[BNW] Advice for making a really easy mod.

[PrrrromotionGiven]

Hi, all. I have never made any mods for any game before, and I have only minimal programming knowledge. I want to make a mod civ which should be incredibly easy to program, since it only uses resources already found within the game.

What I want to do is create a unified Roman civ, which combines the unique abilities of Rome and Byzantium into one civ. Honestly, I don't even think such a civ would be overpowered, though their classical era military would certainly be formidable. I would be content with just that, but ideally, I would also combine their music, civilopedia entries, city lists (in the order West-East-West-East etc.), and basically anything that CAN be combined between them, leaving Augustus as the leader. Finally, to really go the extra mile, I would like to make it compatible with other mods such as YNAEmP v.24, Events and Decisions, and Cultural Diversity (though I think this last part may actually be the easiest, since the creators of those mods have mostly been kind enough to give instructions for including mod civs).

Thing is, a lot of the guides I can find go into far too much detail for what I want - I don't intent to add anything new in, yet this always seems to be "project one" in the list. Does anyone know of a good guide for what I'm trying to do? Or, if it's not too much trouble, even just putting some help in a comment/PM?

Thanks.

 

[LeeS]

You are either going to have to re-direct the existing Rome civilzation to use the data you want it to use or you are going to have to create a new civilization that borrows the desired elements from Rome and Byzantium.

Either way this is not quite as easy a proposition as you think it is. The amount of work to create functioning XML or SQL code will be pretty much the same as if making a whole new civ from scratch.

You will have to deal with the issues of what to do with the original Byzantium and its city-list, for example, if you simply tack everything onto Rome and re-direct as needed. Because the game does not want to have two cities in the game named for example "Constantinople". Most of the other game assets the game does not actually care how many times they are used -- ie, you can give Rome the Hun Horse Archer in addition to the Legion and the game is fine with this even when both Rome and Huns are in the same game.

If you want to tack everything onto the existing Rome civilization then you need to learn either XML or SQL syntax for making UPDATE to existing game data, as well as DELETE syntax to simplify your tasks in creating the needed code. You should be able to find tutorials on the internet by google-searching on how to do an "Update" in either XML or SQL.

There is no guide for conflating two existing civs into one. The guides on creating a new civ are actually appropo to what you need because they show you the proper elements needed to create a civilization in Civ5, and therefore what elements you will need to re-direct. You need to understand how a civilization is structured before you can begin to alter an existing one.

 

[PrrrromotionGiven]

Dicks. Here I was thinking this might not be as hard as it looks.

Thanks for the information, though.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Moderator Action: The "Modding Tutorials and Reference" section is for modding tutorials and reference guides only. All other queries go in the main Creation and Customisation forum. I've moved this thread to there.