[SDK] So I have the CvGameCoreDLL, now what?

[Davinci Fan]

I apologize if the next step seems obvious to experienced coders, but I am at a loss. I have just followed DaveMcW's amazing guide (as interpreted by Kael), and I do indeed have a CvGameCoreDLL.dll in my Civ4 Assets folder. From there, I still have quite a few questions:

I also have a CvGameCoreDLL.dll in my Warlords Assets folder. Are these the same file twice in different locations? Are they different? Were they both there to start with and I am supposed to have a third dll file somewhere else that I don't know about?

What do I do with said dll file to change the game? Do I open it up and mess around? If so, how? With what?

Am I supposed to have done all my fiddling before I Build -> Build? If so, where? How?

If someone could help this poor inductee to SDK modding out, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks

 

[jdog5000]

The DLL is compiled C++ code that runs much of the game, so there are separate versions for vanilla and Warlords (those are the two in the Assets folders already). After you Build your code into a dll, it should place it in a folder in the folder than contains your code. So if your code is in:

warlords SDK/code/

The dll would be placed in:

warlords SDK/warlords/assets

Or something to that effect. You don't change the dll or open the dll to modify it, instead you edit the source code (a whole lot of .cpp and .h files). After you've made you modifications, you build (or compile, another word for the same thing) the dll from the code. This produces a series of commands the computer can execute quickly that follow the flow of what you coded. (This is different than Python, which is somewhat slower because it interprets your code as it gos, instead of compiling it ahead of time).

You do 'your fiddling' in the various .cpp and .h source code files ... if you're new to this, it can be somewhat frustrating cause there's sort of information overload and a fair amount you have to understand before you can do what you want. Just keep posting questions and looking at guides (both for civ and c++ in general), and you'll get there.

 

[Davinci Fan]

I can't get the cpp and h files to save (I'm modifing them in notepad), what gives?

 

[jdog5000]

They may be marked as read-only, so you have to right-click, select properties and unselect read-only or archive. You'll need to use MS Visual Studio Express (or some equivalent) to compile the dll, so you can also use that for editing and it will give you the option to save over files that are read-only instead of silently failing like notepad (in addition to syntax highlighting and other useful features).

 

[Davinci Fan]

Thanks. I managed to save the files, and they compiled without error, but when I load my mod it crashes. Is the dll different for Warlords than for Civ4? I loaded the SDK from the tutorial (which I assume is from back in Civ4) for my Warlords mod.

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[jdog5000]

Definitely they are different! Using the wrong one would cause the game to crash because it can't read the XML files properly, and their might be different calls between the exe (contains engine, other things not in SDK) and the dll.