hello everyone , i want to know how i can change a building to another . i really like to play with the canadian civ mod but the fur trading compagny appears as the japan consulate. i would like to change it for it to appear as the commandery( scp_fort) i know before it was like that but with the update, it appear as the japan consulate now .
Hi, I made that mod and the Consulate file hasn’t been touched on my end since August, do you perhaps have other mods installed that are also modding the Consulate.xml file? Moving the priority up for whichever mod you want to make sure it loads the assets for might do the trick.
With the things I’ve learned since then I should be able to permanently remedy that by moving the Fur Trading Company off the Consulate and into a brand new proto entry.
So to change a buiding’s look there are a few ways to do it. The first would be the way I did it, you use an existing building and edit the anim file for it to add whatever new submodels you want to use, and then use civ, tech, or culture logic to set it up so it looks how you want it. For example, here is part of the code I made for my Maltese Fort Walls mod, which added a new tech logic so if Malta’s initial tech is active your walls change to the Fort, and if not it remains the default look.
<mediterranean>
<logic type="Tech">
<none>
<logic type="Tech">
<none>
<submodelref ref="wood"/>
</none>
<deage0maltese>
<submodelref ref="spcfort_wall"/>
</deage0maltese>
</logic>
</none>
</mediterranean>
The second method would be using the first method but additionally using a culturemods file to add your own culture (which determines the default building set), then editing your new culture and any relevant submodels into all the various buildings.
The third method is the Bender from Futurama method, you just build your own proto unit (blackjack optional), which lets you assign it whichever anim file you desire - an existing one or a brand new one. This method can be the most difficult as some buildings have a lot of things going on behind the scenes, for example Houses have a lot of techs that interact with them, mostly from the Historical Maps, which means if you want to fully support your new unit it needs to be added to all of the relevant techs. It will also need to be added to all the villagers, wagons, and any other unit that can build it, and have a new sound file created for it.
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hello , thank you so much , it was a priority things !
ive been modding farmsim a lots but its my first time in age of empire . thanks you for your time and again thank you for this wonderful mods.
from a french canadian !
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Glad to hear you’ve enjoyed it!
While making your own building or unit can have the most work required, sometimes it is beneficial. I had tried to modify a flag onto the empty second flagpole when the Fur Trading Company was using the Consulate as the base building, and something in the Consulate coding made it not work. Now that it’s on its own unique proto entry it finally functions.
Modding in Age of Empires III DE is fairly painless thanks to the developers creating Additive Data Mods which means instead of having to mod entire files like protoy.xml and techtreey.xml (which would cause your mod to break whenever an official update comes out), you can use additive modding which is much simpler and resilient through updates.
If you have any questions about making your own civ or anything else feel free to ask.
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a thing i tried to do is take the inuit plantation from age of the world mod and add it to your canadian civ instead of the plantation , 3 hours later and i still cant see it ingame ( the plantation have been removed ) but i cant still see the inuit one , probably a thing in proto ? ill check again
Edit: I went to bed and then remembered that you may not know all the steps required for adding a new proto unit, which may be the issue.
First, start by make a new entry for it on protomods. Since you’re wanting to transfer it you could just copy and paste the Plantation between the mods, and if you plan to have both mods active you might want to give it a unique name and IDs on the destination mod.
Modify the unit as you see fit, adding new strings to your stringmods.xml, assigning it the file path to a new anim file and/or icon/portrait if using new ones, etc. The anim file and tactics file need to have their animation line up if you’re making a new unit, sometimes they use universal names like Volley_Ranged_Attack but sometimes not, so always cross-reference those. Since you’re wanting to use an existing thing from AotW, this step would include copying over the tactics file, icon/portrait if using them, and all the art assets out of the building folder, putting all of those exactly where they had them or manually altering all the locations if not.
Find a sound file for the unit, make a copy and edit in the new unit’s proto name on the file name and inside the file. For buildings they’re all pretty simple and you just need the one with the proper Select sounds. For units some of the files are basic and just has one voice option, others are using Civ or Tech logic and you’ll have to code those in (in those cases you can use none to make a default voice). Villagers and some other things use Variation logic, which means if editing those or using additive sound modding you’ll need to make sure you format it correctly (a common mistake I made early on was filling out the variant 0 or male Villager, copy pasting that entry and using the replace tool to set it up for female voice lines, then after moving it back into the file forgetting to change the female variant number to 1.) You can use Resource Manager to listen to the .wav files and cross-reference the various soundset XML files or look up the sound file for a unit to find which soundsets you want to use.
Once all of that is taken care of, the final step should be enabling the unit to be trained or built and getting it slotted into the appropriate proto entries. This must be done for any new units and techs including new age up options. You’d add an Enable effect for the proto name in the age0 or as part of a card or technology in your techtreemods.xml, and while you could add it in techtreemods using CommandAdd effects you can just go into protomods.xml and add it to any relevant units. For example, an infantry unit for a European style civ typically goes into the Barracks, FortFrontier, and Galleon, while a new building goes into all the villager units (at the very least the civ’s default ones) and various wagons.
For a new military unit you must also make new upgrade techs for it (unless it’s using the various AbstractConsulateUnit tags, in which case it automatically gets stat boosts as you age as seen the Fortressize, Industrialize, etc. techs), new upgrade techs must be coded into their anim files if they’ll also change the appearance, you must set the techs as Obtainable in the age0 or wherever they’ll be turned on, and your new techs must be slotted into the relevant buildings.
<protomods>
<Unit name='Stable'>
<tech row="0" page="1" column="0">RGPrincessHussar</tech>
<tech row="0" page="1" column="0">ImperialPrincessHussar</tech>
</Unit>
</protomods>
If you’ve updated the Canada mod you can CTRL+F CanadaFur in to see all the units I had to add the new Fur Trading Company proto to so that they can build it.
<protomods>
<unit name="Settler">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="NativeVillager">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deNatSPCLenapeVillager">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="Coureur">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="CoureurCree">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="SettlerWagon">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="Pilgrim">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="ypSettlerAsian">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="ypSettlerIndian">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="ypSettlerJapanese">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="ypSettlerIceCream">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="SettlerNative">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deSettlerAfrican">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deAfricanVillagerNugget">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deUnknownPilgrim">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deNatNomad">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deNatMercNomad">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deREVNativeVillager">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deRedSeaWagon">
<train row="0" page="8" column="5">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
<unit name="deImperialWagon">
<train row="0" page="6" column="14">CanadaFur</train>
</unit>
</protomods>
If you’ve done all of that and it still doesn’t work and you’ve made no typos, my guess would be it’s an issue due to that being a custom model that he made. I’m not sure what all files conflict between the Canada mod and AoTW other than maybe some anim files for units, but if you want to play both at once the biggest issue (other than the new AoTW patch coming out), should just be manually merging whatever files need to be done, and even then it should mostly be sound files.
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