Mods and existing games

[Mcclaud]

Hi everyone.

I downloaded a few mods and installed them, but there was something that annoyed me about them.

To get the mod to work, you need to load it up. The problem with that is you can't play any existing game saves because if you do, it will unload the mod and make it pointless.

So, why does it need to do that and is there a way I can make mods work in my existing game saves?

Thanks

 

[Baldyr]

I'm not sure I understand what the problem is... Is it the fact that a savegame is associated with the mod that the game was saved with? So you wanna start a game, with a mod loaded, save the game, and load it with another mod? Why?

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

You want to play an unmodded savegame in FFH?

 

[Mcclaud]

Basically, the save I mostly play is made with vanilla BTS stuff. However, I want it to use mods, but it won't allow it.

When I load the mod I want to use, I try loading that save, but it tell me I have to unload the mod and restart the program. When I do that, my best save loads up and the mod doesn't.

 

[Baldyr]

I still don't understand. Sorry.

 

[TC01]

What mod are you trying to use?

I ask this not because it will make any difference whatsoever- mods are not compatible with vanilla BTS saves- but because I wish to see what exactly you're trying to do.

If, for instance, you're trying to load a save game with some modcomp or something, that maybe I could understand. But as Jarlaxe Baenre said- if you're trying to load a save with FFH or Planetfall or Dune Wars...

 

[Mcclaud]

I tried a new water mod, which I have now replaced with some BlueMarble mod.

After installation, it required me to load the mod to get it to work. Once I did that, I couldn't load the save I wanted it to be used with, otherwise it would have un-loaded the mod and rendered it useless.

I wish it was like Fallout 3. There, you make a mod and it will work with all saves because you don't have to load the mod, you just have to play the game and the mod will work.

 

[Baldyr]

If you want to mod your save game, then you need to mod the mod that you used to create the save game. If you didn't use any mod for the save game, then I guess you need to mod the game itself. Just make a backup copy of any files you change...

 

[Lord Tirian]

After installation, it required me to load the mod to get it to work.

This is a safety precaution. Almost all mods (pretty much everything that's not graphics only) will render savegames invalid, due to their different structure. To avoid major hiccups, savegames "remember" their original mod (or non-mod).

If you want to install a graphics-only mod and keep your old saves working, you can install the mods as CustomAssets instead. To do so, locate the mod in your BtS mod folder, open the mod folder, open the "Assets" folder and copy everything in there.

Then go to your ...\My Documents\My Games\ folder, there should be a folder called "Beyond the Sword", open it. Then you should see a folder named "CustomAssets", if not, create one. Open the CustomAssets folder and paste the files in here.

This will change your standard BtS game, allowing you to load your old savegames regularly. Note that if you use anything else but graphics-only mods (and by that, I really mean modified graphics only - things like ethnic unit art *add* new graphics and break stuff.. again), you'll get corrupted saves.

If you want to undo the changes, just delete the "CustomAssets" folder again. Note that Blue Marble (if you used the installer) uses this method by default, so don't be surprised, if there are files already.

And for your Fallout 3-complaint: That's the price for the higher moddability of Civ4 - you can do complete changes that invalidate savegames, that's a bit of inconvenience, but also added flexibility/power for the modders; hence things like FfH or Dune Wars were possible.

EDIT: @Baldyr: using the CustomAssets is a lot better than modding the gamefiles themselves, since you can't accidentally overwrite original files. CustomAssets don't work with modified themes and DLLs, though.

Cheers, LT.

 

[TC01]

I should note that you can actually change the mod a save game points to if you open it up with a text editor (I use Notepad++). Most of the file is binary garbage ("garbage" as in that's what it looks like in the text editor), but at the top there should be a line defining what mod the save was created with in plain text.

However, this won't magically ensure compatibility between the save and the mod. As an example, was able to use it to make a MOO2Civ 5.1 save created by JEELEN run with my copy of MOO2Civ 5.0 (5.1 had not yet been released at that time). This worked because the mods were practically the same.

I don't recommend doing this as you'll probably just end up crashing the game.