First steps

First steps

1. Close the game.
2. Browse... and pick the mod's data folder, for example ...\Rome Total War Gold\HLR\data, or the game's own data. Next time the tool opens the last mod by itself; Mod at the top lists every mod of the game folder.
3. Pick the campaign (usually imperial_campaign).
4. Choose the work at the top: Maps (its Terrain tab paints the ground, rivers and climates, its Coast & heights tab the coast and the heights), Factions (its tabs Edit faction and New faction), Units, Buildings or Characters.

Every change waits until you press Preview changes (shows every file and line) and Apply changes (writes it, with a backup). Undo / Redo step back through what you did in the window.

Scrolling: every list, table, page and text shows a scrollbar while there is more to see; every list, table, page and read-only text also scrolls by the mouse wheel, by dragging it with the left button (it follows the mouse, up / down and left / right) and by the middle button: press the wheel and move the mouse - the further from where you pressed, the faster it scrolls, both ways (held: it stops when you let go; a click: it goes on until the next click or Esc). A text you can type in keeps the left drag for selecting words. The map is as before (the right button moves it).

Medieval II

Medieval II keeps most data in packs. Load the game folder (or a Kingdoms campaign's folder, such as mods/british_isles) and the tool offers to unpack it with the game's own unpacker (the campaign's own unpack_britannia.bat and the like for a campaign; it copies the two DLLs the unpacker needs, msvcp71.dll and msvcr71.dll, next to it). Set-up problems that stop the game from starting (M2EX's vegetation_source text without the raw vegetation maps; in both games a character's name that no list of descr_names.txt has any more) are found on Load and fixed with a yes.

A separate mod folder (recommended)

New mod folder... after loading the mod you build on makes a copy of it next to it (for example HLR_Saba) with its own start file. Your base mod is never touched. On the plain game it makes a thin mod instead: nothing is copied (made at once, no disk space) - the mod holds only what you change and the game reads every other file from its own data; the editor puts a game file into it the first time you change it (the whole map folder, all but map.rwm, the first time you change the map - the game then builds its map again there). Before the first write into the game's own data or a mod it did not make, the editor asks once: Make my own mod folder or Write here.

• Rome / REX: <game>\<name>\, started by Start_<name>.bat (-mod:<name>).
• Medieval II: <game>\mods\<name>\ with <name>.cfg, started by Start_<name>.bat (under M2EX: M2EX.exe --features.mod=mods/<name>).

Start the game (the green button at the bottom right, beside Tools) says what it starts - Start Rome - CE_Test, or in amber Start Rome - no mod when the game's own data is loaded - and starts the game with the mod that is loaded: its own start script, else the line the engine's own start scripts use (REX.exe -mod:<name> - or -mod:mods/<name> for a mod in the game's mods folder -, -bi / -alx for the expansions, M2EX.exe --features.mod=mods/<name>). Apply your changes first - the game reads the files on disk; the button names any change not written yet. Before it starts the game it checks: a start script that starts an exe the game folder lacks is refused in plain words, a Medieval II .cfg that does not name the mod's folder is asked about, and a 32-bit game exe that can use only 2 GB of memory is noted in the status line.

A mod built on another mod (HLR) holds all of it - the game reads one mod folder, never a chain. Every file is copied, so the new mod stands on its own - to share, to zip, to change in any program. For a mod you keep to yourself, tick Hard links instead of copies: text files are still copied, everything else becomes a hard link (the same file on disk under a second name) - no extra disk space, Explorer still shows full sizes, and deleting the new mod folder never touches the game. Do not overwrite a linked texture in place from an image editor.