Beginner asking for some pointers modding Bannerlord

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Dear internetz.

I got deep into modding Warband a few years ago, and now I want to transfer my ideas to Bannerlord, and unfortunately I am rather overwhelmed. It doesn't seem as straight forward to figure out how to mod BL, and it's hard to find threads online with people giving simple beginner's tutorials.

This is going to be a long rant, so I'll start with the TLDR, and hope some of you will be interested in giving me a leg up.

  • I would like to change names of characters, settlements and kingdoms, and I'm looking for the right xml's to edit.
  • I would like create custom banners for the clans, and would like some pointers on how the game generates the banners, because it's clearly no longer just one image file, like it was in WB.
  • I would like to change the kingdom colours of the uniforms, and need to figure out which hex codes go with which kingdom uniform in the banner_icons.xml, or whether they are indeed in an entirely different xml.
  • I would like to edit textures of the existing armours in the game, so I need to figure out how to pull the texture files out of the game, so I can work on them in GIMP, and then recompile them into the game.
  • I would like to take 3D assets from other mods, like helmets, and put them into my mod (I can't create 3D things myself, and there are some gorgeous things out there). I realise that I can't publish my mod if I use other people's assets without their permission, and I would never, but I'm only planning to make the mod for myself at first, and if I were going to share it, I would either do it without other people's assets, or get their permission first.
  • I would also be interested in changing the names of items, and maybe their values as well (like damage, armour and price), and would like to know which xml's to **** around with.
  • Possibly, at some point, I would like to edit the troop-trees as well.


That's the overview. If you can help me with one or more of these things, I would be eternally grateful. To those who want to know more, here is a more thorough description of what I did in WB, and what I would like to do in BL.

I think the native game is great as it is, gameplay-wise (and I'm not that interested in learning how to mod gameplay mechanics anyway), so my mod is mostly an aesthetic overhaul. In WB, I renamed of the kingdoms and lords, and changed the Kuzait to a roman-style empire. Imagine my joy when I saw there is one in BL already. I also made custom troop trees, for the kingdoms, and for bandits, and changed the bandit groups to include more of the expanded troop tree I made for them. I would like to do the same in Bannerlord, starting with custom banners and changing the names of Kingdoms, clans and characters.

I love the late dark age style of BL, and in many ways it has many of the things I tried to put in WB originally.

My mod is intended to be a ”Hollywoodized” and ”Westernized” version of native. Hollywood, in that I love the historical nerdiry of BL and WB, and Taleworlds have done a great job of it, but I don't mind playing around with historical inaccuracy, as long as it FEELS consistent (like Hollywood does all the time). So for one, I would like to Romanize the Empire's equipment more, and bring in some assets from some of the good Antiquety mods, even though mixing 11th century equipment with stuff from a thousand years earlier isn't very accurate. But I like the look of Roman legionaires, and I don't much like the look of the Byzantine style helmets of the Empires in BL.

Furthermore, I would like to ”Westernize” the names of people and places, meaning mostly, anglizising them. I think all the names in BL are cool in theory, and they seem to be well researched variations on dark age names from the respective cultures that have inspired the kingdoms in BL. But... as a Dane who speaks English, and grew up with Hollywood versions of the Middle Ages, all the names just seem too exotic, unrecognizable, unpronouncable, and therefore, impossible to remember.

I may be alone in this, and I frankly feel a little embaressed to want it, but I would like the lords, kingdoms and cities to have names I think sound cool and medieval, like Richard, and Tristan, and Maddox and Augustus. It won't make it more historically accurate, but I worked a lot in WB on making cultures that, to me at least, seemed consistent and believable, as fantasy versions of the real cultures that inspired them: like England, France, Egypt et.c. Think more like Game of Thrones, than a history book of the 11th century.

That should be easy enough, and I've started doing it already, by modifying lords.xml and spcultures.xml, but there are SO many places where the names show up, and I still haven't found half of them. Like, for one, I would like the King of Battania to be called Maddox, and I've done that, but in his encyclopedia entry, he's still called Caladog in the description of him.

I would also like to change the names of the Kingdoms, but then I also need to change the names of the troops (from Vlandian footman to Sarkaran Footman et.c.) and horses (from Vlandian Courser to Sarkaran Courser et,c.), and I would love it if somebody knows of a good tutorial or overview somewhere that tells me where I can find the different text-strings for all these names.

I would also love to someday change the troop-trees themselves, but that's not a priority. I have noticed, however, that it seems all troop-types have the exact same equipment, whereas in WB they each had, say, three different helmets to choose from, and got ramdomly assigned one of them. If I ever get round to modding the troops, do any of you know if that is possible in BL?

As for the textures, I had a lot of fun making armours for the different cultures in WB, and I would love to do something similar in BL. I got pretty good at changing a few things here and there, to make shields and armour much more interesting to look at in WB, and if I could figure out how to do the same in BL, I could get a lot more of my mod the way I like it.

In WB, I taught myself by reading tutorials, and by reverse engineering other people's mods, because all textures and assets that were in a given module where right there to be seen in WB, so I could figure out what people had put in, and what they were replacing in native. But it seems in BL, all the mods I download are just a few DLL's, where everything is compiled into, and I have no idea how to access them.

Like, I know there is a mod that changes the banners of the clans, the same way I would like to, but it's not as simple as just downloading that mod and seeing what they did, because all it contains are a few DLL's. How do I access those? With the official modding tools?

I've downloaded the official modding tools, and ****ed around with them a bit, but frankly, I have no idea where to start. I would love some better tutorials, and I've looked high and low, but I can't seem to find any. Does anyone know where people go to help each other out with modding Bannerlord? I'm posting here, because it seems the best place to start, but is there a forum somewhere that I have just missed? Reddit maybe, or Discord?

Sorry for the long rant, I feel like I'm just shouting into the ether, but I hope someone here can at least stear me in the direction of where I need to go.

I would love to support the modding comunity in return, if someone would help me out. I am patient and merticulous, when it comes to replacing names in the xml's, and I am pretty good at re-texturing. I can edit diffuses, normals and speculars, as long as I have an already working 3D asset to start from. I wouldn't be good at texturing from scratch, but I am very good at adjusting.

If all you can do is tell me which forum or on-line modding community to go to, that would also be a huge help.

Thank you so much in advance for your replies,


Ganael
 
yea its true, really hard to find any good learning resources or documentation on how to code stuff, for example spawning agents, changing agents body properties, their looks and so forth. they should make a guide on how to read the bannerlord dll files and then how to code, give some exmaples of the process of creating some mods, how they find out how to do it and stuff.
 
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It's a bit late but here are some handy resources i've found so far.

BannerLabs Youtube - gives a rough idea how to do some of what you want:


XML modding tutorial on nexus - these are a little old so maybe some info will be out of date - compare the info in them to files of newer mods you've downloaded to see what if anything has changed:
 
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