Building Portraits Bugs

[es157]

Modding buildings portraits is something that seems rather easy and intuitive on a first look, but many things small and big start happening whenever I decide to get too adventurous inside the ui folder. As I tried adding some buildings and stuff, I've encountered not one but three small issues that are bugging me a lot. Once again, I'd like to ask someone to give me a hand to solve any of the three, if possible.

So problem nº 1 - I know the southern_european folder is the default folder that all cultures look for if they can't find the appropriate files in their own folders. Knowing that, I decided to delete all the building folders from the other cultures, because there are too many buildings and therefore too many useless files that are only wasting space. I want all cultures to use the same building portraits. The problem arose since I'm using a mod, so when I delete the folders from other cultures, the game goes back to vanilla and picks the building portraits from there instead of picking the portraits from my mod's southern european folder. My question is, can I fix that or am I forced to restore all the deleted folders together with all their repetitive files?

[Gigantus]

Never fear when the gig is near

What you are looking for is the descr_ui_buildings file. This file allows you to set look up variables if building pictures are not present in the usual folders:

    mesoamerican middle_eastern
    mesoamerican eastern_european
    middle_eastern eastern_european
    greek southern_european

The above is from the vanilla file, which means you will need to set up all other cultures like the greek culture. After that any pic not present in a non SE culture directory will be looked up in the SE directory (in the example only the greek culture does so).

[es157]

Never fear when the gig is near

What you are looking for is the descr_ui_buildings file. This file allows you to set look up variables if building pictures are not present in the usual folders:

    mesoamerican middle_eastern
    mesoamerican eastern_european
    middle_eastern eastern_european
    greek southern_european

The above is from the vanilla file, which means you will need to set up all other cultures like the greek culture. After that any pic not present in a non SE culture directory will be looked up in the SE directory (in the example only the greek culture does so).

Boy, what the—

I had never intended to post this thread like this haha. I had begun typing it, but decided to do some more try and error before asking. So I closed the tab. It turns out it was posted automatically when I closed it. Notice how I announced there would be several different problems to address, but I only described one. That's because the post is incomplete.

Anyways, I still hadn't found the solution to the problem you are addressing, and I was just coming here to ask exactly about this one. Lucky me, it was already here. I won't have to wait days for an answer. Thanks, Gigantus, this is exactly what I was looking for.

(A side question: In your sample, why does the mesoamerican culture have two entries?)

[Gigantus]

The example is the actual entry in the original file.

Meso will first look into ME and if it doesn't find the pic it will then look into EE after which it will default to the place holder pic (barracks from RTW). Possibly because meso requires some building pics that are not present\used in ME but are present in EE.

[es157]

Also, how do I do the same thing in regard to event pictures?

[Gigantus]

Event pictures default to the NE culture directory if they are not in the faction's culture directory, and if it's not in there it defaults to the 'historic_event' pic - whether in the NE directory or from the pack.

It basically works the other way round: instead of giving instructions to use a unified picture you will create pictures in other culture's directory to use those instead of the default.

[es157]

Are you saying when it comes to event pics the default culture is northern_european? Odd. I always heard that southern_european was the default culture in all cases, just like the roman culture was the default in RTW.

[Gigantus]

It's odd indeed, but you can give it a try yourself by creating an event with it's own pic, then place the pic in the NE directory and trigger the event with a faction from another culture. If I am right the custom pic will show. If you are right the default pic will be used. Been years since last I dabbled in it so there is a chance that I might be wrong. The default mechanic however is correct.

[es157]

It's odd indeed, but you can give it a try yourself by creating an event with it's own pic, then place the pic in the NE directory and trigger the event with a faction from another culture. If I am right the custom pic will show. If you are right the default pic will be used. Been years since last I dabbled in it so there is a chance that I might be wrong. The default mechanic however is correct.

I tried it. Didn't work. Seems that northern_european is not the default culture for me.

I'll do more intensive testing on this tomorrow and report if I find anything worthwhile.

[Gigantus]

Well, then it could be a rare occasion of me being wrong and that SE is the default for event pics as well been years as I said....