Modding Questions
 

Modding looks pretty simple. In fact, it looks extremely simple! However, there are many things I'd like to do that I can't find commands for. So...

First, do commands from the .map files work? Such as naming selected monster? Important for editing heroes.

Come to that, is it possible to make new heroes at all, or do I have to stick with modifying the old ones?

Is this the full list of powers/traits I can stick on a monster? Say for example I'd like to make one automatically diseased. Or give it a forging bonus. Or nonhealing. Are these commands not listed in the mod instructions, or are they completely unprovided for in the modding program itself?

All this said, let me commend Illwinter on the most amazingly smooth, simple, understandable, and streamlined modding and mapping systems I've ever seen. I've modded some other games, and you can do almost as much with far less trouble on Dominions 2.

Re: Modding Questions
 

check your dominions2/docs/ directory.
a MODDING.PDF can be found there.

Re: Modding Questions
 

If you want to edit a hero, that is impossible in the present ver 2.06.
And, it thinks that it is impossible that a monster in map is edited, too.

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heroes can be edited, they just can't have all of their equipment removed through the #clear command. This is done in the Hoburg Special Alliance mod. Monsters can also be edited, the Trollheim mod, Hoburg mod from Illwinter show how this can be done, as does the Devil's Lair mod.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Yes, I have read the modding instructions. Thoroughly. However, I want to do things (mainly fairly basic monster/hero edits) that are neither included in the instructions, nor do the instructions say they are impossible.

That is why I am asking if the modding engine accepts any commands that were not included in the instructions, or if for the moment this is the complete limit of what we have to work with.

Don't get me wrong. It's a great basic package, and very flexible. But there are traits the game can (and does) recognize in units that I have not been told how to set, and I was hoping to play with some of them.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Its the first run of a modding set. And we Users did push pretty hard for it to hurry up and be released. Already a few things have been spotted that the devs have said "oops, left that out. next patch". I dont remember what ones but its nice that the devs acknowledge an oops and then fix it.

The terminology might need some work. The game isnt really written in english (literally). As I understand it.. You cant "edit" the heros but you can replace them. So you could make a copy of one to a new number, make a few small changes, then tell the game to replace the old hero with the new Version.

[ January 29, 2004, 17:03: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I apologizes for having been short of words. Sorry.

I wanted to say, Name and parameter of the hero who comes to the Gate can't be edited.
It seems that I was in haste.

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Seems to me you could edit them the same way you can edit pretenders and other units. Get their number. Apply changes to that number. #clear won't work, but you can overwrite anything you can change, including equipment. If they have unique abilities though, you probably can't get rid of those until the next patch.

PvK

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">all cmds that the engine would accept listed in the instruction.
had splited the exe file to shards, and found that there is nothing more.

*But there are something not listed in sunray-be' sites.xls http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif *

[ January 30, 2004, 06:13: Message edited by: void ]

Re: Modding Questions
 

Actually I had an issue where I believe #clear left a shield on my troops, leading to some confusion when I gave them another shield and they had two. But I think it is intended to clear all items and special attributes, so between that and name/sprite replacement the only thing you can't do is add more heroes...you can edit the old ones completely, I think.

Re: Modding Questions
 

#clear doesn't work, but if you add new equipment it replaces the old one. Also the hero will keep the name it had, so it will be "hero name" the "unit name", I.E. "Rhianne the what-ever-you-named-your-unit" if the Ulmish hero 381 is edited.

[ January 30, 2004, 14:35: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

Re: Modding Questions
 

Okay, new question! How do I dig out the game's unit icons to edit? Obviously, people are doing so. It would make my life much easier to edit rather than make them all up from scratch, and I didn't see any files that were obviously images in the game directory. Maybe I just didn't know what I was looking for.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Taking a screenshot of the unit & pasting that to a graphics program is the only way really.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Taking a screenshot from the game is the easiest way to "rip" existing sprites from the game. The hard part is sizing them correctly inside whichever graphics editing program you use to edit the sprites.

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Would the screenshot be taken zoomed up during battle or just a screen shot in the unit recruit? or having 1152x768 full screen and THEN taking the screenshot?

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Would the screenshot be taken zoomed up during battle or just a screen shot in the unit recruit? or having 1152x768 full screen and THEN taking the screenshot? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would say the easiest might be to use the AllView game (which has all the units in the game available for viewing) then use the formation command. That view seems about the right size and there is only one background color to mess with.

You might also set the games graphic settings different. Such as low-res and 100% non-traparent screens

Doing a battle would help you get the second sprite for combat but usually if you are going to edit it anyway the combat move isnt that hard to do. Just turning an arm or something. I would just use the first sprite and create the second by cut-n-paste

Re: Modding Questions
 

It's best to use the method I detailed in another thread, namely, set the opacity to 0% and use a custom, 2-province, all-black-with-2-white-dots tga file for your map. If you pm me your email address, I will email you the "BlackUnitView" tga and map file.

Re: Modding Questions
 

So I'm starting from scratch. Peachy. Well, this just became a longer project. Thanks for letting me know so promptly, though, guys!

Re: Modding Questions
 

'sprnbr too high for this file'.

That is the error message I get when I start my game - right as I click on the appropriate nation for the first time.

Can anyone help me understand what this means? I can't fix it if I don't know what's wrong.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Im guessing sprnbr refers to Sprite Number.
Do you have other mods running at the same time? Try turning them off.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Still don't know what it thought was wrong, but it turned out I'd missed a " at the end of a unit name. Isn't that always the way?

It all works now, although I've discovered I have to go back and add in dark outlines around my units or they won't be visible.

Re: Modding Questions
 

I made 4 creatures today. And it took me ALL DAY. Sheesh... What free graphics programs are out that are more powerful than Paint, but still easy to use?

Re: Modding Questions
 

Bear on me if it has already been said, but one thing which should also be added to modding is the custom name list, as otherwise you will end with out of theme names for new nations.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Yeah, took me all day too, and I've got Photoshop, which IS powerful and easy to use. Of course, I managed about 12 in that time - but I've also got a little professional experience, and between you and me several of them are kinda shoddy. I got tired. More than anything, building icons requires patience, and I've always been in short supply of that.

I'm thinking of using the purple 'shadow' to mark out the outlines of my units. It's easy to see both in the .tga and in the game.

And everything seems to have more or less the power level I was aiming for. That's reassuring. After all, how do you really know how a unit's going to perform until you try?

Oh, and may I say - my work would have been vastly more difficult without your wonderful lists, SaberCherry?

[ February 02, 2004, 16:37: Message edited by: Bowlingballhead ]

Re: Modding Questions
 

My biggest time-consumer is defining the sprite borders. I draw in pencil, scan, and then I have a BMP of the sprite. But I cannot find a fast way to give it a solid black background, because after I use a "fill" command, there are always stray off-white pixels from the scan... especially around the border of the unit, where I have to very slowly trace a black line.

Furthermore, I cannot even imagine a way to automate this, unless there is some command in GIMP or Paintshop, "Make the picture background solid black, but don't touch pixels that are obviously part of the unit." Is there a command like this?

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes and no. Photoshop will perform a 'fill' command with tolerance - ie, it won't just fill in white pixels, but pixels that are *nearly* white, defined as close or as far from perfect color match as you desire. It will also give you fat pencil tips that can be easily used to brush out artifacts around edges.

You may be able to get PhotoDeluxe for free. PhotoDeluxe... is a deliberately hobbled and painful-to-use Version of Photoshop, but it's probably better than MSPaint.

Re: Modding Questions
 

I usually use Illustrator to do any kind of tracing. I much prefer it to Photoshop when it comes to image generation. I use Photoshop more for image manipulation, which is another thing entirely. Putting the two together makes for the best results, of course, but I'd choose Illustrator over Photoshop if I had to pick just one.

Is there a good freeware vector-drawing project? Like to Illustrator as GIMP is to Photoshop, IOW?

Re: Modding Questions
 

You can also use photshop magic wand to select the background, then use Select>modify>expand to expand your selection into those stray pixels.

I threw up a few monster icons I had laying around, just in case anyone has a use for them. You can see a picture here:
http://www.techno-mage.com/~targa/monsters.jpg

And/or download the file as a photoshop .psd file here:
http://www.techno-mage.com/~targa/monsters.psd

Saber: See if your program is using an "anti-alias" setting on the fill command. That's usually what causes you to have off-color borders. Turn off antialiasing and it should fill black right up to the edges of your sprites. Alternatively, in photoshop you'd be working with layers, and could merge the layer with the sprite down onto a solid black layer.

[ February 02, 2004, 17:28: Message edited by: Targa ]

Re: Modding Questions
 

I downloaded Gimp, so I'll see how well I can get that to work... Thanks for all the advice, by the way!

I decided to put up the units I've completed already; you can see them here. They're in TGAs in a zip, so if you unzip that to your mods directory, you can also see them in the game. Any impressions of which Versions of the units look better (there are 2 Versions of the eels, jellyfish, and alligators) or relative sizes are welcome...

Re: Modding Questions
 

Your link doesn't work, Cherry...

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That's strange, it does for me... ?

Can you access this page?

http://www.geocities.com/saber_marionette_cherry/

Re: Modding Questions
 

I can get to Cherry Page, but not the first link. Your animals are as cute as buttons, but I suggest you will find them to be very pale when put into the actual game (I had that problem). They look very large to me, but I can't be sure that the imageviewer I'm using is giving me any sort of correct scale at all.

Good grief. That looks like colored pencil! Actually, that's rather neat. It provides a very unique texture.

[ February 02, 2004, 19:43: Message edited by: Bowlingballhead ]

Re: Modding Questions
 

Cuteness overriding brain... strategy leaving... theme to Carebears invading ... GRAAAAARG!

Re: Modding Questions
 

The link worked for me too. The animals were cute, but quite bright compared to the old Dominions monsters. I suggest less brightness and more contrast, easy to do with the gimp. I look forward to some jellyfish in Dominions. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Modding Questions
 

Same as what BB said. Your page works fine, link to zip file gives me a "Sorry, the page you requested can't be found, if this is your web site..etc.." I did find the file though by going here:
http://www.geocities.com/saber_marionette_cherry/Files/ http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, they are all colored pencil; and the scanner perceives brightness differently than I do. But it's hard to make things dark with colored pencil, anyway. So I guess I'll digitally change the brightness...

Edit: Wow! Gimp looks like just what I needed. I still have to figure out how "Layers" work, though.

[ February 02, 2004, 20:39: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Modding Questions
 

(double post)

[ February 02, 2004, 22:49: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Modding Questions
 

Gimp is really confusing. I redid the buffaloes in it, and they look a lot better now. Anyone know how to set the rulers in Gimp to use pixels instead of inches? They did at first, but now they don't anymore.

Other Gimp issues:

I copied some parts of a picture in Gimp and pasted to a new file (which starts with a checkerboard background...). But the new file is exactly large enough for what I paste into it. I figured out how to expand the file ("canvas", as they call it) to give working room, but there is an outline of the original canvas size, and the the area beyond that - even though it looks usable - is not usable. I cannot find how to expand the border.

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Powerful, easy, and free? Ouch. Well 2 out of 3 would be GIMP but that ones not easy. You might try putting the words powerful easy free paint program into Google.com and see what you get.

-- GIMP is to Paint programs,
what Dominions is to a game of RISK.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Okay, I have a decent working Version of UlmPunk ready for general enjoyment. It will certainly need updates, but I have a basic and completely playable shell, and I think the balance is acceptable. So... does anybody know what email address to send it to to get it put on the Illwinter site? I've searched their site, and can't find it!

Re: Modding Questions
 

Oh, and I learned a couple of things in the process. We definitely need a command to change the leadership abilities of a unit. Very muchly. And the special powers of items (like the whip of command or elemental armor) hard-coded onto a unit do not work! That one, alas, I doubt is going to be fixed. It seems to me that it would be hard to code.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Follow the /etc directory under GIMP. At the end of it is some config files (plain text) where you can make more permanent changes

Re: Modding Questions
 

Merci. I sent the basic Version to IllWinter.

Re: Modding Questions
 

I put in a few more monsters, and touched up the buffalo - they're all in the "MonsterLand" file, which can be found here:

http://www.geocities.com/saber_marionette_cherry/Files/

As for getting things to Illwinter, um - I tried that address and it seems their virus filter is down, so you may want to use this:

dom2contrib at yahoo dot com

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Look at the layers submenue (IIRC) .. something like "set layers to pic size" or something. GIMP handles cut'n'paste as a floating layer .. unless you try to save the file as tga, which doesn't know about layers.

Internally GIMP uses it's .xcf format - even if you open a tga.

A.

Re: Modding Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I believe the fiter is down. We got the UlmPunk mod. Send mods to info. The contrib adress was a temporary solution and I do not know the password (JK has it though).

Re: Modding Questions
 

Ah, well. Turns out I missed a hero, so UlmPunk's going to have to be updated a bit sooner than I'd anticipated. I guess I'll get to work on it!