Modding tips and tricks

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by pyg

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.

There's a complicated way to get the base sprite I came up for DomII, and then there's the easy way EricM used to extract all the sprites (with permission). Here's all sprites up to 3.17, and I think few others have done small updates to accomodate for later patches.

AllView maps are also great. There are few different versions floating around. Basically, it's a five-province map where EA Ermor starts with units 1-1000 in the first province, 1001-1500 in the second, etc. It's the easiest way to look for sprites if you know e.g. that you want a swordsman, but don't know what kind of swordsman.

[Gandalf Parker]

This whole thread would make an excellent sub-topic on the dominions wiki

[Burnsaber]

Decided to give this thread a small bump, considering all the new modders around.

If you know something cryptic modding knowledge which is not contained here, please post it.

[Foodstamp]

1st trick:

If you give a unit the #unique tag and set him recruitable from a magic site, you actually recruit the unique unit instead of a copy.

This means:

If you purchase him again from the site, he will be teleported there, experience/wounds to boot. If someone else conquers the site, they can steal him away from you by purchasing him. This could lead to some fun thematic sites with powerful summons that people fight over.

2nd trick:

Communicants! I read in another thread that the Communicant's "Communion Slave" ability is hard wired to the unit. So I did a bit of testing and it is hardwired to their index number which is 538.

You can #selectmonster 538,

Then set the stats/sprite to whatever you want. As was mentioned in the thread, the new monster will act like a communion slave, even if he is a basic unit with the exception of healing the master's endurance or incurring extra fatigue himself. But the unit will receive the self buffs from the communion master as if part of a reverse communion.

What this means is you can create cool themed units that get their power from their commanders by giving the commanders #onebattlespell "# for communion master".

For example, I used this trick to create the start of a nation of Slivers based off the monsters of the same name from Magic the Gathering.

[Burnsaber]

Just found out something awesome. If you make a modded remote "Farsummon" by using effect number 10037, the game will automatically GoR one of the units summoned to act as a commander for this army.

Also, I managed to chain these spells with #nextspell. Meaning that you can do a remote summon that summons more than 1 type of units. If you make a remote summon just summoning 1 unit, the game will automatically GoR that one, so you could make a modded version of "Call of the Winds" for example (where the main spells summons bunch of hawks, and the next summons 1 big hawk). Althought one of the small hawks will be a commander too.

I'm going to use this trick to make a spell for bretonnia that summons some Questing Knights and Knight Errants to "Crusade" a distant province.

[Burnsaber]

Also, if you chain some remote summoning spells to a teleport spell by #nextspell, the caster will appear in the remote province with the summons.

Also you can create summon spells that summon more than 1 type of unit by chaining them with #nextspell.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Just found out something awesome. If you make a modded remote "Farsummon" by using effect number 10037, the game will automatically GoR one of the units summoned to act as a commander for this army.

Also, I managed to chain these spells with #nextspell. Meaning that you can do a remote summon that summons more than 1 type of units. If you make a remote summon just summoning 1 unit, the game will automatically GoR that one, so you could make a modded version of "Call of the Winds" for example (where the main spells summons bunch of hawks, and the next summons 1 big hawk). Althought one of the small hawks will be a commander too.

Your one big hawk would also have 1 big hawk as a troop under his command. There's no way to farsummon just 1 commander.


Here's a nice trick: I believe you can do commander battle summons with effect number 21. Using onebattlespell with this means you can have some commanders who turn up with other spellcasting commanders for the battle - say a 100% random path familiar or something.

[chrispedersen]

Yeah the lack of ability to farsummon just a commander was a real pain for me.

There's also no way to chain to that new unit to kill it.

[Sombre]

That said, if you want to farsummon say 20 of 'Infantry A' with a leader of 'Commander C' and that's /all/ you want, there is a relatively easy workaround (In fact there's a workaround for almost any modding problem in dom3, it's just they aren't all particularly clean).

You make a monster for infantry A and give it shapechange to monster for commander B (commander C clone). Then you give commander B the #firstshape command pointing to commander C - at the end of any given turn Commander B will turn into C. Of course you make sure commander C doesn't have any command to turn him into either commander B or infantry A. So after summoning you can turn the commanderised infantry A into commander B, then wait a turn for him to turn into C and lose that whole 'shapechanging into the infantry guy' thing.

Messy but it works.

[Gregstrom]

That's a nice idea. It lets you use GoR to promote units to more advanced forms.

A random thought: If you GoR the unit 'caterpillar' and shapechange it to 'chrysalis', which has #firstshape 'butterfly'... If the unit is attacked in the turn you turn it into 'chrysalis', does it fight as 'chrysalis' or 'butterfly'?