Unlocking RomeTW Hardcoded Limits - Memory Editing

[avesta]

When Medieval 2 Kingdoms expansion came out, you could give general orders to your reinforcing armies, allowing them to join the battle instead of waiting outside and joining one by one. Perhaps this code could be ported into Rome 1?

[MathiasOfAthens]

It was done through some memory editing; as to whether we release a mod: wait and see!

What you mean? You just cracked one of the most sought after changes and you guys are debating whether or not to release a mod with more regions? Of course you guys will. It would revolutionize the game. At least 50 more regions would populate the map more like in Spain, Africa and Gaul.

[Venetus]

BUT, what I think might be even better would be an investigation into the mysterious variables governing diplomacy.

I try to get everyone to read this:

http://www.priomh.com/Random/RTWDiplomacy.pdf

Diplomacy works fairly well when you're playing on Medium and don't have everyone irrationally hating you and you have some grasp of the variables in play. Perhaps those variables could be further elucidated and even re-calibrated. I.e. how many "Relationship Points" are gained or lost through certain actions, the thresholds for war/peace/alliance, etc.

This!
Diplomacy really needs more love in this game. Not for player's sake but the AI's.

[Vipman]

What you mean? You just cracked one of the most sought after changes and you guys are debating whether or not to release a mod with more regions? Of course you guys will. It would revolutionize the game. At least 50 more regions would populate the map more like in Spain, Africa and Gaul.

Zarathos who's working on the M2tw project said it'll be a launcher with which you can select and play any mod, I don't see why it shouldn't be the same here. I think both M2tw and RTW projects should work only on the projects they have and leave modding to the plenty other existing modders, to release first such an amazing tool for everyone and not keep it for years until they finish their own mod...

[Bercor]

The first version of the launcher will be for RTRP. After that, we will give it as a gift to the community.

[Crociato78]

Sorry for the inconvenience!


Some discovery?


I can say that the limits have been able to overcome/change our programmers?

[iskandar13]

The first version of the launcher will be for RTRP. After that, we will give it as a gift to the community.

a great thing and I am looking forward


One question: - Most BI features available in RomeTW-ALX - exactly which features will be available?
Horde will be available on alex.exe?

[madmatg]

Woww great!

[Jeff84]

Wow, this is awesome! i got one question o you think there a possibility to make character decision event like Crusader King ?

[MathiasOfAthens]

Zarathos who's working on the M2tw project said it'll be a launcher with which you can select and play any mod, I don't see why it shouldn't be the same here. I think both M2tw and RTW projects should work only on the projects they have and leave modding to the plenty other existing modders, to release first such an amazing tool for everyone and not keep it for years until they finish their own mod...

Luckily, I like RTR. But I'd rather see some more regions in some of their mods.

The first version of the launcher will be for RTRP. After that, we will give it as a gift to the community.

And this launcher will allow modders to add additional regions or make your mod with more regions compatible with the game engine?

[Bercor]

And this launcher will allow modders to add additional regions or make your mod with more regions compatible with the game engine?

Both.

[MacBlain]

Would it be possible to use this to scale down details whilst increasing unit size? It would be awesome if it was possible to create 100 000-men battles and if most unit details could be removed it should be possible.

I would also be willing to sacrifice all frills in exchange for 1:1 historical-scale battles. But it seems to me that graphics aren't really the problem. I can set up an eight fullstack custom battle on huge, and it will render okay when the game is paused. It's when I start the game moving that it hits a brick wall. The bottleneck must be somewhere else -- the AI, the animation system, the placement of individual men within units, who knows?

It would be very exciting to gain some insight into what causes this, and what adjustments we might make. For example, what if line infantry came in battalions of a thousand? Would this tax the game less than five units of two hundred?

[Ramashan]

Another thing that I spent a while fighting with was custom intro videos and launch video. Made a great motion graphic menu structure but always had to esc through the vanilla intro video in order to have it play properly. Any way to point the game to a custom launch video?

[Outcast]

This is great news even for noobish moders such as me
and even more factions will be even more fantastic!

[Melooo182]

Excellent News! good thing i still have RTW installed

BTW how difficult would be to make these tweaks for M2 as well, specially the 1000 regions part ?

Oh just read the rest of the post which already answers my question
Thats freaking cool!

[Pseudolivius]

Damn it I`m starting C/C++ learning today. ) But first some wiskey.Y guys whom are doing this, big cookies you deserve.

[MacBlain]

It would be great if we could tweak the campaign AI's value judgement rubrics.

For example, when deciding whether to attack, how does the AI evaluate the strength of armies? Are player armies considered as stronger per pound? What if the AI refused battle unless it had at least a 3:2 advantage?

And it would be great to recalibrate the evaluation of units when the AI makes training decisions. Cavalry, for example, should have their desirability factor (or whatever) raised significantly.

The game would be revolutionized if we could reduce ill-advised attacks and create more balanced AI armies.

[Infiernus]

I have a few of questions.

1 - Why is this possible now, and hasn't been done before? Did a copyright expire, or did CA give permission, or something along those lines? To my knowledge, overcoming hardcoded limits was always possible but doing so would lead to CA issuing Cease and Desist letters or something like that.

2 - Have you guys given serious thought to how desirable these unlocked options are? For example, I could see a game with 400 regions and 100 factions and 1200-man units running like such crap that it wouldn't even be worth trying to play. I'm not a programmer, but is the technology really there to support these sorts of changes? For example, as I understand it most of us have quad core machines now but R:TW can only use one of those cores due to old coding.

3 - Building on #2, is it possible to code in multi-core support for R:TW now?

It's a very interesting project though, and I'll be watching closely!

1. For the fifth/sixth/tenth? time, memory editing != hacking the hardcode.

2. We can try to optimise performance a little - but all we can do inititally is see how it plays out - to test and graph performancing is going to suck too much resources out of the project - so we are better off at least inititally unlocking up to a silly number, and people will find the sweetspot - but currently I didnt notice an appeciable performance loss (i7-950@ 5.2Ghz, 16GB Ram, GTX 480)

3. Pretty much not - that would require so much work as to be a complete re-write of the game.

It would be great if we could tweak the campaign AI's value judgement rubrics.

For example, when deciding whether to attack, how does the AI evaluate the strength of armies? Are player armies considered as stronger per pound? What if the AI refused battle unless it had at least a 3:2 advantage?

And it would be great to recalibrate the evaluation of units when the AI makes training decisions. Cavalry, for example, should have their desirability factor (or whatever) raised significantly.

The game would be revolutionized if we could reduce ill-advised attacks and create more balanced AI armies.

We can look at this at some point in the future - but it is highly unlikely to make it into Release 1, bear in mind its like 2-3 people working on the hardcode - its not some massive team.

[webbird]

i like to know, will your launcher eventually make graphic improvements possible, like higher resolutions or better shadow shading?

[Nelduin]

Something I would love to see is the ability to change game font. That's one of the small things that increases immersion A LOT in a mod. Do you think it may be easily doable?