Wrote a pak file extractor, modified the game

[Jason Novak]

I never even thought to try making it a seperate map ... I just tried changing it to a brand new map and it does work, so there is no fixed list of number of maps. I'll have to do it that way from now on.

[Pauldls]

Originally posted by Centurion
good work jason, its a pity though that it overwrites an existing map
any chance of mkaing it so its out as a brand new map to select along side the others on the level selection options in multiplayer??

~Cent~

Yea I don't fully understand the pak system, usally in most games it will load all files with the .pak extension and if there are duplicates it'll go with the most recent one. With Pratorians it does read all files with the .pak extension but if if there are duplicates it doesn't choose the most recent one for some reason. But it does load all .pak files and there contents, you should be able to add a map though and not replace.

[Jason Novak]

Ok, the new system is now ready. You'll want to go back to your original 3 pak files, either by reinstalling from the CD over the top or by restoring the 3 backups the PAK tool made.

The map didn't change, but this version doesn't overwrite any other maps, and all you have to do to install it is to copy a PAK file into your data folder, a lot easier ... can't believe I didn't think of that before

fortress_siege.zip

[curtlegion]

Jason can you make the other fort maps that I listed in my other post.... That would be soooooo cooooolllll..... Thanks.

[Pauldls]

Hehe I was screwing around with Praetorians trying to get a feel for everything and produced "new troops".

http://home.earthlink.net/~axel44/glads.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~axel44/100legion.jpg

I'm going to see what else we can do, now that i've dipped my feet in the unit parameters i'll see how I can matipulate maps and what not.

BTW the scripts are really fairly easy to understand the largest problem is definatly that its in spanish, I keep having to open up google and translating words ect.

[Jason Novak]

Nice

Ya, the spanish make it hard. I have to run it though several tools to clean up the formating, and running words together since you can't use spaces in variable names can make it hard to decode some of them... totalhitpoints can be read by a human easily but it's pretty hard for a computer

I've started work on my next map ... it is based on the "cold treason" map, which is a lot bigger. It will be a 4-player siege map. I plan on moving adding 2 more villages, basically everyone will start in a corner, one people in the fort, with a few villages in the center.

[Centurion]

LOL pauldis, 100 legions in a legion now, it displays it as 100 over 30 (100/30) lol

and how many troops of gladiators was that in a unit? 4 or so ? lol good going.



i wander if it would be possible to make a MOD pack liek they do for other games... just a thought

~Cent~

[curtlegion]

Jason try and 8 player map after your cold map..... Everyone keep up the good work and keep moding...... How about those bodies instead of skeletons.......

[Centurion]

When the units die they actualyl leave a body on the floor, but its only for a small amount of time before it fades and a skeleton appears, perhaps you could get it so the body remains there forever!

~Cent~

[Centurion]

lol, i decided to advertise this thread a little on gamespy and some guy started calling me a cheater lol

~Cent~

[Centurion]

Ok, i installed the siege map and it works fine, I managed ot get on gamespy and play a 1v1 on it with 'FearofFlern' i (the host) was in the Fort, and FearofFlern was to siege, after the battle we talked about the map-heres the chat log btw:

---------------------------------------------------------------
<Centurion> o
<FearofFlern> i think that the person on my side would need at least 100 more pop
<Centurion> yea
<FearofFlern> and it needs to regenerate faster
<Centurion> at the moment there was 250 right?
<FearofFlern> yeah
<Centurion> yep i agree need more population
<FearofFlern> but the way it is now i don't think anyone could win attacking the fort
<Centurion> yea
<FearofFlern> there is just not as much compensation for the fort
<Centurion> so abit unbalaned at the moment
<FearofFlern> a lot unbalanced
<Centurion> hehe
<FearofFlern> cuz you have to attack the fort with a lot of guys
<Centurion> aye
<FearofFlern> and the villages has so little pop that if you fail your screwed
<Centurion> and also becauxe you cant build siege weapons (assualt ladders and siege towers in multiplayer) you have to subsitute with lots and lots of cats and ballistas
<FearofFlern> thats why i only atttacked with my siege
<FearofFlern> and left my wars behind
<Centurion> yea
<FearofFlern> yeah and assoult towers would help so much
<FearofFlern> even ladders to flank them
<Centurion> the map of all the gallic tribes would be better i think-because the person doing the siege has 3 villages
<FearofFlern> but rams and cats don't get it done
<FearofFlern> yeah that is a lot more fair
<Centurion> yea
<Centurion> but it would be perhaps
<FearofFlern> more straight forward
<Centurion> too hard for the pperson in fort to win
<FearofFlern> maybe they could have a time limit
<Centurion> unless they can soemone keep with hte 30 minute time limit to win
<Centurion> yea
<Centurion> just thinking the same lol
<FearofFlern> cuz what if the person with the three villages just build towers
<Centurion> yep
<Centurion> be unstoppable
<FearofFlern> then no one would attack
<FearofFlern> and they would be there forever
<FearofFlern>
<Centurion>
<FearofFlern> i could have done the same thing on this map
<FearofFlern> just build tons of tower
<FearofFlern> s*
<Centurion> yea, o which reminds me, i was building
<Centurion> those towers half finsihed
<Centurion> and battering rams
<Centurion> to block ballista shots
<FearofFlern> ah
<FearofFlern> smart
<Centurion> yea, i was worried with gate broken and the spearmen there that 1 ballista shot would kill most of the
<Centurion> them*
<FearofFlern> i can't wait until they start making 4/6/8 player maps
<FearofFlern> maybe even custom ones too
<Centurion> yea lol, it'll be sweet having a 8 way siege maps
<FearofFlern> or how bout a team siege map
<FearofFlern> like 2v2
<Centurion> lol yea, say in a big fort 2 barracks 1 player each
<FearofFlern> yeh
<FearofFlern> yeah*
<FearofFlern> and then two villages for the attacking guys
<Centurion> it be great, but really could use more siege weapons -the oens from single player
<FearofFlern> that would be sweet
<Centurion> yep
<FearofFlern> and seige maps get rid of the inf rushing
<Centurion> yep, i always got annoyed by that
<FearofFlern> cuz they just get eaten up by archers
<FearofFlern> i do it
<Centurion> lol
<FearofFlern> works well unless your up agianst someone with help or more villages
<Centurion> ya
<Centurion> alright im gonna post this dialog up on the official forum as a review of the siege map
<FearofFlern> k
<Centurion> good playing ya, seeya later FearOfFlern

----------------------------------------------------

main points to consider are that
-in multiplayer you cant build all the siege weapons- Assualt Towers and Siege towers to be exact which makes it harder for someone to siege a fort.
Possibly to balance this out add more population to attackers (the oens who siege the fort) villages.

-Maybe if possible institute a time limit from the single player into multiplayer? I have no idea if this is possible, the reasoning for this is that the people who are suppose to siege could end up building loads of towers and baiting the defender outside instead of attacking (which they should)

I liked the map, its abit unbalanced for the host though in the fort because the barracks has a 200 population limit, and the attackers village has a 250 population limit -perhaps the attackers village should have 100 more population?
quite good stuff though!

~Cent~

[Gaius Julius]

To Everyone:

I applaud all of your work!
Very nice work, indeed.
To think, you didn't get one bit of support from the developer.
See, when left to human ingenuity, almost anything can be accomplished.

Pyro; please take note(again), you've got proof once again that there's a community waiting to emerge for Praetorians.
I hope this will get your attention, and your response.
I just want to make one thing clear to you; Pyro, we're on your side, we're not the enemy.

[Pauldls]

I translated the "of all the gallic tribes" map for multiplayer. I'm pulling my hair out because of some peculiar problems, the two barbarian villages automaticly have garrisons, I tryed tons of messing around and still If I try to change it it will give me an error "can't load map". I think that within the map editor it was programed I guess. Anyways its a nuicence to tear down the garrison to build your village. The two barb villages have 250 pop each and the fort has 300. I thought that giving the fort defender honour points to start out with I could mix up it up a little (like 4 or 6 honour points, this would make him build around what his stragy is (should I build heavy foot soldier, calvarly, or slings/hunters ).

I also tried using the crossroads map, taking out the center village and replacing it with a fort but to no avil. Also I have yet to find out what controls all the skirmish settings, so far we still can't build siege towers or ladders.

Enjoy, oh btw should I make it so there can be 3 players (2vdefender) ?
drop the pak file in your pratorians/data folder

http://home.earthlink.net/~axel44/Misiones.PAK

[Athos]

Great job Jason, I must say that way back in march I hardly imagined this happening (which led to the decline in my interest in the game) but now with the possibilities this has made the game promising.

Lets not just leave the work to Jason and Pauldls, we should all take a crack at it, or create a team with different specialties (ie a modeler, a translator, organizer, etc)

Anyways good to see all this happening...

It can only get better!

[Jason Novak]

I updated my siege map for the new 350 population.

fortress_siege.zip

Still working on my treason map, I'm going to make it into an 8 player map instead of a 4. Going to have to add a lot of new villages.

No luck on the ladders or towers yet ... it may be hard coded into the game itself to turn off on multiplayer since it never expected forts.

Pauldls, I think you should make it a 3 player map. Just balance out the population on both villages. One other note, you can change the direction a village faces with with line in the village properties:

*VISUAL "PENW_1"

So the gate isn't at the top, the compass directions are in the name.

Also, to take out the two enemy garrisons remove these two sections:

*ESTRUCTURA
{
*DEFINICION "GUARNICION_BARBARA"
*POSICION 5.5 -0.00886154 36.5
*ORIENTACION 0
*PUEBLO_GUARNICION "Campamento nervio oeste"
*CIVILIZACION_ESTR "Nervios"
}
*ESTRUCTURA
{
*DEFINICION "GUARNICION_BARBARA"
*POSICION 14.5 -0.00886154 12.5
*ORIENTACION 0
*PUEBLO_GUARNICION "Campamento nervio este"
*CIVILIZACION_ESTR "Nervios"
}

[sick]

cuz of this discovery this forum is booming. very good to see. im more busy with modding C2, but i will take some time in the near future to mod prae.

[Jason Novak]

Sick, is there a thread or page on editing C2? I'd think there'd be some similarities that may help... Does it use 3D models or sprites, if the former has anyone gotten into the models?

[Centurion]

Hey pauldis!
me and fearofflern treid your map, its quite good, i was the host and this time was the attacker, (i went egyptian) and flern went romans, i stormed the fort and killed all his units (even he said he had absoultely nothignleft) and i destroyed barracks however it did not come up with a victory screen!

so theres no way to actualyl win that map!! perhaps thats because it wasa timed scenario?

~Cent~

[Pauldls]

I think i'm going to give up on the siege tower/ladders. Heres the deal, I foud out that whether they appear or not is coded in the .trg file, ok np I modify the .trg file.

So I try

QuitarRestriccionEstructura("ORDEN_CONSTRUIR", "TORRE_ASALTO_ROMANA", "");

"QuitarRestriccionEstructura" is the command to let this be contruscted, in this case "estructra" which means structer.

I found out that the catapult is seen as a "unit" and not a structure, so I try

QuitarRestriccionUnidad("ORDEN_CONSTRUIR", "TORRE_ASALTO_ROMANA", "");

Unidad meanig unit. Btw I can take and give every unit/structure except assult tower and ladder also I tryed both TORRE_ASALTO and TORRE_ASALTO_ROMANA since its unclear what its refered to as. I also tried

QuitarRestriccionUnidad("ORDEN_CONSTRUIR", "", "");
QuitarRestriccionEstructura("ORDEN_CONSTRUIR", "", "");

Which tells it to allow all ("") units and structers to be made and STILL not seige towers or ladders! Either its hard coded in (all this happens only with skirmish maps it acts normal otherwise) or its in some file I overlooked, frusterating.

Btw Jason, thanks i can't believe I missed that, lol
Its updated here
http://home.earthlink.net/~axel44/Misiones.PAK

Just overwrite it and if you have any suggestions tell me, its can be 3 player btw the only problem is sometimes the 1man team isn't the defender and spawns near the villages (which is near an enemy) I don't know how to fix it


Paul

[Pauldls]

Originally posted by Centurion
Hey pauldis!
me and fearofflern treid your map, its quite good, i was the host and this time was the attacker, (i went egyptian) and flern went romans, i stormed the fort and killed all his units (even he said he had absoultely nothignleft) and i destroyed barracks however it did not come up with a victory screen!

so theres no way to actualyl win that map!! perhaps thats because it wasa timed scenario?

~Cent~

Thats strange, when I played verse the cpu It did that but online it would end up me losing. But offline I was defender and online was attacker. Also when I was attacker on the tutorial 3 mp map it wouldn't say that i won. It must be somthing with the forts I dunno, I'll look into it.

[Jason Novak]

I updated my fortress siege map again ... I replaced the barracks with a village. It doesn't look as pretty but in skirmish mode the PC will actually play, and it's possible to win when it's destroyed instead of just sitting there.

fortress_siege.zip

[Pauldls]

Well heres the update, I wanted to add new units to the one laying seige, now like telling the player what he can/can't build was simple, in multiplayer getting it to work was another story. Bottom line is theres no practical way to add units in a MP map, it comes down to having to know whom to assighn the troops to.

Changes/updates to "Of all the Gallic tribes"

**Fixed Problem of game not ending if the defender was the looser, the fort barracks MUST be destroyed to end the game if Attacker is winner, also if the barracks are destroyed the game will end being the defender the looser even if he still has an army left, so don't leave the barracks alone!

**Two villages now have 400 pop each and faster repopulation
**Barracks now has 500 pop and faster repopulation

**You need to build a bridge, I removed the built one and replaced it with the same bridge thats on the other side of the map
** Heres the good news: the attacker starts with 4 Assault towers and 6 Assault ladders! Heres the trick, because I couldn't add new troops, you'll have to build infantry to man the ladders and towers, simply take your infantry/slaves and right click on the ladder or tower. And remember once they are manning either, you can't have them adbandon the ladder/tower.

Have fun!
And if you have any suggestions add them exsp if the pop is balanced ect, I put alot of pop so that there could be two waves of attacks instead of one attack and its a matter of do or die for the attacker.

http://home.earthlink.net/~axel44/Misiones.PAK

[sionnach]

This all sounds excellent, well done guys!

Can offer to help with some Spanish translation if required..........


NOTE:

Roman assault tower in Spanish is "torre romana del asalto" so you could try to refer to "TORRE_ROMANA_ASALTO" instead. Or perhaps you have tried all that? (ladder is ESCALA).

What do the naming conventions within the files look like? Perhaps you could make one of these files available to us as a text file so we can all have a look and help if at all possible! :-)

[Jason Novak]

You can use the PAK decrypter at the start of the thread to decrypt the PAK files in the data folder, then you can open them with winzip/winrar. The files of most importance are in the varios.pak file. The *.mis and *.mss files in the Misiones subfolder in that file are text files containing all the locations of buildings, units, starting points, etc. The Scripts folder contains *.trg files, which are text scripts for the missions, mainly used to script events in the single-player missions. I haven't looked at them much yet but the *.dat files in the Def subfolder seems to contain all the individual stats and settings for all the game pieces/units/etc. All these files should open in notepad or another text editor.

[Pauldls]

Ok I updated the map probably for the last time:

Changes/updates

**3 Player now works, it seems that the 2 player team will spawn farthest apart! So I had to change where they spawn, so it is a bit akward. Also 3 player would sometimes be buggy, fixed that aswell.

**The right bridge is back to normal, I didn't realise that the defender can just hide his archers in the woods and the bridge will never get built

**Attacker has 10 seige towers now
Two villages have 750 population each and barracks has 1000 both with faster repopulation

http://home.earthlink.net/~axel44/Misiones.PAK

sionnach- the tower is refered to as TORRE_ASALTO_ROMANA
Its hard coded in I guess, theres not a whole lot of coding we can do for multiplayer.
Translation for those files would speed things up.


What other maps should become multiplyer?