Yet More Mod Questions

[tinkthank]

God I am an idiot -- NOW I FINALLY GET IT. I never understood that researchlevel before, I thought it meant something like how much research you need to invest.
The modding document is EXTREMELY ambiguous.
It says (quote):

#researchlevel <level>
Level of research required to learn this spell. The level
should be a number between 0 and 9.

Well hm, I figured this meant like Construction 0 to 9 or something.
In fact, the number should not be 0 to 9, that is totally misleading. (That somehow makes me feel about 4% less stupid.)
Thanks I will try this out! You people are wonderful.

[tinkthank]

PS. Somewhat unrelated:

How do the devs do it? I mean, how can THEY make a unit with Castle Defense bonus? If it is not possible in a mod, then how can they do it when they make the races? Do you know what I mean?

PPS. Although I cannot get my Sioux to be poor castle defenders (maybe if a patch, however, comes out before I am done), but what DOES work is this: They can be poor forgers! A forgebonus of -15% works (at least, it shows up that way)!

[Kristoffer O]

We don't mod. All units are coded like this.

{"Ghoul Guardian",1924,10,2,2,14,0,13,0,10,11,10,9,18,{fx_guard,fx_ nil,fx_nil,fx_nil,fx_nil,fx_nil},{1,0,0,0,0,0},{5, 0,0,0},{19,20,0},20,31,res_undead+res_poison+res_f ood,ord_undead+ord_poor+ord_undead_ok},

It is not very userfriendly. Everything that is to be moddable must be made available in the code elsewhere. To enable modding of the guard special effect we would have to make the modding utility understand it and read it from a .dm text file. This is made on most special effects, resistances etc, but as they have been implemented over time there are still things that can't be modded.

[tinkthank]

Yikes! Scary! Well ok hat's off to you!
Thanks for the reply.

May I make a tiny suggestion, if you have the time: Could you change the Modding document around section 9, specifically section 9.4 -- a number from 0 to 9 under research level is somewhat misleading if we are to put the nation number in some circumstances?

This is probably not the place for it, but I thought I would mention it here: Perhaps for dom3, SiegeBonus and FortDefBonus would be best uncoupled from "unit bonus", but rather coupled to strength; otherwise, it may be impossible to make *poor* defenders. (A unit with good fort defense counts as 1 extra ... what? 1 extra unit with strength of 10? 1 extra of itself? In any case, a unit with strength of 10 and a fort defense of -1 would net 0, a bit too little, and -.5 would probably screw things up. But a unit with strength of 4 for defense purposes, or 25, would be perfect.)

I hope I can continue to ask my stupid mod questions here? Well here are some more:

I really wanted to take Pan as a nation, since this would allow not only a thematic closeness (stealth, tree-hugging), but also allow me to utilize their cheap temple build, which is perfect for my nation. Additionally, the God choices are perfect.
However: ALthough I like the Oglala's national troops, they are not particularly multifaceted (almost exclusively light cav), and I wanted to make the base of their elite troops both sacred, fairly powerful, and not entirely easy to get. It made no sense to me to have a nomadic tribe with tons of "capital only" troops, although I will be having some (1 unit, 1 commander, or maybe 2 commanders). Therefore, I figured it would make sense to have them be summonable, since the nation will be mage-priest-heavy anyhow. And so this, too, fit in with Pan, since CW has national summons (I didnt want to mod a summons spell from someone else or from the global pool and hence screw up the game for others).
But it turns out that the Pan's CWs national summons are commanders. So:
Is there a way to mod a unit so that it be a unit? (As if it were a pre-GoR mind-enslaved?)
If not, I am afraid I will have to continue to take Tien Chi (as I am currently doing), as silly as that will end up being for all intents listed above....
Any tips?

One last question: I wanted to mod armor, Enchanted Warpaint, is ok, but I wanted it to give basically no protection except for 1 or 2 points of Magic Resistance. I dont see a way to do this. Am I missing something or is that impossible?

Thanks so much

[tinkthank]

Sorry, can I ask yet another question?

I successfully used Gandalf's helpful pics to make a .tga for my new monster, the Hunter, but it turns up really tiny in-game (see attached screen shot). I checked out the .tga itself, and it has the right size; compared to Potatoman's ashikaga mod (against which I always test), it seems fine. Anyone know the problem?
I am also attaching the mod and the .tga itself, if I can attach 3 things at once (please note: the mod is obviously far from done, especially the pricing and balancing of the units)
(ok obviously I cannot attach 3 files at once, only one; if I need to attach the mod and the .tga, can you let me know and I will do so? thanks!)

[Boron]

About the size :
Make sure your unit fills most of the 64x64 pixels .

As example onby attached a comparison from 1 of your units compared to a knight from Subes black moon mod .

[Endoperez]

Liga's Manual Addenda mentions that high strength and flying add to the sieging ability, so atleast siege is more complicated than 1/unit. This hints to castle defence being more complicated as well, but I only know that being mindless makes you poor at it.

About summons being commanders: units/commanders are not differentiated besides the way they are added to the game. You can #addrec a Vanadrott, and you have a very expensive Van that gets some nifty magics if Gift of Reasoned; you can also #addcom a Satyr Hoplite or what have you. We cannot mod change whether creature spell summons is a commander or a unit.
Your best bet is probably to use a rarely used spell. One example is Corpse Man Construction. If you mod that, remember that Lightning Rod and Staff of Storms increase its effectiveness.

Humans should be about 32 pixels high, and Modding Manual mentions few other heights as well. However, it is best to start from a right-sized picture of a unit that already is of the same general type, and add on that. I'm not sure if Gandalf's pictures are of the right size, but they seem to be.

[tinkthank]

THanks much!
I am sticking with Tien -- looks good so far.
I could swear Gandalfs pictures are the right size. They are 64x64. I see no difference between these and those that others use, for example Potatoman.

Besides the graphics and the cost / balance testing and better descriptions, I am nearly done.
Would anyone out there feel ok volunteering to look at my mod and see if they can detect why I cannot some of these pictures to work? (I am computer inept.) Also, I will definately need help with about 5 pictures (national summons and 2 mages, just so it doesnt look SOOOO tien-chi-ish) -- in case anyone could show me how to do this....
Gandalf, you said you were interested in a Native American flavor of mod, would you care to take a look? Or Endoperez?
Thanks very much

[Kristoffer O]

Castle defence and siege is str squared divided by 100. Siege bonus adds to this. Flying adds 1.

CW is might be bad to use as it kills pop and reanimates. This feature is perhaps removeable by modding (can't remember).

Commander status is not moddable. The only difference between units and commanders is that commanders are given commander status. Some spells do this (all spells that summons commanders and Gift of Reason).

If you want the war paint to be a forgeable magic item it is possible, but if you want it only to be an armor it is not. Meteorite armors do not give increased mr to the meteorite guards. Instead they have a higher mr stat. This is not aesthetical, but the only available solution at the moment.

Hmm, magic items aren't moddable are they? Sorry. Forgot about that. I'm not used to modding.

[Endoperez]

Johan:
We can't mod Carrion Woods, but can assign Carrion Woods' spells as national spells for base Pangaea. That's what we were planning.

tinkthank:
As castle defence is (str^2)/100, giving your troops lower strength and higher damage in weapons should do what you want, mechanic-wise. As an example, str 9 and new Hunting Spear with damage 4 will have the same effect str 10 and spear with damage 3 would, but (9^2)/100=~0.81 is lower than (10^2)/100 = 1. This also makes them weaker in storming castles.
Javelins', slings' etc. range is affected, though. But I'm not even sure if we can mod range to depend on strength.

I can take a look in the mod, but can't help with graphics. I could try, but you should really find someone with artistic skills.