How do I make my assembly kit mods playable again after the "elephant patch"?

[Le_Swede]

Hey people! After the patch yesterday that saw the welcomed addition of african elephants to the game my assembly kit mods aren't working anylonger. What changes do I have to make for them to be useable again?

Posting the test on some new unit types I'm working on if that would help.

[Murderin]

I don't have the factions available that you are editing to test it, but from looking at your mod I see two problems.

One, and I'm not sure if this actually matters or not but I've had issues with it before. You should use underscores in your pack name rather than spaces.

Two, and this is most likely the problem since the last update, the tables in your mod aren't renamed with the post process menu. Any item that would share a name with a default Rome 2 entry would have to be renamed.

Don't rename items that have something pointing to them. Keep renames far away from your variantmeshes folder. All of those items are referenced and will break if renamed.

[Le_Swede]

managed to get it it working by removing all vanilla units in the mod.

What do you mean by "renames"?


Edit: Semi-related but noticed that I made some mistakes with some units (used cine-skins on one unit and forgot to attach anothers spear). Seeing this I replaced them/attached them in the variantmeshdefinitions-folder, saved and closed. This didn't however solve the problem. What am I missing and/or doing wrong?

[Murderin]

managed to get it it working by removing all vanilla units in the mod.

What do you mean by "renames"?


Edit: Semi-related but noticed that I made some mistakes with some units (used cine-skins on one unit and forgot to attach anothers spear). Seeing this I replaced them/attached them in the variantmeshdefinitions-folder, saved and closed. This didn't however solve the problem. What am I missing and/or doing wrong?

Click on post process in PFM and start renaming each table except the ones I said not to rename in the first post.

[Le_Swede]

Okay will try this right away.

[Le_Swede]

Seems that I before your comments, but after I had posted this thread I made the postproccess-thingies at the same time I removed all the vanilla units. However I seem to have picked the "Rename All" options. My units are however working except for the ones with the errors I missed. Is there some way I can revert the renaming-process, perhaps just rename them again to their original name?

[Murderin]

Seems that I before your comments, but after I had posted this thread I made the postproccess-thingies at the same time I removed all the vanilla units. However I seem to have picked the "Rename All" options. My units are however working except for the ones with the errors I missed. Is there some way I can revert the renaming-process, perhaps just rename them again to their original name?

You can just individually remove the rename from each one.

You should always make a backup of your work before you make serious changes to it.

[Murderin]

You could also download the file from the first post here as that one isn't renamed yet.

[Le_Swede]

I already have that one saved on my comp. The problem with it is however that I would need to redo all the deleting which was a pain in the butt

[Murderin]

I already have that one saved on my comp. The problem with it is however that I would need to redo all the deleting which was a pain in the butt

Using minimize in the post process menu helps a bit. It leaves some leftovers though, mostly in land_units and main_units. For me anyway.

If you click and drag up the left most box in a table you can select multiple lines faster for deletion.

As for renaming, its easiest to just select db and use post process to rename selected. db and text are both safe to rename.

I'm not sure why renaming is important, but I've run into problems when I haven't renamed something and I assume its because of conflicts with vanilla tables of the same name.

[Le_Swede]

Ah good. In the future I will be sure to always have a backup. Thanks for the help mate!

[Le_Swede]

Managed to achieve success for the most part but I can't get my Woad Warriors skin to work. Atm their skin isn't even showing up. Can you (or anyone else reading this) tell what I'm missing/doing wrong?

[Murderin]

Managed to achieve success for the most part but I can't get my Woad Warriors skin to work. Atm their skin isn't even showing up. Can you (or anyone else reading this) tell what I'm missing/doing wrong?

I'll have a look. Any other problems besides their skin?

[Murderin]

<VARIANT_MESH>
    <SLOT name="base" >
        <VARIANT_MESH>
            <<SLOT name="beards" >
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="VariantMeshes/_VariantModels/man/skin/barb_painted.VariantMeshDefinition" />
            </SLOT>
            <SLOT name="facial_hair" >
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\hair_beards/barb_hair_beard_brown_briton.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\hair_beards/barb_hair_beard_brown.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\hair_beards/barb_hair_beard_brown_celtic.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\hair_beards/barb_hair_beard_darkbrown_briton.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\hair_beards/barb_hair_beard_red_dacian.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\hair_beards/barb_hair_beard_red_knot.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\hair_beards/barb_hair_beard_red_celtic.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="VariantMeshes/_VariantModels/man/hair_beards/Long_Hair_Long_Beard.VariantMeshDefinition" />
            </SLOT>
            <SLOT name="props" >
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\props/brit_props_bronze.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\props/brit_props_silver.VariantMeshDefinition" />
            </SLOT>
            <SLOT name="helmets" />
            <SLOT name="clothing" >
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\trousers/celtic_patterned_trousers.VariantMeshDefinition" />
            </SLOT>
            <SLOT name="cloaks" />
            <SLOT name="greaves" />
            <SLOT name="shield" attach_point="weapon_03" >
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\shield/belgae_hex_shields.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\shield/brit_hide_pattern.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\shield/brit_deal_pattern.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\shield/germanic_long_wooden_shields.VariantMeshDefinition" />
            </SLOT>
            <SLOT name="weapon_1" />
            <SLOT name="weapon_2" attach_point="weapon_02" >
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\weapons/celtic_axes.VariantMeshDefinition" />
                <VARIANT_MESH_REFERENCE definition="variantmeshes\_variantmodels\man\weapons/celtic_swords.VariantMeshDefinition" />
            </SLOT>
            <SLOT name="weapon_3" />
            <SLOT name="weapon_4" />
        </VARIANT_MESH>
    </SLOT>
</VARIANT_MESH>

As far as I can tell there is no reference to a skin in their variantmesh. They have no skin.

Look at the slot names.

[Murderin]

I believe on screen unit names are changed in PFM under text in the land_units.loc file.

[Le_Swede]

You truly are my helping angel this night.

Seconds after I posted about the name problem I realised that there are two kinds of land_units files when using PFM.


Ah, that seems indeed to be a problem, people can't run around with beardy skins hehe. Is the correct name for the "folder" which should contain skins simply "skin"? Seems to not necessarily be that seeing as I just copypasted the skin in the linked mod from the painted ones (vanilla warriors).

[Murderin]

You truly are my helping angel this night.

Seconds after I posted about the name problem I realised that there are two kinds of land_units files when using PFM.


Ah, that seems indeed to be a problem, people can't run around with beardy skins hehe. Is the correct name for the "folder" which should contain skins simply "skin"? Seems to not necessarily be that seeing as I just copypasted the skin in the linked mod from the painted ones (vanilla warriors).

Make a backup first.

I'm not sure if it would work or not, as I'm not a variant pro, but if you export the woad variantmeshdefinition from your pack, open it in notepad, and change the slot name from beards to skin it should work. As long as the barb_painted is a valid skin.

Then you open up your pack again, find your woad variantmeshdefinition, delete it, right click the deleted woad skin, go to add, then files, then add the modified variantmeshdefinition that you edited before, it should all work perfectly. As long as the name isn't changed.

If not then create a new variantmeshdefinition with the variant editor and follow the same steps to remove the old one and add the new one. Just make sure the name is the same.

[Le_Swede]

Ah, lovely it works like a charm now. Many of my thanks you have, as the wise Yoda would say.

[Murderin]

Ah, lovely it works like a charm now. Many of my thanks you have, as the wise Yoda would say.

No problem, feel free to ask any more questions. I was a little disappointed at the lack of help I got when making my first mod, so I try to help as much as possible if I know the answer.

[Le_Swede]

Don't mind if I do.