Basic Modding Help, Please...

[Scott Hebert]

Can someone please tell me what is incorrect about the following (very simple) mod?

#modname "RandomMystic"
#description "This makes the Mystic a 5-random Mage."
#Version 1.00
#domVersion 2.11
#selectmonster "Mystic" | 311
#clearmagic
#magicskill 50 1
#magicskill 50 1
#magicskill 50 1
#magicskill 50 1
#magicskill 50 1
#end

I give it a .dm extension, and put it in my mod folder, but it's not affecting the game...

Scott

[jimbo]

Two things to check:

The Pipe (|) Symbol in your modmonster command is not be used in the mod text - it means put either the name or the number:

#selectmonster "Mystic"
OR
#selectmonster 311

Also, did you go the preferences section and left click your mod name to activate it?

[ June 07, 2004, 16:35: Message edited by: jimbo ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
I give it a .dm extension, and put it in my mod folder, but it's not affecting the game...

You also have to select it under the mod preferences menu, and then start a new game with the mod enabled. After that, any changes you make will show up in that game, or any other game that was started with that particular mod enabled.

[Scott Hebert]

Ah. You'd think those would be in the instructions... hrm. Well, it's now enabled... let me go edit the file to remove the pipe (I knew something but not enough...), and see if it works.

If I may make a small tweak to the mod instructions (I know they're getting tweaked...), you might want to put something in under 2 Mod Mechanics that explicitly states how to enable a Mod (through the Mod Preferences). It tells you what happens if a mod is active, but not really how to activate/enable it.

Thanks for all the help, though.

Scott

[PvK]

The other thing to realize is that mods only affect games created using those mods. So adding a new mod won't affect existing games. Changing a mod will only affect games which were created using that mod (i.e. when the mod was selected).

PvK

[Scott Hebert]

Thanks, PvK.

Now that I know that a 5R mage isn't totally broken (in 20+ turns of hiring one a turn, I have only seen a single 3 pick, and no 4 or higher), I can go ahead with my more ambitious project...

But I'm running into another roadblock. How do you create a .tga file? I don't have access to anything but the basic Windows programs, and while they can create the 24-bit images required, they can't save them as .tga files. Reading another thread here concurrently, apparently there's a program called GIMP. Is it free, and is it easy-to-use? I'm not really an artist, and while I don't care what the .tgas for my new units look like, I want to know if I'll be able to wrap my head around it.

Scott

[Johan K]

Gimp is free and you can find it here:
www.gimp.org

It should not be hard to create a tga picture suitable for Dominions with it, especially if you don't care much what the result looks like.

[Gandalf Parker]

Gimp is a fantastic paint program for programmers and serious artists. Very powerful. It can be difficult to learn though.

If you are making the images in a paint program you know then you might be happy with just a converter. Something like bmp2tga? IrfanView is free.

[Scott Hebert]

Thanks. I'll download it and see if I can get it to work. If I have any Dominions-related questions about it, I'll be sure to post them here.

Scott