WORKING on a FICTIONAL HISTORY during 1940-1945 (Texas and Allies v. Italy and Mexico)

[tigersnack]

After playing Erik's Campaign (mostly loved them) I did find ONE thing I didnt like. I already new the outcome. It was still fun and enjoyable playing them, even though I knew the battles. Thanks Erik N. So I wanted to create a campaign in which no one except me knows what will happen.

1. Is it possible to create an entirely new Country and Army? I've played around with the UNITS list, often breaking it so the game wont start. I copied and pasted, I change unit stats and ratings on a number of things. I can change the Flag icons with paint editor...same as unit Skins...Ive changed the skins to match the desired Army. I can add the country to the unit itself..such as giving my Texas army the German Neberwerfer rockets. This is more of a work-around and I was hoping there was an easier way to manipulate the units. I ALSO NOTICED CZECHOSLOVAKIA was listed as a playable country in the EDITOR but there are no units attached to their country. I will try to add some units to the CZECH army and see what happens.

2. Is it possible to change/add custom units into the game...ala PG 2? I Loved PG 2 and adding new unit graphics. REALLY spiced up the game for me. IF I remember correctly, the units are a....TGA file or something Ive never worked with before. To create my fictional army, I was planning on changing the unit name but the description of the unit remains the same. So I tried renaming and then found the unit couldnt find the renamed graphic. Guessing that info is in the TGA File?

3. Is it possible to ADD all kinds of new icons to the graphics and landscaping for TERRAIN and OTHER units...like the shore batteries and pillboxes? I'd love to see a LOT more graphics and options- large buildings, prison camp, large supply dump, large buildings like hospitals, universities, industrial complexes, factories, special targets, etc etc

4. One thing I ran into while creating my "Attack on Brownsville" Scenario was the bridge connecting the mainland to Padre Island. I couldnt have a bridge spanning shallow ocean water. I realized the map and GAME was based on a larger map scale and I would like to take my scenarios on a smaller scale, with individual large buildings as opposed to complete towns and cities. (Im thinking of the Tractor Factory in Stalingrad)

5. WISH LIST -

More unit graphics of all types.

The ABILITY to interact more with your individual units. Each Unit gets a commander and they earn points for experience that they can they spend on their own stats, like MMORPG game characters and such... I want to spend points to upgrade each unit commander. I enjoy the Hero units but they are rather limited.
I'd like to be able to give simple commands to a unit during the game. HOLD this position to the last man, Order a fighting withdrawal, rest completely until you initiative is back to 10. In Civil War General 2, the unit commander says "Sir...my boys cannot fight another step today" and other things.

Better SKINS or designations of units and airplanes

[bru888]

Welcome, tigersnack. (I hope that forum name is not from experience or some sort of premonition.)

I moved your post here, making a new thread, for greater visibility. With the possible exception of 4. and parts of 5., which go to the basic functioning of the game and therefore will not be changeable, the answer to the rest of your questions is "Yes." There are forum members here who may be willing and able to help you to get into modding Order of Battle. It's not easy, but it has been done.

Your post came from the Design & Modding Guides thread, so perhaps you have already seen the links to "Creating this and that" in the first post. Those are of limited use, however. Your best bet is to poke around in this forum and find threads dealing with some of the great mods that other members have created. Maybe they will be of direct assistance to you in this thread.

Like any game, interest in OOB cycles with releases of new enhancements and content. We're in such a cycle now, between releases, but a new DLC is in the works and that will prompt those members to return and perhaps notice your thread.

[tigersnack]

HA!! We have the same type of humor !

I visited a Big Cat Rescue camp and while up close with the tigers, I asked how much they eat a day?.
The guy looked me up and down (6'0", 225) and he guffawed and said "HA! You'd make just a snack for the BIG one!"

[Zekedia222]

I’d be very willing to help with the modding. An important thing to note is all modifications to the base files should be on a mod. The folder that stores all of your mods is located, at least on windows, in Documents/My Games/ Order of Battle, or something to that effect.
Feel free to post any issues here, and me or someone else could help you.
1) In order to add a unit to a nations list of units, or ‘roster’, you need to know the faction tags. When you look at the units.csv you’ll notice that all units have a listing of all the factions they are available to (i.e. Japanese infantry ‘37 is available to factions ‘japan’ and ‘ijn’. In order to add a faction, say Texas, you must add that unit to the factions list. I’m finding the files now, so I can tell you which file to look through. It is most certainly possible to do. I would recommend you play around with adding a new unit, see what needs to be done. Unit animation sets, model sets, stats, MPs, unit types, and many other things must all be in place correctly.
2) Adding new unit textures is certainly possible, and it can be seen throughout most mods for OoB, but I have no experience with adding new units. Davoust could answer that, I believe GabeKnight has also done stuff with that.
3) Alot of the locations you’ve described (hospitals, universities, prison camps) are not usually expressed as units, but rather as a named hex with a victory point on it, so it openly displays the location name. It is certainly possible, but I wouldguess it would clog up the battlefield with unmoving and unattacking units. In terms of adding them as terrain, I’m sure thats possible, but again, I have no knowledge on the subject.
4) Again, this ties into the terrain. You could certainly add them in as decorations, with the buildings appearing large, however that would be, I assume, incredibly time consuming, if you were going to custom tailor each building as a decoration.
5) I don’t think those thing could be applied to OoB. Maybe if you somehow jury-rigged it to work, but that would be hard. The leader ‘experience’ MIGHT be able to be done through triggers. Also, Civil War Generals 2! I loved that game Still have it loaded up, all with different personal mod versions. Thats how I got into OoB, actually.

[LNDavoust]

Welcome to the forum, tigersnack, it's always great to see new faces (and if they carry a new project in their hands, even better!). As Bru and Zekedia already said, what you basically will need is to do is to create a mod, which is something both feasible and that the devs support (until some extent) for OoB. You should review the thread you came from (again, as Bru said) to find the pdfs and the basic info to start. After that, what you should do (at leat, what i did) is to use a alredy functional mod to see what you need to do for your own project. As any self-learning method, its slow and sometimes a pain in you-know-where, but with enough time it is not that difficult (if i could do it, i'm sure anyone will). My advise would be that when you reach a problem you don't know how to solve, just make a search in the forum (quite probably someone before already had the same problem). If you still don't knowhow to proceed (because you didnt find anything or the answers weren't enough) ask aroud here and i'm sure that after some time some savant (or a regular guy like me) will come to sniff

Besides what Zeke already told you, i would like to add some basic stuff:

- The mod folder will work "replacing" the vanilla files in the main directory of the game (usually in the program files folder). Therefore you don't have to actually modify the vanilla files in the game (as i get you did in your first tries), but when you launch the game and choose your mod, the game itself will use the modified files in the mod folder instead of the vanilla files in the main folder. That is valid not only for the units.csv file, but for many (although not all) files. Therefore you can introduce other modifications as new 3d and 2d models, skins, sounds, factions, etc... just placing the correct new file in your mod folder.

- Keep in mind that not every variable is moddable, and OoB is sometimes nitpicky. For example, introducing new 3d models for planes is problematic because the animation for the propellor not always work.

- Also, the structure of folders in main location of the game will be the same you have to use in you mod folder (sniffing with an already working mod will help you as an example). Therefore, lets say you want to replace an already existing commander portrait. For example, for me the good old Rommel is here (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Order of Battle Pacific\64-bit\Order of Battle - WW2_64_Data\Content\Graphics\Commanders\commander_101.png). What you should do is not to modify that file, but create a new one in an equivalent pathway inside your mod folder (lets say: C:\Users\tigersnack\Documents\My Games\Order of Battle - WW2\Mods\TigersnackMod\Graphics\Commanders). And that's basically what modding OoB is about.

Hope you find my mumbling post useful somehow