(Help) Creating a Mod: Dawn of Man Screen

Okay, so I'm trying to make a mod that adds a civilization to the game. Everything works just fine, except the Dawn of Man Screen.

The leader and civilization names appear, but none of the history text does, or the trait information. The icons for the replaced units are pyramid icons instead of the replaced unit icons (although once the screen loads and it switches to game mode, the icons change to the proper ones).

Furthermore, the splash screen image for the dawn of war screen doesn't appear. Instead it's just black, with some random red in it. I'm not sure what the issue is.

<DawnOfManQuote>TXT_KEY_CIV5_DAWN_BALAMB_TEXT</DawnOfManQuote>
<DawnOfManImage>Art/DOM_HMCID.dds</DawnOfManImage>
<DawnOfManAudio/>

That's my Dawn of Man tags, under the Civilizations table.

My text is under the <Language_en_US> table, with <Row Tag="TXT_KEY_CIV5_DAWN_BALAMB_TEXT"> <text>.

As for the image itself: It's under art, and named DOM_HMCID.dds as appropriate. It was made in photoshop with the .dds plug-in, with DXT1 ARGB 1-bit Alpha, and inside the project it's got VFS set to true. It's also the proper resolution: 1024x768.

So honestly, I'm pretty confused. I don't know why it won't work and it's really frustrating me because everything else is done and works properly.

Here's a link to the ModBuddy project: http://tinyurl.com/ltl62g5

Maybe a mod genius on here and sort through it and find out why it's behaving the way it is. Maybe it's just my computer or my install of civ. Anyone have any ideas?

What is your log telling you? It sounds to me that you "did everything right" but that the file isn't actually being loaded properly. Let me look-see, though.

1. In BalambArt.xml, I'm not sure you need to put the file path as "Art/etc". Just "etc" should work. Also, your units' Atlases are set to UNIT_ATLAS_1 and UNIT_ATLAS_2, not your specific new Atlases.

2. Your Civ is set to import into VFS. It doesn't need to be, probably better not to.

3. Here's the clincher: the order that you're importing items into the game is wrong:
You want anything referenced by a file to come first, the file later.
What I mean is, in general:
Art first
Text second
Custom units third
Leaders next (and traits before leaders)
the Civ itself last.

You've got the Civ hitting the database before it has Text or a Leader and before its units exist.

1. I don't have an issue with any of the art from my art/ folder loading, with the sole exception of the Dawn of Man splash screen, but that failed to load regardless of whether or not I included art/ or not. My icons all load just fine. I'm also not using custom unit icons yet, so the UNIT_ATLAS_1 is intentional.

2. I fixed the Civ import to VFS, so now only art files have that property set to true.

3. I didn't realize there had to be a specific order to the uploads. I thought maybe there might be, but it doesn't seem seem to matter how I order anything. Only the Dawn of Man screen isn't working correctly. Also worth noting it's not included in my BalambArt.xml file. The only place that the DOM_HMCID.dds file is referenced is in the civilization.xml file, for the DawnOfManImage element. If I'm supposed to be referencing it some other way, or in another place or file, I'm not aware of it.

I've edited my database load based on your specifications. Right now, this is the order for my upload.

Art.xml
Text.xml
Units.xml
Traits.xml
Buildings.xml
Colors.xml
Responses.xml
Dialog.xml
Leader.xml
Civilization.xml

Yet still no change. The same issues persist.

I looked at my Database.log but there were no errors that any images failed to load. Below is a link to the file so you can take a look at it yourself.

http://tinyurl.com/n5ov3zs

This is what it looks like when I load my civilization: http://oi43.tinypic.com/t7hg80.jpg

The icon works regularly, and the unit icons change when the game loads. Everything else for the mod works Exactly as intended, except for the dawn of man stuff.

Can you try building the mod and running it on your game? Maybe my install is bad or something. Other mods don't have a problem, but at this point I'm looking for any kind of possible solution to the issue.

[7387.208] Database::XMLSerializer (XML/BalambTraits.xml): 'Row' or 'Delete' expected, got 'Type'.

It is failing to load the trait file. I don't know if it will break the dawn of man screen, but it is going to be a big issue regardless.

Yeah the example I had given I had a typo in my traits file. That's since been resolved, but the Dawn of Man Image issue still persists.

Here's the updated database log: http://tinyurl.com/k7ejffa

From what I can see, there aren't any errors that the image isn't loading correctly. The image itself works properly and everything as well, if you download the balamb.rar I linked further up and take a look at the Art/DOM_HMCID.dds file, and is linked to correctly in the BalambCivilization.xml file. So what could possibly be going wrong?

Not to mention the TXT_KEY for the Dawn of Man screen isn't working properly either, as it gives me nothing at all on that screen (as evidenced by the tinypic link above).

1. The Image is referenced as "Art/DOM_HMCID.dds" in BalambCivilization.xml, but the file is actually named "DOS_HMCID.dds". I actually don't think the "Art/" at the beginning is necessary -- I personally just put in the filename by itself in all of my civs, and it loaded fine as long as it was imported to VFS. But this isn't actually the only issue -- it still wouldn't load until I did the next thing.

2. The .dds file contains some mipmap layers, which are unnecessary. I deleted all of those layers and re-exported it in GIMP, and it was able to load properly when it only had one layer.

3. In BalambTraits.xml, you need to insert "<Traits>" after <GameData> and "</Traits>" before <Trait_FreePromotionUnitCombats>.

4. You will need three more spy names, for a total of ten, or the game might crash when you hit the Renaissance. Name suggestions: Fujin, Raijin, NORG

5. I'm going assume the current trait description is just a placeholder, but make sure to put in something a little more descriptive when you're finished.

6. This is now just in personal suggestion mode, but I think maybe "SeeD Empire" and "Cid Kramer" would fit a little better as the empire and leader names, respectively.

Gah, it figures I would have made a typo... Foolish me. I fixed the traits file already as I realized soon after posting the thread that that had an issue, an I added more spy names (went with Xu instead of NORG though). And yeah, a number of descriptions are placeholders at the moment.

I may change the name of the empire and leader as well, since I agree that it being Balamb Garden doesn't quite perfectly fit.

Do you think you could link the fixed version of DOM image you did? I would like to use GIMP, however I can't get it to work properly. I run 64 bit windows and the only .dds plug-ins I could find were only compatible with 32 bit.... :/ I also have a Shinra Inc. DOM image as well that I'd love to get working as well, if you can't point me toward how I might be able to get gimp working properly with the .dds plug-in.

http://tinyurl.com/mb6hsyf

Lastly, I don't know if the fixed DOM screen fixes the text issue, but if not, is there a way I could fix that?

Thank you so much, I've been stuck on this for days and it's been driving me nuts.

Edit: Belay that last actually, I managed to get everything working! Thanks again for the help.

Edit: Belay that belay. My Shinra mod is exhibiting the same issues as my Balamb was, only this one doesn't have a typo and the /art fix didn't work. I tried having it use the balamb image since that was working, but it had no effect.

http://tinyurl.com/madnohn

Edit: Belay all belays. I got it working (had another issue with the traits.xml, but I took care of it).

I was having the same problem with my civ, but didn't know what you did to fix it in your final post, because I'm assuming it wasn't anything in the traits.xml file.

What I discovered and will leave here for posterity, is that (in GIMP, at least), exporting a .jpg file in GIMP to .dds will leave you with blackness when Civ tries to read it. However, exporting the .jpg file to .png with the defaults checked, then exporting that .png file to .dds (with the Compression set to DX1, which I had checked when I had tried to export from the .jpg - and then unchecked the first time it didn't work), that fixes the problem. I don't know enough about graphics encoding schemes to tell you why it works, but it did for me.

Hope this helps someone!