Modding tips and tricks
 

Now that I've gotten back into modding I see that one sometimes manages to reveal a random piece of modding knowledge when trying out stuff.

If you also hold some fruit of usable modding knowledge, please share it. I'll add them to the list on this post.

- When starting on your first mod, it is very helpful to copy as much as you can from nation mods that already work. Sombre's mods are considered highly in this area.

- You can use #onebattlespell with custom spells with this minor hack. Copyspell a orginal dom3 spell (use a spell that is not likely to be used as a #onebattlespell itself) and alter the orginal spell to your liking. Remember to clearly document what vanilla spells you have altered.

- Did you know that to make a pure holy divine (aka school 8) spell, you need to #copyspell a excisting holy spell to make it visible in the scripting screen?

- You can #onebattlespell summoning ritual spells. Doing this will create a "cloud" that will spawn units from the ritual spell at the start of each combat turn. The graphical effect for this cloud is the poison cloud from the C'tis poison slingers, but it can be changed by #selectspelling the ritual summon in question and giving it different #explsprite. You can also get the same effect by using a spell with effect number over 9000.

- There is a bug with giving forts to a new nation: See this useful post from Jazzepi for details.

- Pure holy ritual spells cannot be monthly casted, doing so will crash the game. Pure holy rituals are also buggy and seem to crash the game on turn generation from time to time. Globu has reported getting a holy ritual work under certain circumstances, but I'd recommend to just forget it, since even he can't monthly cast it.

- If your spell uses #flightsprite that takes effect on the caster, make sure that spell doesn't have huge range. Althought there is no missile sprite, the game will stall until this invisible "missile" hits the target. Very annoying.

- #older accepts negative value, making units younger.

- When using #nextspells, make sure that the #nextspell is researchlevel 0. Apparently the game will not cast the nextspell unless you have it researched! I don't know if this is the case for vanilla spells, but I got hit by this when using my own modded spells. You could also use this to your advantage and make a spell that gains #nextspells as you advance in research.

- Here are some tips from Endoperez on how to easily make good looking new unit graphics.

-See also my guide on the matter of sprite editing (or frankensteining as it known on some circles) in here

- Weapons and spells use same explosionsprites, but you can't use weapon #flysprites with spells nor can you use spell #flightsprites with weapons. These sprites have also been mapped, see this thread:


- Item Modding is quite limited in 3.23, but here are some tips from Psientist on how to work around the limitations.


- You can assign boots of the planes to an Indy commander and have that commander show up in a random other Indy province during game play. (From Psientist)

- If you create a unit with NO magic paths, and give it a magic leadership, it will still not be able to lead magic units. However, if you give it a #magicpath X 0 (a level of zero in that path), it will then be available for leading magic units in the Army Setup menu. (From Psientist)

- You can assign a #watershape (and probably a #forestshape, etc) to a unit in addition to a #secondshape... but the #secondshape must be the last item listed in the series inside the mode file, and the #watershape only is activated when the unit changes provinces. (From Psientist)

- Did you know that the pictures on magic sites are based on path & level? esd29a has mapped them, see this post for details


- There are some mystic bugs regarding PD. See this thread for details.

-The spell effect "polymorph" (number 54) allows for different #damage values for different shapes. However, it seems that the transformation spell does not accept damage values over 1000, perhaps because the spell then adds caster level for damage? Giving values over 2000 seems to result in monsters with monster ID under 1000.

-Also, kennydicke noticed that the Ritual of Rebirth can also be modded by changing the #damage value to revive the hero in another shape than the basic mummy.

-You can give a piece of armor negative encmumberance to make it actually reduce encumberance, for example if you have a unit with a -2 encumbernace shield and 3 base encumberance + 1 from body armor and the -2 from the modded shield it will have a net encumberance of 2. (Thanks to Swan for finding this)

-Here's a modding trick by Sombre:

You have a recruitable commander, let's say a "Royal Guard Captain". The recruitable form of this commander comes with a summon5 and a domsummon of "Royal Guard Infantry". It also has a firstshape pointing to another instance of "Royal Guard Captain" which does not have these summons. Now when you buy the Captain, you get some free troops with him, in a limited supply, without the drawbacks of onebattlespell combat summons or endless streams of summon allies or autosummons.

Of course it eats an extra unit slot, possibly two, per commander you use it on. But then you wouldn't use it on every non mage commander. Just some of them. The 'free' troops are a compensation for hiring a non mage commander

He (Sombre) tested this with lizardmen and you don't even need to differentiate the summoning form from the normal form, because when you recruit them, this happens before EoT, as does the summoning of their troops, so they summon the troops, then they change shape and become normal. In other words, no delay between hiring them, them summoning and them turning into the normal version. So you can literally just put in the description that when you buy them you get X free dudes

-Here is my hack that gives a commander a "battleshape" that it turns into at the start of each battle. Useful for making mages that get weaker in combat, for example.

- If you have too many #tags on a monster, some of them might fail to work. Kennydicke has reported #shape tags being ingored just because of having too many tags on the monster.

- Here is my report on some spell modding test results.

- Popkill and leper only work on commanders. (by Soyweiser)

- A pretender with the changeshape commmand needs a higher monsternr for his second shape. Or it will not show up in the pretender list (by Soyweiser)

- #nobadevents - tag works on troops. I tested with a troops that had 100 bad event prevention and my single province did not a single bad events during 40+ turns in turmoil and misfotune 3.

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

That ritual with onebattle spell gave me an interesting idea: a lightning strike that chained a spawned creature.

And I've been bit by that holy spell not showing up in scripts. Wondered what caused it/how to fix it.. thanks burn.

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

Might be interesting for Skaven to have a cloud that spawned vermin every turn as a onebattlespell of a hero or something.

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

Well, I haven't tested this very throughoutly, it was just something I figured out by pure accident. I don't know if the cloud stays when the caster dies or flees.

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

You don't need a ritual to get a cloud effect. The value of #effect just needs to be over nine thousand, like in Twan's "Mists of Deception" fix:

#selectspell "Mists of Deception"
#effect 9043
#damage 695
#nreff 2
#nextspell "Phantasmal Warrior"
#end


Seriously speaking, adding x*1000 to #effect value will make a cloud that lasts for x rounds.

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

... trying to resist the urge to comment ...

Come on, that was on purpose! :p

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

I actually wrote it that way before I noticed the meme. But I chose to leave it in and to emphasize it. :D



Here are some modding-related tricks:


Sprites. Download an AllView map, download the sprite compilations, try out the different nations. When you have an idea about what you want, go through the game and try to find a sprite that has something you want.

Let's say you want a forest ranger. Tir Na Nog and Tuatha have green-garbed infantry sprites (some of them are units, some commanders) who start all battles with glamour. As long as your rangers don't have glamour, you're fine.

Take a cavalry unit and make it infantry. You'll only have to remove the horse, and do a bit of trickery with the legs. My furman avatar is a Horse Brother.

On the other hand, you can also take an infantry unit and give it a mount. Attach anything on a Wyvern and most people will see a wyvern-rider instead of Tuatha-commander-on-a-wyvern.

Mage sprites follow a formula. There's the robe, hands down and up, bearded or beardless face, and perhaps some ornaments. You don't have to follow the formula, but it's not hard.

Similar sprites are interchangeable. In my Kaleva mod, I used sprites from both Vaetti (MA Jotunheim) and Bakemono (MA Shinuyama). They are small and wear furs, and that's close enough.

Use attack sprite for base sprite, and base sprite for attack sprite. Easy way to make a "new" unit, especially if the original sprite is from a unit that's not too unique.

Changing colors is easy, and will make a huge difference. As an example, if you need to create a female sprite, look through the three ages of Arcoscephale (Priestess, Oreiad, Sibyl), LA Pythium, LA Ulm (Fortune Teller), MA Ashdod and LA Gath (it's easy to resize giant sprite to human-size), MA Machaka (Sorceress), the amazon tribes... The chances are that one of those sprites is close enough, and then you can edit and recolor it and (because Kristoffer is really good at sprites) it will look good.

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

So this is might be a FAQ, but how do you get a copy of one of the in game sprites to edit. I haven't figured it out yet.

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

Sombre -
AFAIK you can't #onebattlespell a custom spell, it has to already be in the game. Maybe you can #selectspell mod an existing one to assign to a commander unit in-combat.

Burn - thanks for the notes. I had discovered most of those, and I think most are scattered in pieces throughout the forums... but I learned a couple and it's nice to have them in one place.

Here's a couple tips I've found...

1. I have confirmed that my little trick of assigning boots of the planes to an Indy commander CAN work, and have that commander show up in a random other Indy province during game play.

2. If you create a unit with NO magic paths, and give it a magic leadership, it will still not be able to lead magic units. However, if you give it a #magicpath X 0 (a level of zero in that path), it will then be available for leading magic units in the Army Setup menu.

3. You can assign a #watershape (and probably a #forestshape, etc) to a unit in addition to a #secondshape... but the #secondshape must be the last item listed in the series inside the mode file, and the #watershape only is activated when the unit changes provinces.

I have several other observations in an "item modding" thread somewhere regarding some of the things you can, and can't seem to get away with for crafting custom items.

Re: Modding tips and tricks
 

Sure and copyspell it first so the original remains in the game. I believe that's the standard method.

I don't actually know for sure that #onebattlespell doesn't work perfectly so long as you /define your newspell first/. Someone should test that ;]