Finishing and Publishing a Mod

[Le Sage]

Hey. How's it going with the mod? This should have nothing to do with UAC though, I believe.

November 6 is the day of the Battle of Lützen, you know. During the Thirty Years' War, Gustav II Adolf (Gustavus Adolphus) won a minor victory at Lützen, Germany, over the Catholic League, but also lost his life. This was in 1632.

The Swedish Army landed in Northern Germany in 1630 to take part in the war. To protect Protestantism from the Catholic League which was at the time on the march forward. Gustav II Adolf of Sweden had reformed the whole Swedish army during his days and the fighting force that landed in Pomerania was small, but the most effective armed force of its day. Gustav Adolf divided his army into smaller battalions, which made is superiorily maneuverable to the heave Spanish Tercios that the Catholics showd up with, and the Swedish artillery was much lighter and maneuverable as well.

During the few years from 1630 to 1632, the Swedes had turned the situation around for the Protestants in Germany and had the Catholics on the knife's edge. Gustav Adolf was operating in Bavaria and Bohemia, but pulled back in the face of Wallenstein's great army that was soon marching against him. At Lützen the two armies met and fought a legendary battle that started in thick fog ("The fog of Lützen" is still a saying in Swedish!). The Swedish king lost his life, but had already established Sweden as a major power and his gifted generals took over the army and continued to conduct very successful warfare in Germany and against the Protestant brother Denmark as well.

 

[Ajidica]

I replaced the three remaining vanilla civs, and nothing new happened. I'm going to try it your style where the civs are just renamed.

 

[Le Sage]

I haven't quite yet gotten around how to deal with the fact that Civ5 xml really is what we in Civ4 called modular. The only files you'll ever need to fully include in your mod includes the ArtDefines, and probably defines concerning sounds and music later on too. All the rest of the xml should only be updated from the existing files. For me, it's a new way of thinking too.

Luckily there seems to be a lot of visual modding tools in development. I am waiting for Lemmy's Visual Tech Tree Editor right now. I'm using his first version of it already, and liking it, but the secod one will be even better.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm going to try deleting everything I don't need in the CivInfos file. If that doesn't work, I honestly don't know what I am going to do. It isn't an issue of not using the SQL properly as I can use the <delete> command to remove vanilla civs.

EDIT: I'm assuming things won't show up if there is a spelling error and that would cause the whole file to not show up, but is there any faster way to check for spelling errors other than doing it by hand? There shouldn't be that many spelling errors as I used the find and replace command.
EDIT2: Okay, deleting the stuff I don't need didn't work.
I honestly don't know what to do now. All of my stuff looks like it should work, but it doesn't work.
EDIT3:
Last trial. I'm going to use the Civ renaming method. It works for your mod and the other total conversion mod I found (Arcadia).
EDIT4:
Well, the quick trial of the rename/update method I used works. Admittedly I am happy about that, but cursing Firaxis and Jon Shaefer for their 'mod friendly' bullcrap. If you want to be mod-friendly, why not MAKE IT WORK IN THE WAY THAT SEEMS THE MOST INTUITIVE WAY YOU FRILLING IDIOTS!
Sorry for the rant. Now that I know what I should be doing, this should go faster.
EDIT5: Would it be possible for them to be consistant in naming? I've come across three different spellings of Bismarck with one blatently wrong one. (Bizmark)

 

[Ajidica]

To avoid going to edit6, I have everything working. Now I just need to add in the DOM and Map Screen art and make the scenario. I won't have a lot of time tomorrow (Yay for procrastination!) so I should have the first workable version out around the end of next week.
Here however are my design documents if you feel like critiqing them for historical accuracy or just plain curiosity. I haven't added the units yet though as that will require a tech tree adjustment.

 

[Ajidica]

Okay, small issue.
I made custom MapScreens for the civs and I added them to the game using the method LeSage used in his mod (the update tags). However, they don't work for me and I get an error message with them. I have them sized to 360x412 like LeSage did, but they aren't working for me. This isn't a critical issue, but it would be nice to have them fixed.

EDIT:
In Worldbuilder, how do I rename cities? Under the City tab, the place where it looks like I should be able to type in a name is greyed out. When I click on the city, all that happens is the city name switches from 'Dublin' to 'City'.
Also, am I correct in assuming I can make multi-city citystates in WB, correct?

 

[Le Sage]

I've never tried making more than one city per city state, but I must try that out now straight away.

To rename a city you need to check the "Edit" checkbox right under the Create Box in the same menu.

weird stuff about your .dds-maps too... I don't know what that's about.

Edit: Yeah it seems like you can make several cities within one City State. This opens up some interesting scenarios that I've never thought of!

 

[Ajidica]

Stupid question:
How do I make the cultural borders?

 

[Le Sage]

You just paint it. Choose the Paint tab and there's a culture border drop down menu right there. You can paint your land in any shape, which is really great for making historically accurate maps. That was impossible in Civ4.

 

[Ajidica]

Thanks.
I had to switch to a different map because the one I was going to use didn't have enough room in Germany.

 

[Le Sage]

Ah OK. Can't have the Thirty Years' War without Germany

 

[Ajidica]

Bugger. I just realized that musketmen don't have ranged fire. Well, that should make the game interesting. Only a few factions start out with any form of ranged unit then. (This included cannons.)

 

[Ajidica]

Question with regards to the SQL and Contents tab.
I have to define the map I have in the Contents tab, but I'm stymied for what I put in the Type, Name, and Description column. I'm assuming that for the FileName column I put down where the file is located. What do I put in the Type, Name, and Description column?

 

[AgentTBC]

The worst thing about uploading a mod is the stupid character limit on the description. How do we include a list of changes someone can view before downloading the mod if there is nowhere to put it?

 

[Ajidica]

I think you posted in the wrong thread.
Anyhow, I would resolve the issue by putting the 'Letterman List' of changed on the ModHub page and say 'Follow this link for a complete list of changes' or something like that.

 

[Le Sage]

The Contents tab is pretty straightforward. The first column should just say "Map", the second should mention the name of the map as it will appear in the list where the player chooses it for play (Like The Hundred Years' War Map 1), the third will contain some short description that will appear when the player hovers over it (Like 1337: The English Invasion) and the last is just for the correct filename and path.

Yeah! My problem with the ModHub is that you can't publish enough written information about a mod. Players just download your stuff without really knowing what to do with it. I've restorted to using most of teh short description for the mod to tell them how to start the mod. That they should load the scenarios, click the Scenario Tick Box and all that. That's no fun. I'd rather tell some cool stuff about knights and Longbowmen there and not have to describe the technical details there.

That is why I upload my mods to CivFanatics and on the web as well. I can have threads going with my mod and provide proper information on these threads.

Edit: Have you removed units from the game? I read on another thread that such a removal may actually interfere with the Map picture in the startup menu. I have a hard time believing that though.

This is the Contents Tab for the Hundred Years' War; do it similarly, and you can't go wrong:

​

 

[Ajidica]

Thanks. I haven't deleted any units, so that shouldn't be causing any interference. I should have the mod up in a day or two, so if you could troubleshoot the images then, that would be appreciative.

 

[Le Sage]

Yes. I will give them a look. As it seems though, more modders are having problems with them as well, so no panic.

 

[Ajidica]

Yay! Its working!
Here is a picture of the map. I'm going to use a larger one once I make some modifications to the units and techs.

Here is turn one as Austria. Unfortunately, the map wasn't large enough to include Russia, but I was able to include the Huguenots!
I still need to adjust populations and buildings though.

 

[Le Sage]

Yeah! That looks really promising. You need more Sweden, though. And Denmark. But really good job. I can't wait to try it out.