Modding buildings - a little help please

[JulianJ]

Hi everybody,

I have successfully modded one building - just a variant on a stock CMBS commercial building and got it to load in the scenario editor.

After more reading-around, especially  @umlaut 's      work, I have come to the conclusion that modding modular buildings is never going to work.

Today I modded CMBS independent building 103 - a commercial building, and called it building400 and put it in the Z folder including a renamed .mdr file from the original 103.

After opening the Scenario Editor I cannot seem to find it loading.

Any ideas?  Please.

 

Second request:

I know know how to mod flavour objects.  What I want to do is turn the posters through 90 degrees to make them into shop/wall signs and billboards.  If info is right there is "space" for at least 5 more poster designs, but I need an appropriate .mdr file.  AFAIK calling it poster5.mdr will mean it turns up in the right place in the scenario editor.  Unfortunately I have failed to open a .mdr file and don't know what to do.

Anybody able to manipulate one of the poster mdr files so the alignment is changed by 90 degrees?

Thanks

Julian

 

 

[sburke]

It must be able to be done as Kieme did it for CMSF and that mod works in CMSF2. CMSF only has modular buildings 

[JulianJ]

Above my current pay grade however!!   I think I need to be promoted to Specialist, Modding Grade 2 before I can attempt that.  Still, the town is progressing in other areas...so that's good.

[sburke]

no you have it backwards, when you can show you can do it, then we promote you to Specialist Modding Grade 2.

[Zveroboy1]

Try to see if it shows in game by using the default number i.e 103.

If it works like uniforms, I think you should be able to add new textures on top of the existing ones so that your modded building doesn't replace anything but it is likely that each series 100, 200, 300 etc corresponds to a particular model.

[MikeyD]

'103' is the name of the building type. '1' signifies its a commercial building type, '03' means its the third building model. You get versions by adding numbers in (parens) at the end. So the name would look like building103-front-level-0 (00).bmp or building103-front-level-0 (01).bmp

Its been awhile since I've tackled indi buildings. I believe to get a new version you need to make sure EVERYTHING gets duplicate art with a new (0x) version number. That's everything including interior walls & floors, roofs & roof details. If you don't include everything the game won't recognize the mod at all.

But wait, there's MORE!  depending on the title, you could also be looking at different regions too. For CMRT, for example, the sample art file could be named building103-front-level-0 (03) [easterneurope].bmp  With the tag ending the art won't appear when the default Russian region is selected. CMBS doesn't have regions, though.

Edited September 6, 2018 by MikeyD

[JulianJ]

Thanks for the clarifications everybody, particularly Mikey. The game bureaucracy is as bad as actual work, or possibly even the Army. I do need a pay upgrade....from 0 to 00!

[A Canadian Cat]

7 hours ago, JulianJ said:

Thanks for the clarifications everybody, particularly Mikey. The game bureaucracy is as bad as actual work, or possibly even the Army. I do need a pay upgrade....from 0 to 00!

Thankfully, according to the forum rules, anyone can take ownership of issuing a pay raise like that. I hear by grant you a pay raise to 00.

Edited September 6, 2018 by IanL
added smillie

[JulianJ]

Thanks a lot Ian.  Let me buy you a pixel pint of beer out of my new increment of zero.  You're welcome!

[umlaut]

Hi Julian
Yes, modding modular building is a real PITA. I never really got it to work properly and I really dont think I can help you, as I have put building modding far behind me - and I really dont want to reopen that can of worms
But I think I remember that NPye found some sort of solution when we made the joint Stalingrad mod project. Perhaps you could ask him?
Cheers

[JulianJ]

HI Umlaut,

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply.  I've seen some of your awesome mods

29 minutes ago, umlaut said:

Hi Julian
Yes, modding modular building is a real PITA.
 

I'm beginning to find that out!  The problem is that I don't know things that I am sure is in the "collective knowledge" of the community, so I don't want to mess around by trial and error when someone could tell me if there are only 9 INDY commercial buildings allowed (=slots). I thought my building would turn up as No.10 in the scenario editor.  If not it's probably something wrong in the MDR file?  There's 16 houses, for example.

Anyway, I will take your advice and contact NPye.

thanks again

Julian

[JulianJ]

Hi all,

 

another question:  I have now modded three independent buildings - a barn, a house, and a commercial building as "variants" e.g. they have different numbers in brackets (02) for example.

Most buildings don't seem to be limited in the number of variants you can have.

Commercial buildings unfortunately seem only to have 3 variants (00) (01) (02)....is that correct?  I have tried calling a building (03) and also renaming it 109 but in neither case does it appear.  I might have made some mistake somewhere but the other two buildings were OK so I don't think so.

This is important, IMO, because the difference between Modern and WW2 is commercial building facades - the shops in my street are modern at ground level, but created in old buildings, which are fairly unchanged above.  It should be easy to put some neon signs and current adverts on them and retain the functionality while giving the buildings an appearance of today.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  I wouldn't have tried modding without reading Kieme, Tanks a Lot and Umlaut's posts here, so any input from the commmunity would be most helpful.

cheers

Julian