Announcing MedModManager

[ShellShock]

This post is to announce a new project: MedModManager, a Medieval 2 Total War Mod Manager.

Based on excellent feedback from Epistolary Richard (who has been let loose on the game in Oz), it is now clear that M2TW supports "modding the differences"; that is, unlike RTW where you have to create a complete copy of the whole install for each mod (all 11 GB!), or mod your original game files, for M2TW you can simply direct the game to pick up the modded files from a separate, mod directory.

The MedModManager utility will make it simple to manage mods created in this fashion, particularly to help novice players who may not be familiar with managing files in Windows.

Features of the first release of MedModManager will include:

Displaying a list of existing mods; clicking on one will launch M2TW to play that mod.
Creating desktop shortcuts for mods - play the mod from an icon without having to use MedModManager.
Creating a new skeleton mod, with the necessary files to get you started on your own mod.

My aim is for this first release to be available shortly after M2TW comes out (I have until then to do most of the coding!).

In a later release I hope to support modders more, e.g.,

Interactively selecting which files to include in a new mod.
Associating editors with specific file types. I will probably not be writing the editors myself; initially this may just be notepad for editing txt and xml files.
Anything else I can think of.

Updates will be posted here, including the first release.

[DavidtheDuke]

Sounds great, I'd definitely use it and with the size of MTW2 it's almost totally necessary so you could have at least a few GBs left on your harddrive.

[Black Francis]

Excellent news!

This will make life for us mod addicts a lot more bareable.