M2 GUI-Kit V2.4.3

v2.4.3

The toolkit in Spanish, and German that no longer leaks English. The
second translation of the interface: every one of its 8,120 strings in
Spanish, offered in Settings as a draft for a native speaker to read over.
Translating it turned up places where the code put English words into a
translated sentence; those are fixed for German too, along with one that
wrote German into a trigger file.

New

• Español. Settings > Interface language now offers Español (Spanish) -
  borrador. Every screen, button, finding and message is in Spanish (Spain),
  with the game's own words where the Spanish release has them (séquito
  for ancillaries, turno for a turn). It is marked a draft until a Spanish
  speaker has read it; anything that reads wrong is worth reporting. Mod
  content, unit names and file names stay as the mod has them.

Fixed

• The trigger editor wrote its joiner in your language. With the
  interface in German, choosing oder between two conditions wrote oder
  into the trigger file instead of or. The joiner is now always written as
  the file spells it, whatever the interface language.

• No English left inside translated sentences. Nearly thirty messages
  took a word from the code in English (a plural ending, "wider", "summer or
  winter", "(nobody)", a module name). Each is now a whole sentence or a
  translated word in every language.

• German is complete again. The eight strings the transfer fixes of
  v2.4.2 added are in German.

• My Changes no longer goes blank when it is reopened before it has
  finished reading the first time.

M2 GUI-Kit beta 2026-10-02

beta 2026-10-02

Everything in v2.4.3 with the campaign map switched on: the interface in
Spanish, offered as a draft in Settings, including every panel of the
campaign map editor; the trigger joiner always written as and/or; no
English left inside German or Spanish sentences.

Nothing on the map itself changed since beta 2026-10-01.

This is still a beta for the reason the first one was: the campaign map
editor is the first thing this toolkit does that WRITES to a campaign, and a
campaign is the one part of a mod where a bad write shows up ten turns in rather
than the moment you load it. Everything it writes is backed up and one Undo
away. Read the plan before you press Apply.

M2 GUI-Kit V2.4.2

v2.4.2

The toolkit in German, and a transfer that lands files where you point
it. The first translation of the interface: every one of its 8,112 strings
in German, offered in Settings as a draft for a native speaker to read over.
And two fixes to Unit Transfer from a tester's report.

New

• Deutsch. Settings > Interface language now offers Deutsch (German) -
  Entwurf. Every screen, button, finding and message is in German, with the
  game's own words where the German release has them (Gefolge for
  ancillaries, Runde for a turn). It is marked a draft until a German
  speaker has read it; anything that reads wrong is worth reporting. Mod
  content, unit names and file names stay as the mod has them.

• Room for longer words. Every screen was measured in German at desktop
  width and on a phone with nothing clipped; the one squeeze, the Buildings
  view toggle, no longer shrinks.

Fixed

• Reroute lands files in the folder you pick. Picking
  unit_models/_units/umbar_swap wrote the files a whole source tree deeper,
  under umbar_swap/_Units/Umbar/. They now land in the folder picked; only
  when two files would land on one path is the full structure kept.

• A unit whose dictionary the destination already uses is a conflict. A
  new unit type with a dictionary name the destination had (97 of Third Age
  Reforged's units against Divide and Conquer) became a second unit on the
  same dictionary, and overwrote the other unit's name, description and cards.
  It is now caught as a conflict: Rename keeps the type and gives it a new
  dictionary, and a rename never reuses a type or dictionary the destination
  already has.

• The unit card choices say what they do. Keep only fills the faction
  folders that have no card; the panel now says so, along with what
  Overwrite does.

M2 GUI-Kit beta 2026-10-01

beta 2026-10-01

Everything in v2.4.2 with the campaign map switched on: the interface in
German, offered as a draft in Settings, including every panel of the campaign
map editor, and the two Unit Transfer fixes (a reroute that lands files in
the folder picked, and a dictionary name the destination already uses caught
as a conflict).

Nothing on the map itself changed since beta 2026-09-30.

This is still a beta for the reason the first one was: the campaign map
editor is the first thing this toolkit does that WRITES to a campaign, and a
campaign is the one part of a mod where a bad write shows up ten turns in rather
than the moment you load it. Everything it writes is backed up and one Undo
away. Read the plan before you press Apply.

M2 GUI-Kit V2.4.1

v2.4.1

Transfer does more of the job, M2EX mods are read the way M2EX reads them,
and the screens fit the window. Everything since v2.4.0: a transferred unit
can arrive recruitable, carrying only the skins its new owners wear, with a
banner the destination did not have; an M2EX mod that reads its battle models
as text is read and written through that text; a cloned faction arrives with
its victory conditions and campaign descriptions; and the layout holds at
every interface size, down to a phone.

Measured on the mods the reports came from: Tsardoms 3.0 (the recruitment lag)
and M2EX's own files (the text battle models).

New

• Let the faction recruit them. A tick on the transfer page adds the unit's
  recruit pools in the same job as the unit, through the Recruitment tab's own
  writer. A renamed copy of a unit the destination has gets the original's
  pools, held to its owners; a new unit goes into the building levels that
  recruited it in the source, where the destination has a level of that name.
  Each pool is listed before you apply, one Undo takes them back with the
  unit, and a unit left with none says so.

• Copy only the skins the new owners wear. An option on the transfer: the
  copied models keep the texture records of the factions that will own the
  unit, and the files only the others named are not copied. The plan says how
  many files and MB that saved.

• A banner the destination has not got. A unit whose banner line names a
  banner missing from the destination is caught in the plan: bring the banner
  across (cut to the destination's factions, with a row for each owner) or use
  main_cavalry / main_infantry instead. Neither leaves a Health finding.

• M2EX mods that read their battle models as text. A mod whose
  descr_caps_ex.txt says model_battle_source text has its models read from
  and written to descr_model_battle.txt, so a transfer into or out of one
  lands in the file the game reads, converting between the two. The Home card
  says which file a mod reads, and Health warns when the one the game does not
  read has been changed since.

• A cloned faction's campaign files. Add a faction now writes the donor's
  victory conditions under the new name in every campaign (its hold_regions
  left empty, since those provinces are the donor's) and a title and
  description on the faction picker, and says what is left for you to fill.

• New resources on M2EX. On a mod marked as running on M2EX, Minor Files >
  Resources no longer flags a 29th resource as ignored, and offers New
  resource and Clone: the record, its name and tooltip, and its icon.

• Open any screen in a new tab. The Home card's screen buttons and the side
  menu are links now: a middle click, Ctrl+click or Open in new tab opens that
  screen for that mod beside the one you are in.

• The turns beside a pool's rate on the Unit Editor's Recruitment tab, as
  the Buildings editor shows them: "= 8.9 turns" under 0.112.

Fixed

• The Buildings editor no longer freezes on a big level. On Tsardoms'
  militia barracks (1,131 recruit pools) a ▲ on a pool's rate froze the page,
  and every open tab of the toolkit with it, for a third of a second a click.
  Ten fast clicks now take a fifth of a second in all.

• The layout fits the window at every interface size. The Minor Files tab
  strip is one row that scrolls instead of tabs three lines tall pushing the
  page sideways, + New and Port from another mod are the size of their
  labels, and the breakpoints now follow Settings' interface size, not only the
  window's. Nothing scrolls sideways at 1280, 1600 or 1920 px at 60-125%, or on
  a phone.

• Restart now to apply it keeps its console. With Keep the console window
  open ticked, a restart came back with no console; it now starts on the
  console interpreter.

• A faction clone's shield. A cloned faction pointed at shield names the
  interface sheets did not have and showed the wrong button; it gets shields of
  its own, and the Factions editor, Health and the faction audit find and
  repair the ones made before.

• A sprite at the far LOD. A transferred model whose sprite path the
  destination already used for a different sprite showed the destination's;
  it now arrives under a name of its own.

• A models file with a hand edit. A battle_models.modeldb with a stray
  letter after a 0 is named as the hand edit it is, with the line, and a
  blank entry holding a name reads.

M2 GUI-Kit beta 2026-09-30

beta 2026-09-30

Everything in v2.4.1 with the campaign map switched on, plus four changes
on the map from users' reports: a watchtower's line of sight drawn on the map,
a region rename that no longer takes seconds, painting that survives saving a
settlement, and a way back to the brush from the province itself.

This is still a beta for the reason the first one was: the campaign map
editor is the first thing this toolkit does that WRITES to a campaign, and a
campaign is the one part of a mod where a bad write shows up ten turns in rather
than the moment you load it. Everything it writes is backed up and one Undo
away. Read the plan before you press Apply.

On the map

• A watchtower's line of sight. Every watchtower's reach, 10 tiles, drawn
  filled or as an outline (w, or the box in the markers panel), and drawn
  under the pointer while one is being placed or dragged, so its spot can be
  chosen by what it covers.

• Paint its tiles. The region's own panel has a button that picks up the
  brush with that province as its colour, for adding tiles to it or redrawing
  its border.

Fixed on the map

• Painting is no longer lost to a settlement save. Painting a province and
  then making a settlement its faction's capital threw the unsaved painting
  away. It now carries on where it was, unless a map image it painted was
  changed outside the tool.

• Renaming a region is quick. The first rename planned in 11 seconds on
  Divide and Conquer, and every save after it paid that again; it now takes
  about one.

M2 GUI-Kit V2.4.0

v2.4.0

Animations travel with a unit, and can be edited where the game plays them.
Everything since v2.3.9: a mod's animation packs read in place, every action a
model has played in the Models viewer, a transferred unit bringing the
animations the destination lacks, an edit saved straight into the pack, and a
skeleton or one animation brought from another mod. Nothing is unpacked or
repacked: a pack is only ever added to, and one Undo takes each change back.

Every change to a pack was proved in the game on Third Age Reforged with units
from Divide and Conquer: Hobbit Infantry, Suriut Chariots, Trolls, the Moria
Balrog and Steward's Guard all animate after the transfer.

New

• Every animation a model has, in the Models viewer. The actions are the
  filled slots of each of the model's skeletons, read straight out of the mod's
  pack.dat (or vanilla's, for a mod that ships none), all 687 slots named and
  grouped: idles, walks, attacks, deaths and the rest. A slot's impact frame
  and its sound and effect cues are marked on the scrubber. The weapon
  skeletons move the weapon, a rider can be shown on his mount, a campaign
  model's .cas plays too, and another mod's take on the same action can be
  played beside it.

• A transfer brings the unit's animations. A skeleton the destination's
  pack does not have is appended to it with every animation its slots name,
  reusing what the destination has already, byte for byte, under any name.
  DaC's Balrog costs a few MB, not a copy of DaC's 352 MB pack. The copied
  model is pointed at the name the skeleton lands under, and the transfer's
  one Undo cuts the pack back. The loose .cas files and a
  descr_skeleton.txt block are written too, so a modder who removes the
  packs to have the game rebuild them keeps the unit.

• An edit saved into the pack. The animation editor now opens on an action
  played from the pack and saves the edit there, under a new name, with the
  skeleton's slot pointed at it, so the game plays it on every model with that
  skeleton. What the editor previews is exactly what it writes.

• Another mod's animation in one slot. Beside the model, Use it here puts
  another mod's take on an action into this mod's slot. When the two
  skeletons' bones differ, the animation is carried across bone by bone.

• A skeleton from another mod. Bring a skeleton from another mod… in the
  animation panel ports one skeleton with all its animations. If this mod
  already has a skeleton of that name, it comes in under a name of its own,
  and the model on screen can be pointed at it.

• Animation packs on the Home screen. Each mod card has an Animation
  packs line: what the packs hold that nothing plays, and a compaction that
  writes them again without it, the old packs kept until you let them go. All
  three mods measured were already clean.

Fixed

• A transfer no longer breaks the destination's unit file in three ways
  the game rejects outright: an ownership or era line naming a faction the
  destination has not got (it is left out, and a unit left with no owner is
  given to the rebels), an engine's shot effect the destination lacks
  (commented out), and a soldier count above what the destination's engine
  takes (DaC's 120 Balrogs become 100 in a mod without M2TWEOP's higher cap).

• The editor says what a loose file does. A loose .cas does not override
  an animation the pack holds, so the editor no longer tells you a rebuild with
  an outside tool is the way; it saves into the pack instead.

• Two skeletons whose names differ only in case (vanilla has a body and a
  weapon skeleton called MTW2_Halberd_Primary and MTW2_Halberd_primary)
  are told apart.

• The interface starts with an ad blocker on. One of its scripts was named
  so that some blockers dropped it, and the page never finished loading.

M2 GUI-Kit beta 2026-09-26

beta 2026-09-26

Everything in v2.4.0 with the campaign map switched on, plus the rest of
Mylae's New Map Editor brought into the map screen: the real world picked
anywhere on Earth, reference and historical maps, lakes and seas, ground types
and climates from real data, historic sites, a new campaign on any stretch of
the real world, and the layers exported as one bundle.

This is still a beta for the reason the first one was: the campaign map
editor is the first thing this toolkit does that WRITES to a campaign, and a
campaign is the one part of a mod where a bad write shows up ten turns in rather
than the moment you load it. Everything it writes is backed up and one Undo
away. Read the plan before you press Apply.

On the map

• A world picker. Pick it on a world map… on the Real world tab opens the
  whole world before any box exists: search for a place, draw the map's box,
  move it, resize it and turn it, with the size of a tile in km shown as you
  go.

• Reference and historical maps. The backdrop can be OpenStreetMap,
  OpenTopoMap, OSM Humanitarian, a relief drawn from the real heights, or
  OpenHistoricalMap at any year from 500 to 1600.

• Lakes, lagoons and seas. The real outlines, an island in a lake kept dry,
  shown over the map and made sea in one stroke with the Paint tab's Undo.

• Ground types and climates from the real world. Ground types from
  OpenStreetMap land use or from ESA land cover, and climates from the
  Köppen-Geiger zones, each a preview and one Undo.

• A new campaign on the real world. The new-map form can start a campaign
  on any box picked on the world map, with its cities picked there too, a
  province round each. It loads and validates clean.

• Historic sites. Castles, towers, monasteries and the rest of 21 kinds of
  site from OpenStreetMap, marked on the map, any of them made a fort, a
  watchtower or a new region.

• Every OpenStreetMap request shown chunk by chunk. A stretch that never
  answers costs only that stretch, and can be asked again with a click.

• The map bundle. Export the map bundle puts the map's layers, its box
  and a list of its provinces with their cities and ports in one zip, in the
  shape Mylae's editor exports.

Everywhere else

Everything in v2.4.0: animations played out of a mod's packs in the Models
viewer, a transfer bringing the unit's animations, an edit saved into the pack,
another mod's animation or skeleton brought across, the packs' housekeeping on
the Home screen, and the transfer and start-up fixes. See its notes.

M2 GUI-Kit V2.3.9

v2.3.9

Walls, agents, and whole things brought across. Everything since v2.3.8:
screens for descr_walls.txt and descr_character.txt; a building tree, a
settlement model and any data/ zip brought in from somewhere else; campaign
models drawn standing up rather than piled on the ground; and animations played
out of a pack that was unpacked in place.

New

• Walls, gates and towers. A tab edits descr_walls.txt, which is per wall
  level (0 to 4), not per culture: the wall, the gateway and its gate types, the
  tower's firing levels and the gatehouse. It is held against the buildings
  file: every wall_level has a block, and every building's tower_level has
  enough firing levels on its wall. It found ROCSS's three empty shot_gfx
  lines.

• Agents and generals. A tab edits descr_character.txt: each agent type's
  actions, wage and action points, and each faction's strat models, battle
  model and kit, with a grid of which faction has which type. A strat model's
  card in the Models Editor lists every character block it stands in for, as
  links, and each model on the tab links back to its card. It found DaC's two
  england inquisitor blocks.

• A building tree from another mod. From another mod… on the Buildings
  screen brings one or more building lines of another installed mod across
  whole: the block, its text (per faction and per culture, carried to the new
  name) and its building cards. Every faction and culture this mod lacks is
  mapped or left out, a recruit this mod lacks is left out and listed, a hidden
  resource it lacks is added, and a level that needs a line, resource or
  religion it lacks is refused with a one-click add that line. A same-named
  line can be replaced in place. One backup, one Undo.

• A settlement model imported and put on a culture's level. Import…
  beside each level's model on the Cultures screen (and the fort, fort wall,
  fishing village and watchtower lines) copies a settlement .cas from another
  mod or from disk, with the textures it names, into a folder where nothing is
  written over, and puts it on that line, keeping its settlement plan.

• Any data/ zip loaded back. My changes takes any zip laid out under
  data/ (the changed files, a faction's files, a whole campaign) and plans
  each file: new, the same, replacing (with the records named) or refused. Stale
  compiled maps are deleted, and one Undo takes it all back.

Fixed

• Campaign models drawn in their pose. A skinned strat model is now placed
  by its skeleton, each piece where its bone puts it, instead of piled on the
  ground. All 296 characters in both mods stand. 53 ROCSS models with a baked
  animation, its diplomat among them, decode at all.

• Strat textures in the game's order. A material named x.tga is looked for
  as x.tga.dds, then x.tga, and never as x.dds. DaC's Amroth general
  paints, and 864 materials that have both a real .tga and a .tga.dds now
  show the .tga.dds, as the game does.

• Animations from an unpacked pack play. A pack.dat unpacked in place keeps
  each file under the path it was packed from, and the viewer found none of
  them. It now looks where the game reads, then under the nested path, and reads
  those entries with the unpacked skeleton's bones: 40,460 of DaC's 41,501. An
  edit saves as a loose .cas beside the entry, never over it.

Also

• A mod's layers save faster where numpy is installed. The release runs as
  before without it.

M2 GUI-Kit beta 2026-09-25

beta 2026-09-25

Everything in v2.3.9 with the campaign map switched on, plus the rest of
the map roadmap: the real world behind the map, a map resized or made from
nothing, layers generated from the real world, every tile as text, a campaign
brought in from another mod, a horde start, and a validator that listens to the
people who fix these maps by hand.

This is still a beta for the reason the first one was: the campaign map
editor is the first thing this toolkit does that WRITES to a campaign, and a
campaign is the one part of a mod where a bad write shows up ten turns in rather
than the moment you load it. Everything it writes is backed up and one Undo
away. Read the plan before you press Apply.

On the map

• Resize the map. The new Size tab under Map grows or shrinks it by any
  number of tiles on each edge. New ground is the map's own sea. Every
  coordinate the game's files hold moves with it: the strat, the events, the
  custom battle tiles, the custom battles and the campaign scripts (DaC: 7,149
  coordinates in 9 files). A shrink that would leave a settlement, character or
  resource standing nowhere is refused, naming the file and line of each.

• A new campaign on a map made from nothing. New map on the same tab makes
  a campaign with its own map: an island of the size and number of provinces
  you ask for, a city in each, one province and a leader per faction you pick,
  the rest held by rebels. It loads and validates clean, and your base map is
  not touched.

• Layers from the real world. The new Generate tab makes heights from the
  real ground under the map's box, at the game's own scale; ground types from
  the heights; climates from the ground types; and rivers, cliffs and volcanoes
  from OpenStreetMap, drawn the way the game can build a river (no diagonal
  steps, no loops, one source each, never under a city). Each shows its picture
  before it writes.

• The real world behind the map. The Real world tab aligns the map to a
  box (typed, or a bbox_coords.txt), draws OpenStreetMap over it, fetches the
  real coastline and marks every land tile on its water side, and finds places
  by name. It is off until Settings turns it on, and nothing is sent until
  then.

• Every tile as text, and a campaign as a zip. The Export tab writes a
  .tsv with a row per tile (region, owner, ground, feature, climate,
  height…), and downloads one campaign at its data/ paths.

• A campaign from another mod. From another mod under New campaign
  brings another installed mod's campaign in as a new one. Its factions are
  mapped onto your slots, and what your mod lacks is substituted, left out and
  counted.

• A horde start for a faction that holds nothing. The people panel's Horde
  start either puts leaders and armies on the map from turn one, or has them
  arrive later the way vanilla's Mongols do.

Validator

From a modder's feedback, and checked against the game itself:

• Ports are drawn on their dock, the sea tile the game shows the port on,
  not one tile inland.
• The same resource twice on a tile is no longer a finding. The game loads
  every copy and the province trades all of them, so modders stack them on
  purpose, and the old Fix deleted lines the game uses.
• A settlement on dense forest is now fatal: a battle there can crash.
• A river crossing on uneven ground warns. A battle map averages the 5x5
  tiles around the fight, so a bridge under a mountain ends up in mid-air.
  Smooth, on each crossing, levels the ground around it and eases it back
  into the hills.

Also in this build

Everything in v2.3.9: walls, gates and towers; agents and generals; a
building tree, a settlement model and any data/ zip brought in from
elsewhere; campaign models drawn in their pose; strat textures in the game's
order; and animations from a pack unpacked in place. See RELEASE_2_3_9.md.