ummm what's the update for?

[Melooo182]

That was like 8-10 months ago, but I remember very well trying all possible methods and i could never get past the main menu, as soon as tried to start a campaign BAM CTD...it was so frustrating specially having 0 problems with mods like SS, Bello Mundi, etc...that I eventually gave up on those others.

[RubiconDecision]

Ugh, I have a bad feeling about this. Maybe we'll have to create a tutorial with pictures that describes how to regedit the mods to make them work properly, even a procedure to migrate mod folders too, for otherwise when you do a reinstallation of MTW2, then you'll lose your savegames.

The regedit is straight forward in Vista...usually. We'll see.

EDIT: If you're having sound issues, there's a good chance that you'll have to do a complete reinstall of MTW2 and not merely patch it. That's what I'm testing now minus mods to see if it happens in the vanilla or crusades official mod.

EDIT2: You know what I'm concerned about? What does this do regarding unpacking the game and does this bugger up the installation process of many mods. It's jumping the gun, but I would bet that it screws up installation programs too.

[RubiconDecision]

Well this is a real pain in the ass. The steam re-installation had 60 errors and has to be reacquired. This is why I hate Steam and MTW2 combined.

I took a look at what they did. Even though it says medieval2.exe in Windows Explorer, if you look at the code of that program, it's actually the kingdoms.exe in disguise plus whatever they did to get Gamespy to work. What's notably weird is they didn't fix the 2 GB limitation which is really dumb. That's an observation not provoking anyone to do anything.

See this:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/4700/d...0847658755047/

"Game Issues Today (Official) Folks,

We are aware that many of you are having issues starting the game today. We are in the process of migrating the game away from Gamespy and have run into a few issues on the Steam side in getting everything configured correctly. We are working on it and will continue to do so until things are back up and running tonight for you.

Stay tuned. Thanks for your patience.

Updates:
Please see post #5 to determine if you have all of the latest files. If not, please see post #37 to validate your game cache. If after following those steps, you are still having issues with your game running, please add to this thread and we'll work with you to get the game running again. Thanks. "


Steam is aware of the sound issue and the mod issue and is trying to fix it. We'll see. If you're not technically inclined, and you haven't updated, then I'd advise you to STOP, play some other game until this gets sorted, and then try later.

Somehow this pic and scene from Fight Club comes to mind. I won't include the clip as it breaks ToS. They literally tell the powers that be, "Do not with us."

[Larkin]

Jeez, this second update...

I had renamed my SS install to americas from crusades, because otherwise vanilla crusades would launch anyway. When called americas it would load but saves wouldn't load, the faction select screen would just be "Crusades 1 AD" and nothing else.

Now Steam seems to have deleted most of my kingdoms expansions... only 4 folders are in there, instead of 5, and I still get CTDs when loading using the method described above. Trying to start a new campaign won't even take me to the faction select screen - I just get "please choose an option".

Would uninstalling and reinstalling everything make a difference?

[capablecenturion]

Jeez, this second update...

I had renamed my SS install to americas from crusades, because otherwise vanilla crusades would launch anyway. When called americas it would load but saves wouldn't load, the faction select screen would just be "Crusades 1 AD" and nothing else.

Now Steam seems to have deleted most of my kingdoms expansions... only 4 folders are in there, instead of 5, and I still get CTDs when loading using the method described above. Trying to start a new campaign won't even take me to the faction select screen - I just get "please choose an option".

Would uninstalling and reinstalling everything make a difference?

I confirm this - Playing with GUAM Mod (Retrofit + the mod installed) and it doesn't allow me to get to the faction screen.

(Lost my screenshot )

I've tried this with multiple ways (one posted by irishron, regarding using Med2.exe as shortcut in steam library, as well as using .bat way) -- both have rendered the error. It worked yesterday when changing kingdoms folders was actually WORKING (it didn't screw up my mod, interestingly)

This is just gonna keep going forever in a loop isn't it...just like Rome 2 -_-

[capablecenturion]

...

I've tried this with multiple ways (one posted by irishron, regarding using Med2.exe as shortcut in steam library, as well as using .bat way) -- both have rendered the error. It worked yesterday when changing kingdoms folders was actually WORKING (it didn't screw up my mod, interestingly)

...

I was wrong as I had suspected - replaced my mod with a backup and now the error no longer persists. Apologize for double post -- couldn't edit, thank the site for that.

[BM309K58SMERCH]

This may sound too big, but I personally find the only theoretical solution to be this: Do a complete reinstall of Medieval 2.

Having a merged game is glitchier than simply downloading the new one. The .exe of both Medieval2 and Kingoms were merged along with other properties to adapt to a "new" file system. If you check the options in-game, you will notice M2+K (medieval2+kingdoms) is patched to version 1.51.

This is somewhat similar to what happened to Team Fortress 2 (and other HL2-based games) a few months back when it shifted to a newer, more efficient file system which uses less hard drive memory. Since I have an older version of TF2 installed in my PC, I have the older file system which is more cumbersome and slower. After the update, I still have remains of the old file system, and now I have a merged version. My memory is still being used as if using the older system. If I want to solve this, then I must completely uninstall TF2 and manually delete the files in the steamapps folder.

The only difference between this update and the TF2 update is that memory was freed up in this one, two .exes got merged into one. While for the TF2 update, it was simply installing (and merging) a new file system.

I haven't tried this myself yet (+14GB to uninstall then download again ), but I find this the only solution to fixing this problem. Especially the sound problem and multiplayer lag. We will wait for Rubicon's results.

As for mod support, these are the possible theoretical solutions:
1. It is only a matter of reinstalling medieval2 alone to make them work again. (I really hope so, this seems like the best solution in my opinion, I'll even bet on it!)
2. Reinstall the mods again. Keep a backup of the mod folder or the saves for a safe measure.
3. Wait for a fix from CA.

Don't take my word on these, I am only speculating. Although I have a very big feeling that option 1 is the one true solution.

I don't see why you should stop Steam from updating m2+k. If you done the "renaming folders" workaround, then you should know that Steam will detect this as an un-updated game and will "update" it to match the "current" version of the game. The americas, british_isles, crusades, and teutonic folders in the mods folder should be left untouched, as well as vanilla folder (Medieval II Total War/data). Steam will only allow a new mod to be added by creating a new folder in the mod folder (like mods always do), so as a warning for those who are not aware: DO NOT RENAME YOUR MOD INTO A KINGDOMS FOLDER. It will only result in dire consequences.

People are looking for a solution for this problem, please wait warmly until it is ready.

EDIT:

Oops, it looks like there are still errors even after reinstalling. So now, here are a few solutions for the common man for this annoying yet temporary problem:

1. Play another game.
2. DON'T RENAME ANY FOLDERS. (This fixes NOTHING)
3. If you don't mind playing without sound, or your mod is lucky enough to be exempt from this terrible disorder, then play it if you like, but don't modify anything unless you know what you are doing.

This will take a while...

[Emperor of The Great Unknown]

I downloaded and successfully installed Bare Geomod Kingdoms so i don't think mod installers are broken per se. And yes the medieval2.exe is basically the kingdoms.exe, it would be nice if CA added AI reinforcement control, stone forts and boiling oil while they are at.

[irishron]

I downloaded and successfully installed Bare Geomod Kingdoms so i don't think mod installers are broken per se. And yes the medieval2.exe is basically the kingdoms.exe, it would be nice if CA added AI reinforcement control, stone forts and boiling oil while they are at.

Stone forts was the main howl and reason for the 1.5 Kingdoms patch. I lost half my posts a .Com during that period. Don't tell Yakaspat or another war will start.

[RubiconDecision]

Here's what I am doing. It's up to you to decide what to do on your own machines.

1. Migrate your mod folders somewhere safe so they won't get deleted by a reinstallation.
2. Go to Steam and do a delete local content.
3. Go to the control panel and programs and do a removal of MTW2. Personally I used a uninstaller so that every single registry entry would be removed as well, in case the programmer who made the update buggered up the registry changes.
4. Now there is no MTW2 on your hard drive, or a mention of it in your registry. Do a fresh pristine install of MTW2.
5. Pray that the installation programs of mods works.
6. Meanwhile it's possible we'll figure out a patch for those saved migrated folders of Third Age, Stainless Steel, etc that everyone plays.

This is a cluster, but common in the tech world, but it's been a long time since I've experienced one first-hand. It usually begins when some well-meaning programmer gets a bright idea, but doesn't think of the consequences of making a program change.

Since this is a modding community, I'll bet most everyone has slightly modified versions of the EDB, EDCT, EDA, descr_strat, campaign_script, etc. By migrating your mod folders, then there's a chance you can migrate them back once all the dust settles. Perhaps even the save games will work as well. Who knows? Keep your fingers crossed, but back up your data. That's always been the case.

[Prozn856]

So it's pretty much impossible to play mods now for the time being?

[Yayattasa]

Wait, so they did not add the Kingdom features to the base game?

[Emperor Hantscher]

I was able to play Broken Crescent today by doing the following:

1. Open Steam, click "Games" on top left toolbar.
2. Select "Add a non-steam game to my library"
3. Browse and find Medieval2.exe
4. You will now see "medieval2" on your games list, right click, open "Properties"
5. You can now rename it to your mod title in my case "Broken Crescent", on the target line add ""C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\medieval2.exe" @mods\nameofmodfolder\nameofconfig.cfg"
6. Make sure in the modfoler the .batch file uses medieval2.exe and not kingdoms.exe. Open the .batch with notepad++ and you will see this line "start kingdoms.exe @mods\nameofmodfolder\nameofconfig.cfg" rename kingdoms.exe to medieval2.exe

That should be it now you just select your mod from the games list press play and everything should be smooth. I find this way better than the old launcher anyways.
Please note, if you have changed the name of the mod folder or config then both the .batch and .cfg will need to be change to reflect the new folder name, like in my case.

No need to worry about an update corrupting your mod folder. If you want to play a mod or one of the Kingdoms expansions that was corrupted during the update than yes, a reinstall of both mod and M2TW is nessasary, if you are like me and could care less for anything vanilla then who cares.


EDIT: After trying to set up other mods the same way it alwasy just opens the first mod I setup. However I was able to open all my mods by making sure the .bat file has Medieval2.exe instead of Kingdoms then opening it. it opens the mod no problems. no bug nothing. Worked on all mods.


So basically as long as you have not changed any folder names etc. all you have to do is open the mods executable with notepad++ or w/e and change kingdoms.exe to medieval2.exe and you can run the mod from it's own .exe creat shorcut to desktop whatever you want. I have no idea why everyone is saying you can't play mods and why some people are going of with all this technical nonsense......Simple.

[RubiconDecision]

I was able to play Broken Crescent today by doing the following:

1. Open Steam, click "Games" on top left toolbar.
2. Select "Add a non-steam game to my library"
3. Browse and find Medieval2.exe
4. You will now see "medieval2" on your games list, right click, open "Properties"
5. You can now rename it to your mod title in my case "Broken Crescent", on the target line add ""C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\medieval2.exe" @mods\nameofmodfolder\nameofconfig.cfg"
6. Make sure in the modfoler the .batch file uses medieval2.exe and not kingdoms.exe. Open the .batch with notepad++ and you will see this line "start kingdoms.exe @mods\nameofmodfolder\nameofconfig.cfg" rename kingdoms.exe to medieval2.exe

That should be it now you just select your mod from the games list press play and everything should be smooth. I find this way better than the old launcher anyways.
Please note, if you have changed the name of the mod folder or config then both the .batch and .cfg will need to be change to reflect the new folder name, like in my case.

No need to worry about an update corrupting your mod folder. If you want to play a mod or one of the Kingdoms expansions that was corrupted during the update than yes, a reinstall of both mod and M2TW is nessasary, if you are like me and could care less for anything vanilla then who cares.


EDIT: After trying to set up other mods the same way it alwasy just opens the first mod I setup. However I was able to open all my mods by making sure the .bat file has Medieval2.exe instead of Kingdoms then opening it. it opens the mod no problems. no bug nothing. Worked on all mods.


So basically as long as you have not changed any folder names etc. all you have to do is open the mods executable with notepad++ or w/e and change kingdoms.exe to medieval2.exe and you can run the mod from it's own .exe creat shorcut to desktop whatever you want. I have no idea why everyone is saying you can't play mods and why some people are going of with all this technical nonsense......Simple.

This is a well written post and is reflective of another old school way of getting a mod to work. It works EXCEPT there are known issues with sound and multiplayer that are yet to be worked out as a result of the 10Gig "patch" and the devs at Steam are working on it. Which means yet more patches to come while they sort it out.

Honestly, it might be worth it to simply wait to do anything until the chips fall where they will as you might have to do it all over again.

I honestly couldn't detect any sound issues in custom battles or in the vanilla or Britannia campaigns, but I've barely tested it thus far. The only way would be to bug test it exclusively.

A check of the registry after doing a completely new reinstallation after doing a complete forced uninstall of the registry prior, shows the identical registry entries, and so it's possible that mods will still install and that save games MIGHT work if you carefully do as I suggested and migrate data for safe keeping.

The patch is 10gigs, and a completely new installation is 14.6 gigs. Honestly that mammoth a patch is bound to fail.

Example: there are reports that SS 6.4 has sound issues where the Americas' campaign music plays instead of the regular SS mod music.

Note that there is a patch of some sort that was supposed to fix the sound/MP issues on another forum, but the same issues remain. It will take a cadre of lots of players to hunt down these issues by trying different things within mods. I seriously doubt there will be any simple answers.

See: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-Update-Hotfix

[Emperor Hantscher]

This is a well written post and is reflective of another old school way of getting a mod to work. It works EXCEPT there are known issues with sound and multiplayer that are yet to be worked out as a result of the 10Gig "patch" and the devs at Steam are working on it. Which means yet more patches to come while they sort it out.

Honestly, it might be worth it to simply wait to do anything until the chips fall where they will as you might have to do it all over again.

I honestly couldn't detect any sound issues in custom battles or in the vanilla or Britannia campaigns, but I've barely tested it thus far. The only way would be to bug test it exclusively.

A check of the registry after doing a completely new reinstallation after doing a complete forced uninstall of the registry prior, shows the identical registry entries, and so it's possible that mods will still install and that save games MIGHT work if you carefully do as I suggested and migrate data for safe keeping.

The patch is 10gigs, and a completely new installation is 14.6 gigs. Honestly that mammoth a patch is bound to fail.

Example: there are reports that SS 6.4 has sound issues where the Americas' campaign music plays instead of the regular SS mod music.

Note that there is a patch of some sort that was supposed to fix the sound/MP issues on another forum, but the same issues remain. It will take a cadre of lots of players to hunt down these issues by trying different things within mods. I seriously doubt there will be any simple answers.

See: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-Update-Hotfix

The way I did it through steam(creating the mod in the game list) I played 3 custom battle and about an hour in the campaign. I did not notice any sound issues(I had the volume cranked) Running the mods through their proper .exe I played a few custom battles and noticed not sound issues at all. Not thoroughly tested but still good enough for me.

Can you explain these sound issues? because I clearly am not experiencing them. Oddly enough for me, Squids launcher never worked for me. I was on tech help for a very long time trying to find out why it never worked, everything was as it should have been but my mods always crashed on startup. No one could figure out why, not even the "pro's". I wonder if that has something to do with the fact I am not having any problems this go around lol.

[RubiconDecision]

The way I did it through steam(creating the mod in the game list) I played 3 custom battle and about an hour in the campaign. I did not notice any sound issues(I had the volume cranked) Running the mods through their proper .exe I played a few custom battles and noticed not sound issues at all. Not thoroughly tested but still good enough for me.

Can you explain these sound issues? because I clearly am not experiencing them. Oddly enough for me, Squids launcher never worked for me. I was on tech help for a very long time trying to find out why it never worked, everything was as it should have been but my mods always crashed on startup. No one could figure out why, not even the "pro's". I wonder if that has something to do with the fact I am not having any problems this go around lol.

The sound issues are numerous with diverse ranged weapon sound effects being incorrect or totally missing as well as music playing from the wrong campaign even when specified by a mod and unique, or missing music. See the steam forum link in one of my posts, the official one in which the Steam devs related that they're working on it.

Steam will allow you to run any game within their package, and so when you do that, then it is in effect doing the Regedit editing just as Squid's tool does.

Now the weird thing is they literally renamed the kingdoms.exe to the medieval2.exe after making modifications to the Assembly code, but they didn't have to make the regedit changes to reflect this exe change. Which is odd. Literally the americas or britania campaigns are calling for the same old kingdoms.exe, so it shouldn't work...but it does. No idea why.

I'm glad that you got it to work. Realize that lots of people have been helping in the tech part of the forum, and that regardless of your luck, making a snarky comment does nothing to help the vast majority of users who only got mods to work because of folks like Squid or irishron. That's not helpful.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I was able to play Broken Crescent today by doing the following

It should be a lot easier than that: simply let Steam create you a desktop shortcut for M2TW. Rename M2TW shortcut to $mod_name.exe, edit Target line appropriately (to referenced the correct config using the @config option, as per your post).

It works EXCEPT there are known issues with sound and multiplayer that are yet to be worked out as a result of the 10Gig "patch" and the devs at Steam are working on it. Which means yet more patches to come while they sort it out.

Honestly, it might be worth it to simply wait to do anything until the chips fall where they will as you might have to do it all over again.

Example: there are reports that SS 6.4 has sound issues where the Americas' campaign music plays instead of the regular SS mod music.

Note that there is a patch of some sort that was supposed to fix the sound/MP issues on another forum, but the same issues remain. It will take a cadre of lots of players to hunt down these issues by trying different things within mods. I seriously doubt there will be any simple answers.

See: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-Update-Hotfix

That would be because your friendly mod developers have not yet built proper IDX/DAT packages. Therefore you are relying on what M2TW cooked up when you first ran the mod. Which reflects the old location/paths of the mod, which had a different directory name. Here's another fun fact: simply copying a mod from one place to another and then removing the first location will break sound, even if the mod directory name itself remains the same. You see, when IDX/DAT files are built by M2TW it uses absolute path names, so 'copies' are not always quite what they might seem at first.

The way I did it through steam(creating the mod in the game list) I played 3 custom battle and about an hour in the campaign. I did not notice any sound issues(I had the volume cranked) Running the mods through their proper .exe I played a few custom battles and noticed not sound issues at all. Not thoroughly tested but still good enough for me.

Can you explain these sound issues? because I clearly am not experiencing them. Oddly enough for me, Squids launcher never worked for me. I was on tech help for a very long time trying to find out why it never worked, everything was as it should have been but my mods always crashed on startup. No one could figure out why, not even the "pro's". I wonder if that has something to do with the fact I am not having any problems this go around lol.

No, you are simply using the very same mechanism (albeit in a somewhat more convoluted way than strictly necessary) that CA relied on with their launcher, namely the command line syntax supported by M2TW/Kingdoms. All the CA launcher did was read out a few registry keys, assemble a (broken, in case there were spaces in the mod path) command line and execute that. You could get the CA launcher to execute pretty much anything by writing the name of the program to execute in the GameExe field.

This could lead to undesired results, for example, say GameExe = "rmdir.exe" and Path = "C:\Windows\system32 /S /Q" then you will find out who has UAC disabled and runs everything as admin by default.

[RubiconDecision]

That would be because your friendly mod developers have not yet built proper IDX/DAT packages. Therefore you are relying on what M2TW cooked up when you first ran the mod. Which reflects the old location/paths of the mod, which had a different directory name. Here's another fun fact: simply copying a mod from one place to another and then removing the first location will break sound, even if the mod directory name itself remains the same. You see, when IDX/DAT files are built by M2TW it uses absolute path names, so 'copies' are not always quite what they might seem at first.

I'll bet a lot of mod developers plus legacy mods will need this done. I hope you write a tutorial on it because otherwise I doubt the sound gets fully repaired in our old favorite mods.

EDIT: Irishron, what do you think it means? How can they be using a GameExe attribute for kingdoms.exe when there isn't a kingdoms.exe anymore with the Steam patch?

[Gigantus]

Please note, if you have changed the name of the mod folder or config then both the .batch and .cfg will need to be change to reflect the new folder name, like in my case.

1. Does this mean that the BAT file and the CFG file have to have the same name as the mod folder? Right now all three of these have different names in my mod - and I don't have steam to test this.

My present set up would be like this in the steam set up: @mods\Three_Kingdoms\Configuration.cfg with the edited BAT file named Steam Start.bat (start medieval2.exe @mods\Three_Kingdoms\Configuration.cfg)

2. If I create a desktop shortcut to the edited BAT file (med2.exe) will I be able to start the steam game with it?

[RubiconDecision]

1. Does this mean that the BAT file and the CFG file have to have the same name as the mod folder? Right now all three of these have different names in my mod - and I don't have steam to test this.

My present set up would be like this in the steam set up: @mods\Three_Kingdoms\Configuration.cfg with the edited BAT file named Steam Start.bat (start medieval2.exe @mods\Three_Kingdoms\Configuration.cfg)

2. If I create a desktop shortcut to the edited BAT file (med2.exe) will I be able to start the steam game with it?

Gig, using his old school method, I did this to make De Bello Mundi operate. There's no difference in the installer which is the good news.

1. This was the target change in the new non-Steam game added to the Steam menu:
"D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Medieval II Total War\medieval2.exe" @mods\DBM\DBM.cfg"
(The user has to know where Steam is located and then point to the cfg file). There's no kingdoms.exe any more so that medieval2.exe is important. There's no longer a launcher anymore so this is really the only way to do it outside of desktop icon file commands.

2. Now right click on the new non-Steam game in the Steam menu, and send it to the desktop.
It will send it there, but naturally it won't have a graphic icon attached, but look really generic. Then clicking upon it launches everything so it operates, but expect sound issues.

3. Have users report their:
a) OS
b) Steam Client ID
c) mod

etc so we can track down sound and graphics issues.

To locate their Steam Client ID:
1. Right click on mtw2 in their Steam Library
2. Select properties
3. Click on Local Files
4. It should display the Steam Client ID. The current one that has some quickfixes is 334162 , but that's strictly fixes for multiplayer not sound.

EDIT: Note that I can't get Bare Geomod to work now. It crashes.

EDIT2 : Official answers to adding mods