Easy Mod Tip

[tchristensen]

There may be a number of players that would love to try a hand at modding, but just do not know where to start and may be afraid to do anything too crazy.

Here is a little idea to just get your feet wet:

Find a pre-existing mod. I started my sojourn with the great mod called Thomas' War, but any mod will do, and go into the \MyMod\Assets\XML\Units.

Before going any further, make sure you copy the entire folder into another folder (I just throw it on my desktop). If you try your adjusted mod and it crashes, you have something to revert to. You will need to make the adjustments to the folder that is in the Mod's directory.

Now you are ready to make a little adjustment, and take your first step into modding.

Open the file: CIV4UnitInfos.xml with WordPad -- don't use anything to sophisticated because you just want to edit the contents without the program putting any additional encoding into the file.

The first unit in the XML is no doubt the Lion. Here is a bit of code of what you will see:

<UnitInfo>
<Class>UNITCLASS_LION</Class>
<Type>UNIT_LION</Type>
<UniqueNames/>
<Special>NONE</Special>
<Capture>NONE</Capture>
<Combat>UNITCOMBAT_ANIMAL</Combat>
<Domain>DOMAIN_LAND</Domain>
<DefaultUnitAI>UNITAI_ANIMAL</DefaultUnitAI>
<Invisible>NONE</Invisible>
<SeeInvisible>NONE</SeeInvisible>
<Description>TXT_KEY_UNIT_LION</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_CONCEPT_ANIMALS_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
<Strategy>TXT_KEY_UNIT_ANIMAL_STRATEGY</Strategy>
<Advisor>NONE</Advisor>
<bAnimal>1</bAnimal>

What you want to find is the line called: <Description>TXT_KEY_UNIT_LION</Description>

Between the <Description> put anything you want. For example:

<Description>Sabertooth Tiger</Description>

Exit and Save.

Run the Mod and either search out a Lion or go into WorldBuilder and place one -- you will notice that it is called a Sabertooth Tiger.

The lesson here is that anything you put bewtween the <Description></Description> is the name that appears in the game.

Now let your mind go wild and rename units.

Hope this helps someone, start down the road to modding. . .

-Troy-

[Baldyr]

I believe my own humble beginnings was that I was trying to edit a custom barbarian spawn in the RFC mod in order to make a Russia scenario. So I posted a question on the RFC mod-mod board about the modulo operator (%) - and got no reply. After some whining someone was kind enough to point me to a page on modulus operations on Wikipedia, but that mostly confused me as I know very little math. But then someone else (I believe) linked to a list of Python operators and I started to experiment with the modulo thing...

And before I knew what had happened I was trying my hand at programming, but it was pretty rough going as I didn't really know what I was doing. Had I only had a mentor of sorts this process would have been shortened by a couple of months. Because once EmperorFool was kind enough to help me out the Python thing really took off!

This is where to start if you're looking to get into Python programming. Its a free online textbook and once you've finished it you can pretty much call yourself a programmer (but maybe not a Computer Scientist, even if you would have a good idea about how one would be reasoning ).

With unlimited free time and unlimited funds, I'd write a comprehensive textbook on CivIV modding with Python. Not because I know everything there is to know on the subject, but rather because I would like to know everything there is to know on the subject. And by forcing myself to really do this by the numbers I'd pretty much learn this.

But instead I'm busy with the old day-job...