Discussion about modding and its future

[Leonardo]

A discussion about the future for the MTW modding and how to make it easier for any modder to continue modding when one tool or any tool of the old modding tools simply stop working due for being too old, because sooner rather than later a modding tool will stop working and most modders who knew what purpose a mod tool had of the old modding tools is no longer active. I need to point out though that the worse scenario

Right, then. First things first. Get a copy of Gnome Editor, because it's so much easier to use... See this thread for a package of nearly all the tools you'll ever need for MTW modding.

The relevant part of the UNIT_PROD file is not even shown in the text you have quoted above, it's much further along. In Gnome you'll see all the data arranged into convenient columns with headings giving a description of their contents. To determine which factions have which units, there are three columns you need to consider.

Column 17 - Buildings needed to produce this Unit
Column 50 - Faction Association Labels
Column 54 - Specific cultures this unit belongs to.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In the case of Armenian Heavy Cavalry, what limits the availability is it is set to MUSLIM in Column 54. If you want the unit available to other cultures you must either add the other cultures here, e.g. "CATHOLIC, ORTHODOX, MUSLIM, PAGAN" (you must include the quote marks with a list here) OR you can just delete the word MUSLIM and resave the file*. You can select any combination of cultures here to your taste.

Column 17 is relevant because the building requirements may limit it to a particular culture - you can make Nizari for instance available to all cultures, but they need a GRAND_MOSQUE, so in practice they'll still be limited to Muslim factions.

Column 50 allows you to list specific factions, so for instance if you leave column 54 blank (all cultures) you can change the current entry in column 50 ( ALL_FACTIONS ) to make a list of the factions you want, eg "FN_ENGLISH,FN_TURKISH" Obviously this would make your AHCs available to those two factions only. Now, because these columns are filters, if you keep column 54 showing as MUSLIM, then only the Turkish would have them, because the English are not a Muslim faction.

Other notes: the spaces in {HORSE_BREEDER2} and { HORSE_BREEDER2 } make no difference beyond making reading easier But {HORSE_BREEDER 2} would break it because the label is no longer the same as in the BUILD_PROD file.

Once you have Gnome, you'll also see that Turcopoles are limited to CATHOLIC factions in column 54. The Muslim factions have their own horse archer units, the turcopoles are there to represent units who fought alongside the Crusaders against their co-religionists.

Finally, regarding the tech chart -it's mostly correct, but has enough errors in it to make it useless in this regard.

* However, this exposes you to Gnome's one major failing: when data is deleted from it, the end of the file sometimes contains remaining snippets of data which must be removed by using Notepad or similar to restore the proper file ending.

I can only think of one solution and that's to use pre-defined spreadsheets when editing a file(s) e.g CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.TXT, CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.TXT plus a few other files.

But how about the other modding tools that requires some knowledge in programming in which I don't possess aside from compiling a Python source code.


Feel free to comment, suggest or share your thoughts about this.

[Macsen Rufus]

The threat isn't so much that the tools 'stop working', rather that you will upgrade to a new OS that no longer supports them. If you think you may want to go on modding MTW into the future, maybe keep a cheap old PC with XP just for that purpose...

[Leonardo]

The threat isn't so much that the tools 'stop working', rather that you will upgrade to a new OS that no longer supports them. If you think you may want to go on modding MTW into the future, maybe keep a cheap old PC with XP just for that purpose...

Here are two examples of why I think your suggestion might work for the next 5-10 years, but eventually it won't work due for a couple of reasons.

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/24-...ful-link-list/ (scroll down to the quote in the bottom)

That quote is about the included help file in the TES Construction Set (CS) for Morrowind that won't work without that patch when using CS in Windows 7. Which I discover when trying to read the help file in the CS at that time.

Furthermore, such a patch won't be available for eternity unless someone have save it somewhere, so what I'm talking about has already started to happen and that reminds me about one modding tool we have in the Morrowind modding community.

The Enchanted Editor is very useful moddding tool (the best tool that has ever existed) and the question is for how long will people be able to use it before it stopped working. Another tool that's old is TESPCD.

These moddding tools are entirely depended of what OS one use and to what OS one may upgrade to.


However, that will dramatically changed when the file system most computers use today will not work properly after year 2038 due for being too old computer and old computers cannot handle better file system than FAT32, NTFS I think (I may have miss a file system or two).

Here is more information about what will happen in the future.



These are the reasons of why I started this thread in the first place.

[Macsen Rufus]

By 2038, it's not only my PC which will be too old for modding If by any stretch I'm still going, then I think I'll just have to turn the clock back a few decades.... (and remember to disable NTP....)

[Axalon]

I am essentially with Mac on all this...

- A

[Stazi]

I can only think of one solution and that's to use pre-defined spreadsheets when editing a file(s) e.g CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.TXT, CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.TXT plus a few other files.

I really doubt there will be someone still modding this game after 2038 but if you have any problems with editing those txt files you can simply use Excel which gives you very similar column view as Gnome and has a lot more useful editing options (and it doesn't destroy the file structure while saving if you do it right). I've been using 2010 version but newer versions should work too. Of course if you think about some serious editing like adding several lines or whole blocks of text the faster and better solution will be to use free Notepad++. I've never trusted Gnome due to the problem mentioned in the first post.

[Leonardo]

I really doubt there will be someone still modding this game after 2038 but if you have any problems with editing those txt files you can simply use Excel which gives you very similar column view as Gnome and has a lot more useful editing options (and it doesn't destroy the file structure while saving if you do it right). I've been using 2010 version but newer versions should work too. Of course if you think about some serious editing like adding several lines or whole blocks of text the faster and better solution will be to use free Notepad++. I've never trusted Gnome due to the problem mentioned in the first post.

True, but that could happen earlier than one may think and like I said in the OP it had already happen for the Morrowind CS. So, in the future anyone who wants to read the helpfile in CS must install a patch from M$ in Vista/Windows 7 or newer.

Calc in OpenOffice can also be used for those who don't have Excel.

[Leith1970]

Hello. I cannot see any bright future, or any modding for this game, I'm afraid. I'm one of the very few "nuttas" who still mod this game but how many more are there? Look at this website and see for yourself. I hate the status quo because MTW is my all-time-favourite game.