Scenario Editing

[IainMcNeil]

Hi guys,

here is how you create your own scenarios. Be warned it can be a little painful so follow the steps carefully! The design feature has always been in, but we didn??™t feel it was reliable enough to let you guys at it.

Please Note - map editing for Legion Arena & Cult of Mithras use different file formats. Maps created in Cult of Mithras will be not visible to Legion Arena players, however Cult of Mithras players are able to load Legion Arena maps.

1) Before you do anything else, create your own MOD directory
2) Edit your user.txt file and add the line "ADMIN 1". You don't want this file in your MOD, so edit it in the main game dir & change it back when you are done. Note : you can use the // to comment out a line in user.txt which means the code ignores it so use this to turn admin off when you are done.
3) Copy your DB directory from the game in to your Mod\MyMod directory.
4) Run the game. When you start up you'll see the mod menu appear and you should pick your mod from the list. If no mod menu appears check you have set up your mod directory correctly & try again. Start a new game with the tutorial army.
5) Open the options menu. You'll see a new text button labelled Design. Click this and it will take you to the deployment screen. On the left will be a list of scenarios. If you do not see a scenario list, exit the game and load up again, then open options and try again.
6) There are 2 tabs at the top of the scenario list. These toggle between the troops available for the scenario and the scenario list.
7 ) In the bottom right are a series of new buttons. These allow you to load & save maps and set objectives. Select the tutorial from the scenario list and click load. You'll see the squads from the tutorial army appear on screen. You can move these around & change their orders. When you are happy with the changes click submit. Note: background story & fame buttons no longer work as the way these are set changed during development, but the buttons were never removed.

Obviously there is a lot more to it than that, but if you get this working you can do basic scenario editing.

Creating New Scenarios
The game has a technical limit of 150 scenario & all of those are used. Therefore you cannot create new scenarios. Instead you must replace existing ones, which is why you are using the mod directory! Each new scenario you create must overwrite an old scenario.

Changing Objectives
Click on set objectives and a pop up box appears. You can toggle objectives by clicking on the Red Yes/No. When an objective is active you can click on the red value box and set the maximum casualties, the time etc. Ignore the prize button on objectives as this feature was taken out.

Deploying & Modifying Enemy Army
Make sure you click the army tab at the top of the scenario list to look at the squads in the enemy army. Just like you deploy your own army you can toggle a squad on/off by selecting it in the enemy squad list. You can add orders, waypoints and all the commands you yourself use in deployment. If you find that the enemy army composition is not what you're looking for you can change it. Before you do this make sure your current games progression is saved as you're about to overwrite it! Click the fetch army button at the bottom right of the screen. When you return to the army management view you'll now be looking at the army from that scenario. You will also see an "XP ME!" button below the squad list. Click this button to allocate all squads 100,000xp points and give yourself 100,000 gold. You can now recruit as many squads and as much equipment as you like. The types of squads you are able to recruit will depend on what type of army was used to create the scenario in question, but you??™ll probably find that most of them use the Admin army that allows any type of squad. Once you??™ve made all the changes & you??™re happy save your army, like you would any saved game. Now go back to scenario design, load up the scenario you wanted to change & you??™ll see your new modified army listed instead of the old one in the scenario.

Note: If you load up a scenario, then edit your army & then load up the same scenario again it will use your newly edited army. If however you load up a different scenario it assumes you want to use the army from the original scenario. If you wish to create a special army for use in more than one scenario, make sure you save it. Then to get it in to a scenario, load up the scenario, fetch the army, go to the army screen, load up the army you wish to use & load up the scenario again. Complicated ??“ yes, but that??™s what we said J

Setting the Map
In the bottom right of the design screen is a list of the maps available. Use the mouse wheel to scroll the list and make your selection.

Scenario Grouping
All scenarios are split in to groups. Each group is a campaign and has an intro and outro movie. Other than this, the grouping does not really have any meaning other than to organise the scenarios from a designers point of view.

Scenario Descriptions
If you want to modify a scenario description make sure you put the localisation.xls files, the localisation text files, the lang.str files and the localiser.exe in to your mod dir. The localiser exe goes in the root of the mod, while the other files all go in data. When looking at the list of scenarios put the mouse over a scenario. The tooltip will give you 2 bits of debug information ??“ the map group and the scenario ID. The map group is only useful for organising the order scenarios are listed in. The ID is the map file name of the scenario. If you look in the DB directory you??™ll find the scenario with the corresponding ID and if you look in the localisation.xls files on the edit page you??™ll see the tag IDS_BRIEFINGX_Y. X is the scenario ID, and Y is the page of the briefing, from 0-3. Instructions on how to get your text changes in game are shown in the xlsformods.zip file so I wont repeat them here.

Briefing screens
Once you??™ve changed your briefings & have the text appearing in game you may find that there are too many or not enough pages for all your text. Alternatively the pages may be too big or too small. You can change the size & number of the pages by editing the files in data\battle\briefing. Each text file matches a scenario with its scenario ID. The values are explained in the file. Add a new line to add a text screen, or remove a line to get rid of one.

Squad Descriptions
Enemy squads each have to be named. Look for IDS_SCEN_SQUAD_NAME_X_Y in the localisation file. X stands for the scenario ID, while Y is the squad number. When you have deployed your army in the scenario, put the mouse cursor over each squad to find the string ID. The string ID shows you which Y values you should be using for that squad. Note: You??™ll find there are gaps where squads that are not being used can be left blank. Also note that if you re-deploy your squads you may find the squad ID??™s change.

Movies
If you want to remove the movies for your mod you need to edit the data\battle\movies.txt file. You could make your own movies if you were able to create avi files. Note : all sound is in MP3 format with a similar file name. You could change the voice over quite easily.

Who Can Play the Scenario
It is possible to set which sides are allowed to fight which scenario. We??™d recommend using an existing scenario structure if you can to save a lot of time and effort. If you really want to do your own however you can use the groupmasks. It uses a bit field, so each side has a value of 1 or 0. E.g. if there were 6 sides, and the scenario was available to sides 1 and 6 the bit field would look like this 1 0 0 0 0 1. This is a binary number, which is then converted to decimal & the decimal value is what we write in the file. There is one value for each group and they are listed consecutively.

Map Locks
The maplocks.txt file in DB is used to specify which groups link to which groups. We advise using it as is but it can be changed if you really want to!

Map Purses
The map purse file is used to specify how much you earn for completing a scenario, whether you are allowed to heal at the end of it, how many squads you can bring to it & more. The file is not in number order, so look for the MapID that matches your scenario ID and make your changes there.

Rain
You can add rain to a scenario by clicking the button at the bottom right of the screen. It is not labelled. Note: Rain is a basic graphical effect & only really works on certain scenarios. We didn't have time to do everything we wanted!

There are a lot of things to change & a lot of things that can go wrong, so we advise making small changes and testing them before going too far. To help testing we advise you use the tutorial scenario as a working map, and copy any data you want to test to that scenario ID before putting it in its final place. Remember to make backups of your files before you change them and also backups as you go in case you later break something and cannot work out why.

We??™ll do what we can to help but we can??™t afford to use up too much time supporting this, so good luck guys!

[grimsta]

Iain, i love you - and i want to have your babies.

in a heterosexual non man love kind of way.

Thats fantastic news mate cheers

[inferiorbeing]

Hmmm... Might actually consider buying it now. Closest thing one can get to a skirmish mode...

[spedius01]

Ave Iain,

Have you taken on board my suggestion about creating a .pdf version of this file for possible download and printing?

I think that when the members get their brains around this mod they're going to be refering back to these instructions a lot.

I've copied and pasted it into a spreadsheet but not everyone has Excel.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

[IainMcNeil]

Hi Spedius, I can do, but people could just copy & paste the instructions in to word, notepad or any other text editor & print it?

[magobarca]

Hi Ian and Speedius,

I just copied it in Notepad and saved it.

magobarca

[spedius01]

Hi Spedius, I can do, but people could just copy & paste the instructions in to word, notepad or any other text editor & print it?

Ave Iain,

You're quite right, of course they can.

However, in my limited experience with these things, you need to make things as easy as possible so that many will try and implement these mods.

I believe the more options that you can offer the better.

These mods are "voyages of discovery" for those of us who are not part of the Slitherine team.

People need to get excited by the possibilities offered by your instructions.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

PS. Can some of these mods be applied to the demo?

[spedius01]

Hi Ian and Speedius,
I just copied it in Notepad and saved it.
magobarca

Ave magobarca,

I get the distinct impression, from reading your posts, that, unlike me, you are no novice when it comes to modding?

What other mods have you done?
Do you have any friends who are into modding?
If your answer is yes, can you interest them in Legion Arena?
What ideas do you have for modding Legion Arena?

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

[magobarca]

Hi Speedius,

No, I am not a novice, but I am not an expert at modding, and never fiddled with making 3D models or maps.

I WAS familiar with the old Legion texts, but have to relearn them. I think Spartan and GoT are different than Legion, but I think CoW is the same. LA text files are somewhat similar but still very different, and especially the graphics files which are not compatible with Legion or Spartan.

My mod ideas concerning LA are campaigns and /or battles for the Punic and Mithradatic Wars. I have read and copied much that was done here by some people with the LA Demo, but am unsure if these mods will work with the full LA.

I am doing some minor but repitious and sometimes complex text file and very minor graphics modifications for Middle Eart Total War/Viking Invasion, and none of those people are interested in Legion or LA.

Magobarca

[Redpossum]

I love the idea of this, and I will get around to it sooner or later, but RL is kicking my butt severely right now...

[magobarca]

I love the idea of this, and I will get around to it sooner or later, but RL is kicking my butt severely right now...

What's RL??

Magobarca[/quote]

[Redpossum]

Real Life.

You know, if we are going to do campaigns, we should probably tell each other what we're up to. I mean, it'd be a bummer to spend 3 months working on a Rise of Carthage campaign, and then have some other guy release a carthaginian campaign just before yours was ready...

[magobarca]

Ahhhh, yes RL = Real Life. What's that!??! ust kidding, somewhat anyway.

I haven't doen anything with LA except finish the Gallic campaign 2-days ago. No modding at all, just reading and copying posts here.

I also have to try the new patch, the uncorrupted one.

Magobarca

[Redpossum]

Mago, how did you like the Gallic campaign?

I loved it, especially the last 10 or 12 scenarios. So many of them are so wonderfully desperate. There's nothing like being hammered between a time limit and a casualties limit.

Fortunately, in both my runs through the Gallic campaign, I have by that point had a force of hardened, veteran troops that were capable of hacking through the opposition without taking too many casualties.

[magobarca]

Hi Possum,

The Gallic Campaign is at times hard, but you're right, the upgraded Gauls can blitz through almost anything. I usually do a massed 'barbarian rush' straight at the enemy leader or sometimes a weaker spot in the enemy line. Disciplined Gallic units make them easy to order around. My cavalry is usually massed together. The spearmen are OK and fare well against enemy cavalry if you upgrade them.

I am playing it again as the Nervi and Bellovaci (I just name the units by tribe), and previously it was the Nervi ang Eubrones, all Belgae.

I have an upgraded Peasant unit and a couple of Militia units that smoke. They have lots of upgrades in order to make them effective.

Magobarca

[gamer66]

I need to buy it then I'll do it because I am like the best map editor EVER on any game dude. Thx for the info.

[Redpossum]

Welllllll, one thing you can't do is edit the maps...

It was implied by a comment from one of the beta testers (years ago, now) that there did exist a map editor, but it's never been released to the public, probably because of the potential for "more hassle than it's worth" syndrome

[Aleksandr]

Since yesterday I'm tinkering with Legion Arena modifications. I'm at the very beginning and far from any results, and it even looks like I won't make it through the initial stages, as the process of modding wants much more patience (read: stubborness) than I can sacrifice.

Thus I've got few questions, before I'll even continue with anything serious:

1) EDITED: I already know the answer

2) Is it possible to create a completely new campaign? I mean - the one where I don't need to use preexisting structure? Because if the only possibilities are the three stock campaigns (Latins, Romans, Celts), I'd surely give up, cause I don't have time and will to make a fourty+ or even sixty+ battles long campaign. The reason why I ask is that I haven't seen a "End Campaign" command anywhere in the .xls files; my consideration is that the campaigns' ends are hard coded, which in turn makes any user-defined campaigns impossible to create.
I'd like to make a short campaign (more for a testing purposes before I'll find strength for anything else), but if there aren't another posibilities than two, fourty or sixty scenarios long campaigns, I won't bother myself any further.

Thanks for any informations!

[IainMcNeil]

The MapLocks files determines the flow of the campaign I think and you can set it to be anything you like.

Group masks determines which campaigns maps appear in. Its not pretty that's for sure but I think that's how it works...

[Aleksandr]

The MapLocks files determines the flow of the campaign I think and you can set it to be anything you like.

Group masks determines which campaigns maps appear in. Its not pretty that's for sure but I think that's how it works...

Iain, if that's true, than I need your address. Wouldn't be the carnations too official?