Yet More Mod Questions

[Boron]

You cannot mod the summoned allies AFAIK .
You also can't mod new spells or new summoned monsters

Heroes-numbers can be found out in Edis unit_ID document .

Use this for clearing sites :
12.25 #clearsites
Clears all start sites for this nation.

Then feel free to add as many sites as you want with this command :

12.26 #startsite “site name”
Adds a start site for this nation. Table 15 shows some
suitable start sites.

All sitenames can be found in Edis Sites.xls .


You have unfortunately to chose the national heros only , so you can't get more then the nation gets . I can't make 9 Nazgul heros for my mordor mod e.g. .

And most evil you have to make unitgraphics . This is the part that takes longest . I am experimenting around there atm by testing various programs because paint is complicated because it can't save as targaformat afaik .

I can't draw neither but you should find with some patience somewhere fitting pictures of the new creatures you have in mind .

[tka]

Boron said:
You have unfortunately to chose the national heros only , so you can't get more then the nation gets . I can't make 9 Nazgul heros for my mordor mod e.g. .

You can have all 9 as heroes but only if you use Man's Knight of Stone. All nazguls then have identical stats. Man probably is not the best choice for Mordor...

[tinkthank]

Thanks!

Can I rephrase yet again....

Look, I want to make at least 2-3 units recruitable in CAPITAL ONLY. So therefore, I need to give my nation a site in which I can recruit certain units, and then find those units and mod them, right? So I need to find a site which has the right *number* of recruitable units, but also the right number and type of gems, and mod that, right?? Is that possible?
thanks so much, boy am I bad at this, but I think the mod will end up being very good, if not quite so neat as I had hoped (since a lot of the goodies I wanted to do are not yet possible)

[Boron]

tinkthank said:
Thanks!

Can I rephrase yet again....

Look, I want to make at least 2-3 units recruitable in CAPITAL ONLY. So therefore, I need to give my nation a site in which I can recruit certain units, and then find those units and mod them, right? So I need to find a site which has the right *number* of recruitable units, but also the right number and type of gems, and mod that, right?? Is that possible?
thanks so much, boy am I bad at this, but I think the mod will end up being very good, if not quite so neat as I had hoped (since a lot of the goodies I wanted to do are not yet possible)

Yeah exactly . Some nations have sites which give only 2-3 units but no gems . So you should seek such a nation and keep this 1 site + add other sites for your wanted gems .

I downloaded today gimp and it is very good . It is for free so you should download it also to start making your units

[tinkthank]

Thanks much.
I tried reposting, but the boards were down.

My problem is this: I have found the right combination of starting sites with the right number of units, but I cannot find out how to change the #spr1 and the #spr2 command for these units.
I mean this:
Let's say I take the Keep of Ulm -- it gives me 2 units, one a commander and one not, as capital only recruitables and no gems, great. So I take their numbers, mod them, and I'm all set.
BUT: I cannot find the .tgas for the units I want to replace them with!! I wanted just fairly simple horseman types, so I took the Red Guard as an example, because I REALLY CANNOT make new unit graphics, it will look just so crappy. So I cannot find where to have the #spr1 and #spr2 commands lead to. So the mod will work, but instead of mounted horsemen, I get Guardian-looking units.
Do you see my problem?
Since I cannot actually change the graphics, I thought I would use the game's existing ones. This works fine as long as I can select a monster which looks all right to me. This works well -- except for the nation's capital-only units.
So where can I find the .tgas? I searched the whole folder, but I dont see them!

[Boron]

tinkthank said:
Thanks much.
I tried reposting, but the boards were down.

My problem is this: I have found the right combination of starting sites with the right number of units, but I cannot find out how to change the #spr1 and the #spr2 command for these units.
I mean this:
Let's say I take the Keep of Ulm -- it gives me 2 units, one a commander and one not, as capital only recruitables and no gems, great. So I take their numbers, mod them, and I'm all set.
BUT: I cannot find the .tgas for the units I want to replace them with!! I wanted just fairly simple horseman types, so I took the Red Guard as an example, because I REALLY CANNOT make new unit graphics, it will look just so crappy. So I cannot find where to have the #spr1 and #spr2 commands lead to. So the mod will work, but instead of mounted horsemen, I get Guardian-looking units.
Do you see my problem?
Since I cannot actually change the graphics, I thought I would use the game's existing ones. This works fine as long as I can select a monster which looks all right to me. This works well -- except for the nation's capital-only units.
So where can I find the .tgas? I searched the whole folder, but I dont see them!

You have to make screenshots and copy+paste .

Or you wait for Gandalf he had somewhere all units from Dominions saved .


I would rather recommend though to use Gimp or something like this .
It takes time but i just made my first unit graphic today

[Endoperez]

EDIT: I came late. New post follows soon.


- They will look wrong. (I was hoping to mod only existing monsters since I cannot draw worth dung.)

Neither can I. But I can copy a shield of Black Forest Ulmian, then paste it over general Infantry of Ulm's shield. And paste the bright crescent symbol over Black Knight's shield. And for Pangaea, you can probably use some of the Oceania pictures: they already are of the correct size and filetype.

Oh and one last thing I forgot: Can I mod a command "summons allies" and then specify the monster which it summons? (I hope so.)

Sorry, nope. If you could replace Mictlan, you would get their slaves and slave-animators. Their starting sites don't match with your gem income, however. And the pretender selection would be wrong, and on the other hand the "blood must be sacrificed" cannot be removed.

- I dont want this nation to have Pan's gem income, but rather a completey different one (namely: 2N 1a1f1e).
#clearsites, and many #startsite s. It might be hard to get both three capitol-only units and that gem income, so you probably have to change it a little. Forest of Avalon would give 3 nature gems and allow recruitment of one commander and two units, as an example.

[Endoperez]

I used Redguard in my Nation Replica. It was in the banner, but I easily extracted it, changed background and shadow and zipped it. Check this post's attachment. Only #spr1, but that should be enough for most purposes.

To get unit's Spr1:

Run Dominions II in window. Alt-Tab if it is already running and is not windowed. From visual options, put Filter off and Opacity to 100. Then choose the unit which image you want. Take screenshot (Prt Scr key after F12 in my keyboard) and paste it into graphics program. Remove DomII around the unit. Remove background. Recolor shadow. Save as targa.

If you use MS Paint, the following is the easiest way to remove the background and recolor the shadow:

Choose eraser. Choose "color chooser", and click on the black background of the image. The second color can be anything, white goes well. Use eraser with right mouse button. It should only replace the main color with the second color, that is, background's black to white. You have to use this twice because background has two types (hues?) of black. Do the same for shadow, but use magenta as the second color. Its in lower line of colors, in about middle. Now recolor all white to pure black. The image looks almost the same, only the shadow is now magenta, but it works in the game.

Change picture's size from Ctrl-E. Save as bmp, use IrfanView or similar to convert to tga.

If the game used filter or the opaque wasn't 100, you will have many more blacks in the background. Take a new screen capture.
You could try to recolor the almost-black background to black without going white between, but might miss some almost-black pixels.

[tinkthank]

Hey thanks -- I just saved that text and will try it out at home.
One question: When you say, choose the unit, you mean select it like you were recruiting it? I ask because I think the spr1 is the "normal" pose, and spr2 is when it attacks, but to get the spr2 I would have to make a screen shot of it on the battlefield in action, and I am not sure I knew how to do that.
Well anyhow thanks so much for all your help!

[tka]

This should work just fine. Carrion Centaur now needs 1N1D caster and 3 nature gems. The spell is also specific for Pangaea now.

#selectspell "Carrion Centaur"
#school -2
#researchlevel 10
#path 0 6
#path 1 5
#pathlevel 0 1
#pathlevel 1 1
#fatiguecost 300
#end

If #school is set to -2 you must specify the nation with #researchlevel X -command where X defines the nation.