How to make Banners & other mod making questions

Hoplosternum · #1 July 28th, 2009, 08:17 AM

My multiplayer scenario is nearly done. Just a few last questions if anyone can help.

In order to make a mod banner what do I need to do? I know where it goes and where to put this address in the mod file but how do I make the file i.e how do I get a .tga file? I have MS Paint, irfanview and CoralDraw. I don't seem to be able to even open a .tga with these never mind make one!

I have put in some recruitable commanders that are pretty tough. Ideally I would like to limit the number of these but still have them bought from the Capital. i.e. I want to make them Unique and limit them to say 6. Is it possible to do this and if so how?

If I create a recruitable unit (not a commander) that has magic paths, summon allies and auto summons and other abilities that are useable only by commanders will any of these take effect before the unit is Gift of Reasoned? And is autosummons commander only? Or will a unit spawn other units when not a commander? I assume it will acquire these abilities once it is Gift of Reasoned.

rdonj · #2 July 28th, 2009, 08:40 AM

For the first question, 99% of all responses are going to be - get gimp. It can deal with .tga files and is very useful for creating unit graphics as well.

I'm also 99% sure that you can't make a recruitable commander that's unique and you can have 6 of them. If you make a commander unique, you can only have one of it. So if you want more than one unique commander, you're going to have to make 6 copies of the same commander pretty much, just with different unit numbers. It'll clutter up the recruitment screen but you'll get what you want. Or you could make them insanely expensive to the point where it's not really feasible to buy many of them. It'd have a smiliar effect, though they'd have to be pretty darn good to justify the kind of cost I'm thinking.

I am not 100% sure about this last question. My guess would be that a unit has to be a commander for autosummons to work, the other stuff definitely only works when it's a commander.

Hoplosternum · #3 July 28th, 2009, 09:27 AM

Cheers rdonj.

I don't really know how unbalancing the recruitables will be. Hopefully not too much. They are going to be very expensive and it won't really matter if none are recruited as some will appear as heros, where as it will if they are recruited in huge quantities and they unbalance the game

So I am going to err on the expensive side

But my other option is to make them less expensive but none commanders so that they have to be gift of reasoned. That pushes back their usefulness a long way although I suppose I could copy the spell and make a nation only version that has lower requirements.

Gandalf Parker · #4 July 28th, 2009, 10:22 AM

Balance is not a big thing if you pitch it as an better computer-player nation.

You MIGHT be able to tie a unique into a magic site for the nation but the mod experts would have to judge that.

rdonj · #5 July 28th, 2009, 05:45 PM

There's no reason you couldn't do that. I believe Burnsaber did that with his Holy War mod, though I myself have not run into the uniques if they are there.

One thing about making the commanders recruitable as troops... you can get a lot more of them per turn that way. Yeah gift of reason is somewhat expensive to be casting repeatedly, but if the commanders are good enough it may be worth it. Perhaps you would be better off just making them into lowish level unique summons, or heroes.