EDIT: Here's a really good TL;DR step-by-step howto by crzyrndm:

  18. #38

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    how do i change the way units look for example different helmet, armour, hair and shield atc..??

  19. #39

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    I also want to learn about Primer Modding Primer, please give me the answer

  20. #40
    carlh's Avatar Foederatus
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Location
    Fareham , Hampshire , UK
    Posts
    41

    Default Re: Warscape Modding Primer

    Brand new to modding , after a quick read through this things are becoming clearer. Want to get my ducks all lined up before messing around with files etc. Would you say its better to work on the concept of a mod first?

Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •