Please Read This Before Modding Your Files

[Alinestra Covelia]

Okay, so what that means, if I understand it correctly, is this:

You can mod your game by altering the files. But if you do this in the core files, you'll end up modding the game permanently.

In later versions of RONTAP, the nice folks at BHG realized it's a pain to have to backup and restore all the old files. So they put in a nifty little way you can alter the game files in a separate folder.

This folder must be created here:

Microsoft Games/Rise of Nations/mods/yournamegoeshere/

(Note that you do NOT create it in the /Thrones and Patriots/ folder! Even if you have the addon, you must only put it into the /Rise of Nations/ folder.)

So once you have the /mods/ folder created, you can make subfolders for the various tinkerings you've made. Say Gramps likes his games with a really large population limit, so he wants to make a mod that puts the pop limits up at 1000 instead of 200. This is understandable, as he is very virile and has had many fierce and warlike grandchildren spring from his loins to make the world quake and tremble.

So Gramps can go into the rules.xml file and change stuff. But that makes changes to the whole game. Instead, a crafty and devious Gramps could make a mod called "GrampsPop" or something similar, and put it in this folder:

Microsoft Games/Rise of Nations/mods/GrampsPop/

Everything in this folder will exactly replicate the internal folder structure of the normal game. You can have an art folder, a tribes folder, and a data folder. There is only two exceptions that I know of.

First exception is the info.xml file, which tells the game engine what the mod does. You have to put an "info.xml" file in the GrampsPop folder. But this is easily done by opening a text file and typing this in:

[?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?]
[ROOT]
[INFO name="GrampsPop" description="Mod to make the pop cap larger, by Grandpa Troll. Grrrr!" version="1.0"/]


[/ROOT]

(The forum code requires me to use square brackets instead of the angular brackets < like so >. When you do your coding, make sure to use angular brackets.)



Okay, so we've done the info.xml, which is just a little procedural formality to let the game know what's what.

The second exception is the interface icon buttons. (These are the files that start "iface..." and they're in the art folder.) For some reason, these buttons are ignored if you change them in the mod folder. The game will not replace the iface buttons with ones you put in the mod folder.

So what that means is that you will have to replace the originals in the Rise of Nations/art/ folder or the Thrones and Patriots/art/ folder, depending.

Here is an example. We wanted to make a new Chinese unit, the "Jiefangjun Infantry". So we altered all the skin textures and put it into /mods/Jiefangjun Infantry/art/Jiefangjun.tga (the game only recognizes tga files). Then we altered its data in "unitrules.xml" and we put that into mods/Jiefangjun Infantry/data/unitrules.xml.

But in order to change the button graphics, we had no choice but to go into the core Thrones and Patriots folder, and to change iface_units_03.tga and the "half" variant. Fortunately there are some blank squares, and so I just put the Jiefangjun pic in a blank square. If for some reason the interface buttons have to be restored to the original, it's easy to backup a copy, or even don't backup and just redraw the blank space over the Jiefangjun Infantry.

[Grandpa Troll]

It appears that you can make mirrors of every file in the mod folder directory, with one exception that I've found so far. The "iface..." files cannot be redirected, and you must change the basic files. So make sure you make backups.

So educate us AC, is this a good thing or bad thing?

Thanks

[Alinestra Covelia]

It appears that you can make mirrors of every file in the mod folder directory, with one exception that I've found so far. The "iface..." files cannot be redirected, and you must change the basic files. So make sure you make backups.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Two years later, I am getting the hang of the scripting language too!

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yes, I'm still playing this game. A lot.

I'm even starting to get the hand of the scripting language!

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll


Yes

It will be called Thrones and Patriots

Has anyone played this recently?

I am seriously considering this again.......

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by The moses



1) Will there be an expansion for RoN in the near future?

Yes

It will be called Thrones and Patriots

[Broken_Erika]

Originally posted by Solver

We didn't include an XML editor because there are already so many really good tools out there for this we would be duplicating work that didn't need to be done.

There are many tools, but this one could be RoN specific. This is to say, if you load unitrules.xml, you get an UI that actually shows different stats for units in cute user controls, flags as checkboxes, etc. Just pondering .

that sounds cool,

[The moses]

Originally posted by bhg_paul
We didn't include an XML editor because there are already so many really good tools out there for this we would be duplicating work that didn't need to be done. Plus we're too busy working on RON.

Mod-file ditsro is something we've talked about around here for some time. Hard to say if we'll be able to include it or not in a patch. We'll just have to see what the future holds.

Hi..

I assume that you are working at bighuge games.

I have some questions:

1) Will there be an expansion for RoN in the near future?

2) I have been looking at the unitrules, and i noticed that the jetfighter (F-16 ingame) are named F-16 in the unitrules, but jetfighter ingame. And the russian modern-age tank are named "tank" ingame, but T-34 in the unitrules. And there are several other units like that. How can that be?

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

So where is this tool to mod RoN files? Guess I'll be waiting for RoN Flicster.

[SkalTur]

Originally posted by Solver

We didn't include an XML editor because there are already so many really good tools out there for this we would be duplicating work that didn't need to be done.

There are many tools, but this one could be RoN specific. This is to say, if you load unitrules.xml, you get an UI that actually shows different stats for units in cute user controls, flags as checkboxes, etc. Just pondering .

Yes, I'm totally for it.

[Solver]

We didn't include an XML editor because there are already so many really good tools out there for this we would be duplicating work that didn't need to be done.

There are many tools, but this one could be RoN specific. This is to say, if you load unitrules.xml, you get an UI that actually shows different stats for units in cute user controls, flags as checkboxes, etc. Just pondering .

[bhg_paul]

We didn't include an XML editor because there are already so many really good tools out there for this we would be duplicating work that didn't need to be done. Plus we're too busy working on RON.

Mod-file ditsro is something we've talked about around here for some time. Hard to say if we'll be able to include it or not in a patch. We'll just have to see what the future holds.

[DarthVeda]

How do you use custom files with a scenario?

[Timeline]

Yes, Tassadar's idea is excellent...although when you download you will simply have to take their word about what has been changed. I still like the idea though.

And yes, please read and show your support for this thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=86879