I've been poking around the tutorials, docs and such toying with a rather pie in the sky mod idea: a game where instead of building cities, you build a large castle to defend. Probably, you would have a "keep" that functions in the game like a city would and improvements like "walls", "moat", "tower", etc, built around it.
Obviously this would require custom terain tiles and improvement models. Modeling skill and software aren't a problem for me but I've been poking around Google and these forums and I haven't seen any examples of this being done yet, much less tutorials. All I've been able to find is that they're the same file format as other units but nothing about how to get them into the game. If such instructions exist or there's people working on this who could offer advice it would be appreciated.
(On another note, there's the issue of coding to be considered: I'm lousy at it, although I'm going to need to learn at some point. XML doesn't seem too hard, python...well, I might get brave enough to learn; C++: Ack, hide! I've no idea which level of code mastery would be required to pull off the above, but if it involves digging into the SDK source there's a good chance i'll be scared off. Any idea how dirty I'd need to get with code to make this work?)
Obviously this would require custom terain tiles and improvement models. Modeling skill and software aren't a problem for me but I've been poking around Google and these forums and I haven't seen any examples of this being done yet, much less tutorials. All I've been able to find is that they're the same file format as other units but nothing about how to get them into the game. If such instructions exist or there's people working on this who could offer advice it would be appreciated.
(On another note, there's the issue of coding to be considered: I'm lousy at it, although I'm going to need to learn at some point. XML doesn't seem too hard, python...well, I might get brave enough to learn; C++: Ack, hide! I've no idea which level of code mastery would be required to pull off the above, but if it involves digging into the SDK source there's a good chance i'll be scared off. Any idea how dirty I'd need to get with code to make this work?)