Dagor Silmarillion [UPDATED]~ First Age Campaigns '...slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon (bonuses) and by (coded) torment and by (scripted) grief...'

[myarta]

+1 for that UI fix helping.

I was getting crashes every 1-2 turns around turn 120+ as Men of the West, but now with this change I haven't crashed once in 30-40 turns. It does suck that they're generic looking and I have to mouse over all the names to find out what's left to build, but that's a small price to pay for the stability. I forgot to rename/regenerate the .sd's mentioned though, so this was just with the cleaner script and replacement buildings directories.

Thanks, alreadyded!

And maybe once they're compressed etc, we'll be able to see them back in the game while maintaining stability.

[alreadyded]

+1 for that UI fix helping.

I was getting crashes every 1-2 turns around turn 120+ as Men of the West, but now with this change I haven't crashed once in 30-40 turns. It does suck that they're generic looking and I have to mouse over all the names to find out what's left to build, but that's a small price to pay for the stability. I forgot to rename/regenerate the .sd's mentioned though, so this was just with the cleaner script and replacement buildings directories.

Thanks, alreadyded!

And maybe once they're compressed etc, we'll be able to see them back in the game while maintaining stability.

Thanks for letting me know, I compressed all the new images already but I found out that vanilla TATW has quite few done improperly too so I will probably do those as well just to be safe before I (you guys) test adding them all back in.


Speaking of UI...

[myarta]

Sweet Still doing the familiar 3rd age, but a 1st age is going to be my next campaign. Thanks, I'll look back in for the texture update. Much appreciated.

​puts on LOTR soundtrack and keeps restoring the borders of Arnor

[myarta]

I'm trying to read through the campaign script to figure out what's up with the Ring and I'm not sure I'm following everything.

So far all I've seen is the main scripted 3rd age events like the turn 133 Sauron Returns and the turn 154 White Council.

I'm on turn 174 3rd Age campaign as Men of the West and I haven't seen any ring popups yet. It looks, since I'm neither Catholic (Influenced by the Dark Lord), Pagan (Advocates of the White Hand), nor Heretic (Assorted), that I'm working with ring_timer2 here.

If it's turn 15 or later and sauron_free = 0 (meaning the war of the rings is over and he won?), ring_timer2 goes up by 1. When it hits 26, it goes back to 1 again. Before that, when it hits 25, as long as ring2_spawned = 0 and activate_baradtimer = 0 (so after 7 jumps it goes to Barad-Dur instead of being eligible for random spawn), and the ring doesn't exist yet, and it's not been destroyed, then it has a 4-9% chance to spawn in (varies by place): Isengard, Dunland, Mt Gram, Carn-Dum, Moria, Goblintown, Umbar, Harad, Mistrand, Rhun, Deep-Mirkwood.

So I guess I should have something like a 50/50 each round of 25 for it actually landing somewhere. I've taken Gram and Carn Dum so that lowers it a bit. I should have had something like seven tries so far though, and I'm surprised none of them have resulted in the ring popping up.

Am I missing something? Just bad rolls and I need to keep waiting for more multiples of 25 turns offset by 15 in the hopes that it will spawn?

[alreadyded]

I think the chances start after turn 100 or something, I will have to look. The campaigns are designed to last 600 turns or more and the ring is supposed to be a mid game goal (the campaign starts long before the ring is found) so you should start seeing it soon. I have play tested the script to make sure it works every time I mod it, but I usually have it kick in the first 20 turns or so.

Edit; Yes, it starts after turn 100 in the code it seems, I will have to look at it in more detail though.

[myarta]

Hmm, okay. It looks like it kicks in after turn 100 if you're an evil faction but after turn 15 if you're good. I'll play around with it some more. I really like the 4th Age scenario so I might play that for a bit. I'll let you know what happens with my 3A campaign and if the ring ever starts to pop. I wish you could read variables like ring_timer and so on out of the save games like you can with Paradox saves, would make debugging easier.

[alreadyded]

HERE is the UI Update which compresses all images that should be compressed. Extract to desktop and overwrite your data folder with the one provided. Saved game compatible. It is the same as the Third Age thread, just posting here for anyone that only checks this thread.

[Black Numenorean]

I'm getting the same black screen problem. The first age loading screen pops up, then after a few seconds crashes to desktop. I have done the following:

Ran the cleaner .bat file in the data folder.

Ran both installers and pasted them into Third_Age_3 (both "data" folders)

Edited the Dagor Silmarillion .bat file. I changed the folder paths to Third_Age_3 in both that and in TATW.cfg

I used to have DAC, but I deleted the folder for it, then made a clean install of the Third Age to path 3.2 (in case you were wondering)

I gave myself full permissions for the Medieval 2 Total War folder, as well as getting rid of the Read Only attribute.

I made a copy of the .bat file, and added in to pause just before it launched medieval2.exe. The last portion of the copying failed, apparently the files could not be found.

It goes like this (from the last file it successfully copies until the pause command):

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_moors.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
1 file(s) copied.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_saxons.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_timurids.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_england.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
1 file(s) copied.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_denmark.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_venice.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
1 file(s) copied.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_norway.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_spain.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
1 file(s) copied.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_hre.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_portugal.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_four.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_papal_states.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_normans.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_ireland.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_scotland.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_russia.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>copy data\world\maps\campaign\custom\ds_alpha\leader_pic_milan.tga "data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign"
The system cannot find the file specified.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3>pause
Press any key to continue . . .




It could be that I didn't install it properly, but I doubt it. I had both installers install the data files to the desktop, and copied these over the Third Age data folder.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Black Numenorean]

Update:

I attempted to run the copied .bat file as administrator, which put the command line in system32 and didn't find anything. I edited the file with this first,

C:
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age_3

Allowing it to run properly whilst being run as admin. The same problem occurred, it could not find certain files.

[Black Numenorean]

Another update (sorry)

I added -show_err to the launch options. When I launch now, it crashes instantly before getting to the loading screen. It reads Medieval 2 suffered a fatal error and must exit. The name of the window is CA_LIBS.

[alreadyded]

There is no need to use the .bats I provided, after using the cleaner and both installers you can just run the game as usual with the TATW .bat that only launches the game. Swapping files is only necessary when switching Ages and I recommend using the installers for that if you have Windows Vista/8+ to avoid permissions problems.

"The system cannot find the file specified." This usually means that windows is using the temp folder to copy/paste, try giving the .bat full permissions and maybe running the .bat as admin by right clicking as well though that probably isn't necessary. Since you already gave permissions to the folder I can't think of anything else it could be.

I recommend you install the First Age installer again by itself to put the First Age as default on your current installation and start the game as you used to, that should work if all is well.

If files are actually missing then run the installers as admin.

[Black Numenorean]

Launching from the Third Age .bat file just has the same result.

[Black Numenorean]

Guess I'll just uninstall literally everything, reinstall med 2, then Third Age, then this mod and see if that works.

[alreadyded]

"I recommend you install the First Age installer again by itself to put the First Age as default on your current installation and start the game as you used to, that should work if all is well."

Worth a try. There is no need to reinstall m2tw or TATW if other mods work, unless those other mods messed something up. I have heard a few reports of people needing to delete DAC to get this working and I have no idea why. I have never installed DAC and never will so I can't help.

[Black Numenorean]

Yeah I just tried that, still the same result.

I've already deleted DAC so, I'll just give up trying to play this and maybe wait for the other Silmaril mod coming out.

[alreadyded]

Well enjoy the wait. If you like playing M2TW and DAC kinda gameplay this mod isn't really for you anyway I am guessing.

[Black Numenorean]

No, I wanted to play this because DAC doesn't follow the lore. I like playing Stainless Steel with all the hardcore submods for it activated, like Real Recruitment, the most aggressive AI and the realism sub mod. Vanilla is too boring and exploitative.

[Black Numenorean]

By realism mod I meant the Grim Reality option.

[alreadyded]

I don't think you will enjoy that other silmaril mod then if that is how you feel about vanilla gameplay, which I totally agree with you about btw.

Did you try this? The black screen problem seems to be common on google.

[myarta]

New compressed images update looks much better than them all being the same image!

I still got corruption pretty quickly with it, though, until I also deleted the shared.sd / strategy.sd. Not sure if it was just a correlation, but that did it for me. Back to having the variety of icons but also long term stability.

Now if only I could figure out my high chance of battle CTD when fighting wolves/wargs/other unusual skeleton critters.