Editing Castle Battles, Dealing with AI mesh and is it bad to have huge castles?

[General Alexander]

Hey guys, allthough I hardly ever post on here, I've been playing M&B for a few years now and have edited my own game frequently. A while I got warband and now I've done some editing. Anyways to get to the point, I just wanted to show one of my lastes castles and get some real modders' constructive criticism, Give out a few ideas that I have and also have a few questions answered. Oh and all these picture where taken in the "Knights of the last battle" mod and great mod by the way, I am enjoying playing it.

To start off, here's my castle.

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My problem: I can't seem to get my AI mesh to work right to get my units to move up the siege tower, I did scale it up... would that be a problem? The tower allready starts in place and does not have to move to get to the wall.
Also the wheels to the tower disappear when I load a battle and I don't know why.

Here is one of my ideas: To keep people out of an area you add in objects that look cool insted of just barriers.
Here are some of my object ideas, they also make it look like a way bigger battle.

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What these are made up of:
First ones, areana spectators lying on the ground and horses with added armor, red texture for blood and lots of weapons. Th seige tower is what block players and AI... and I also have barriers.
The second is areana spectators with armor on and shields so players cant see the arms pointing strait out. I think it creates a cool look.
The fourth is of course barrels/suplies that have village fire big added to them. I believe that the fire only is there in battles.

This one is arrows stuck in mid air. Is that normal, or is that a result of something I did?

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[Adorno]

The wheels to the tower are scripted to only spawn during a siege (like the fire and big siege ladders e.g.),
so you won't see it when taking a walk in the courtyard. But they should show during the siege.

Scaling an object should not be a problem (I have done a lot of that).

Can you post a screenshot of the AI mesh? Rule of thumb is if your own character can get to a place (without jumping) then so can the AI.

 

[General Alexander]

I worked some more on the AI mesh after posting this and I looked at some other guys pics of AI mesh and everything was more square than mine, mine looked like ****. I had vertices in edges of walls and was just all over the place. I usual don't spend alot of time on it and it usualy works fine. I changed most of it. Got my units to get on the wall with warbands big siege tower. I still have to work on the defenders reinforcements mesh area, but its working better. Ill get some pics of the AI mesh up tomorrow.

Oh and I never asked the question? why don't most mods create huge castles, does it slow peoples machines?

And Is it posible to create alternate siege scenes, so that randomly selects one?
For example having one where there is a wall breach, or one where you use ladders, or one with siege tower, or posibly(if someone created one) you have a battering ram at the gate.
Anyways, not saying someone needs to do it, just is it posible?

 

[Adorno]

If the castle you've made is based on a native castle you can send me the sco. file and I can take a look at the AI mesh,
maybe correct something or just give feedback (if it's not a remade native castle I can't do it though).

Oh and I never asked the question? why don't most mods create huge castles, does it slow peoples machines?

There's practically no limit. Although I have reached it with using perhaps 1000 objects (small stone) to make a broch. Don't do that!


I have made some large castles and they all work fine, like these (especially York and Conwy):
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,115163.0.html

And here are some other of my scenes (reply#1):
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,135583.0.html

All in all I will say it's the AI and not the size that sets the limit. The AI defenders will always spread out in a straight line facing the besiegers.
So if they have too little room on the walls they will try to spread out in weird places maybe even exit the castle if possible.
For the best result create a straight wall by the chokehold where besiegers will come and let the besiegers spawn in front of the wall facing the defenders (just like in native).

I wholeheartedly support your quest for huge, epic castles! 

And Is it possible to create alternate siege scenes, so that randomly selects one?

I don't know.

 

[Crossbow Joe]

You made that "broch" with stones! I have fought in that and I always thought you made a new scene object. Nice work Adorno. And also the caslte looks really good Alexander. Quite a spectacle. But however I cannot help you in that department apart from the AI mesh, I know nothing about getting sieges to work in singleplayer.

 

[Caba`drin]

And Is it posible to create alternate siege scenes, so that randomly selects one?
For example having one where there is a wall breach, or one where you use ladders, or one with siege tower, or posibly(if someone created one) you have a battering ram at the gate.
Anyways, not saying someone needs to do it, just is it posible?

Yes, I believe it is possible. The scene for a given battle is set within the module_game_menus. Specifically, the menus dealing with sieges are: "castle_besiege" and "besiegers_camp_with_allies"  for offensive battles, and "siege_started_defender" for defensive battles. Additionally, there is this menu "castle_besiege_inner_battle" for when you get to the streets or within the keep.

Within each of those menus, look for the menu option where the player chooses to attack. "Lead attack" or some such. You should see the lines

           (try_begin),
             (party_slot_eq, "$g_encountered_party", slot_party_type, spt_town),
             (party_get_slot, ":battle_scene", "$g_encountered_party", slot_town_walls),
           (else_try),
             (party_get_slot, ":battle_scene", "$g_encountered_party", slot_castle_exterior),
           (try_end),

Here, it gets the appropriate scene for the given castle/town. This scene was stored in a party_slot for the castle/town in the script "script_game_start".  Further down, there is the line           
(jump_to_scene,":battle_scene"),
That sets the scene returned from the party slot as the one to be used.

Editing the setting of the variable ":battle_scene" should allow you to change where the battle will be fought...and you can make that dependent on whatever you'd like.

 

[General Alexander]

Thanks guys, it's nice to be able to get quick help anytime, you all are great modders. Adorno, I love your historic castles.

and here's my AI mesh, it's still a bit... well you'll see. I've been working alot the last few days, so havn't had a chance to work on anything.
You can see what the wheels are doing, I remember now that the reason they wern't comming in, was because I saw that they were messed up and deleted them.

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Here some of my guys run into the wall of the tower, but most don't, there were about 85 of my guys in this battle, so...

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[Adorno]

I don't see anything wrong with the AI mesh in those pictures.
Don't know why some troops run against the wall in the tower - but sometimes the AI is just stupid.

 

[General Alexander]

Also, is there a way to get a larger scene, so that I can have more room?
And... if I were to create a water scene, is there a way to change the backdrop area to be water?
Im working on the city of paris and trying to make it as historical as possible, but I cant have a river that ends at the edge of the "scene".

Again, thank you for your time, I'm sure you have better things to do than answer my stupid questions. lol

 

[Crossbow Joe]

Also, is there a way to get a larger scene, so that I can have more room?
And... if I were to create a water scene, is there a way to change the backdrop area to be water?
Im working on the city of paris and trying to make it as historical as possible, but I cant have a river that ends at the edge of the map.

Again, thank you for your time, I'm sure you have better things to do than answer my stupid questions. lol

If we had better things to do we wouldn't be on this forum!
And yes there is a way to get larger scenes but don't try it on one you have already edited to your liking, do this on a new one you are starting from scratch on. First you need to enable edit mode (which I presume you will have permanently on anyways) then you will need to be on the world map in single player and on the bottom left there will be a button called "Terrain". Click on this and now you are in a terrain editor of sorts. This allows you to create the terrain for your new scene. If you slide "size x" and "size y" to full you should have a fairly large map. I think changing the polygon to 5 metres makes it bigger but I'm not sure. Anyway make sure you slide "Vegetation" down to nothing as all pre-placed vegetation is afaik un-deletable. When you are happy with the terrain click on the code at the top to copy to clip board. Close and exit mount and blade. Now go to the scene you wish to edit in the scene.txt files. (You will have to figure out which scene it is yourself) go to it and replace the end code: (Which is the highlighted part)
outer_terrain_snow
scn_random_scene_desert random_scene_desert 1792 none none 0.000000 0.000000 240.000000 240.000000 -0.500000 0x0000000229602800000691a400003efe00004b34000059be

with the new one you just made, and save.
Now go to the scene and the terrain should be changed. If there are any problems then message here. this is the simplest way to do it without directly modding. There are proper ways to do it however, which Adorno will probably say and I would like to know as well.

 

[Adorno]

There are proper ways to do it however, which Adorno will probably say and I would like to know as well.

Ha! You overestimate my powers 
I don't know about editing size or terrain borders of scenes.

 

[Lumos]

The only way to get a big scene is to do what Crossbow Joe says. About the outside-scene-edge terrains, (please use the term "scene" which is how they're really called, because map refers to the World Map) there is a field at the end of each scene in module_scenes.py: it says something like "outer_terrain_plain" or "outer_terrain_snow" or something. For the terrain to be water, you must change this field to "outer_terrain_ocean".

 

[Crossbow Joe]

For the terrain to be water, you must change this field to "outer_terrain_ocean".

Really! I was always under the impression that you could not change the background terrain to be water. But now that you mention it I recall the sea battles. Thanks

 

[General Alexander]

Awesome, that'll help, alot. Is there an easy way of telling which scene it is, or do I just have to guess?

 

[Crossbow Joe]

I think it says it somewhere in them mod files but I am not sure where. For example in multiplayer it is
scn_multi_scene_1 - ruins
scn_multi_scene_2 - village
scn_multi_scene_3 - Hailes Castle (castle 1)
scn_multi_scene_4 - ruined fort
scn_multi_scene_5 - Hidden Scene (A scene which is in native but taken out in the final product, can be activated)
scn_multi_scene_6 - Hidden Scene  (Same for this one)
scn_multi_scene_7 - field by the river
scn_multi_scene_8 - Rudkhan Castle (castle 2)
scn_multi_scene_9 - snowy villeage (in Mahud's case this is Naval Battle )
scn_multi_scene_10 - Turin Castle (castle 3)
scn_multi_scene_11 - nord town
scn_multi_scene_12 - port assault
scn_multi_scene_13 - Brunwald Castle (castle 4)
scn_multi_scene_14 - battle on ice
scn_multi_scene_15 - Mahdaar Castle (castle 5)
scn_multi_scene_17 - The Arena