Creating the The Hobbit units!

[Kurmanji]

Geetings!

In the past few days I have been learning how you're supposed to create units (descriptions, making them recruitable in single player, adding textures, I use the skeletons of the mod itself though as I am not good with 3d Models).

I'm basically able to create these units but I encounter 3 problems:

-A lack of suitable textures that I can use, uptil now I have used the textures from the "The hobbit trilogy dwarves and thranduil's elves mod" (it is made for MOS and DAC TATW).

-I'm not sure whatever it is because of the skeletons of the units but a few seconds after being in a custom battle to test them out the game freezes. Even if I do not use any self-made or imported textures this happens. As far as I have checked I got all the lines in the export_descr files right as well as in the other related files. Anyone has encountered a similair problem?

-As I am new to modding I am not sure whatever I may edit files created by the makers of this mod so if any in the modding team reads this, am I allowed to use textures and skeletons for the units I make from your mod?

(-Actually I also still need to do the unit cards or should I say redo as these units will replace the defualt units once this mod is doen and you choose to install this)


As a last note, give me any suggestions regardening the units you'd like to see. I'll try and create as many as possible so you can enjoy them during you summer holiday. ^^


Kind regards,

Kurmanji

A preview: (Please don't pay attention to the heads and double arrow shafts) Here's the "King's guard of Thranduil"



EDIT 1: I have now managed to fixed the heads of the units. First this was not possible because if I edited the texture files that I imported from Medieval 2 with GIMP the game would crash when loading the custom battle with any unit made this way. For anyone who wonders how:
If you use GIMP never save to DDS but to TGA. THen just google "convert DDS to TGA" and any webbrowser converter would do the work. Apperently the mipmaps in GIMP cause a problem for RTW.

On a side note the game doesn't freeze immidiatly when looking at the units but it still does occasionaly freeze. If someone knows how to fix please contact me.

tl;dr The main and only severe obstacle now is basically preventing the game from freezing when the edited textures for units are used. Anyone who knows how to fix this or wants to test out how this happens feel free to contact me!

[Bardo]

That would be a nice addon to this mod.

-As I am new to modding I am not sure whatever I may edit files created by the makers of this mod so if any in the modding team reads this, am I allowed to use textures and skeletons for the units I make from your mod?

You have permission, just give proper credits to Wlesmana, who made all the unit models and textures.
There is a related thread here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...nt-Of-This-Mod

-I'm not sure whatever it is because of the skeletons of the units but a few seconds after being in a custom battle to test them out the game freezes. Even if I do not use any self-made or imported textures this happens. As far as I have checked I got all the lines in the export_descr files right as well as in the other related files. Anyone has encountered a similair problem?

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about unit editing, so I can't help you much there.
There is a similar freeze caused by troll units (non-elephant models used as elephant units), but I don't see how it could be related to your problem.

EDITED: I suggest you to give a try to some unit file validator, like this one:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...smite-thy-bugs
It might help you find typo errors or missing references.

[CapnDan]

Nice!

I relied fairly heavily on the following guide for my early modding needs, it's a good one.
http://rtw.heavengames.com/rtw/mods/...on/index.shtml

[Kurmanji]

Thank you booth for your advise.

To update everyone, apperently if I replace the textures of an existing unit with the "The Hobbit MOS elves and dwarves" mod's textures the game does not freeze anymore if the units are in the enemy's army. (Maybe it depends on the texture, as you see in the screenshots they don't always properly fit, in particular the head of the unit.)

Furthermore with Python and a script I converted some textures to DDS images to edit them.
I basically copy textures from the files of the "The hobbit mod for MOS" and paste them in an existing texture (dds) file for a specific unit in GIMP, the problem I have is that even after merging all layers it continues to say that there's something wrong with the shapes and something about a volume map? This happens when I export the file as a DDS image.

Kind Regards,

Kurmanji