THE PROBLEM

Anyone who's made a new civ must have thought about making a new set of buildings for it, right? At least, so did I when making my Danish Civ Mod. If you don't know how to do that, this will hopefully be the solution.

THE SOLUTION

Firstly, I must note that cultures are all about buildings (of course), and buildings have Granny 3D Models. So bear in mind you can't edit models, only textures.

Note: Everytime you see 'Scandinavian' in this tutorial, that's just an example. Use your own culture name instead.

OK, let's start. If you want to create a new set of buildings, you'll have to create a new culture. Cultures are defined in cultures.xml, inside Data.bar . Extract and open it, and you'll see this short amount of text:



WesternEurope
22856


Mediterranean
22857


EasternEurope
22858


Aztec
43701


Sioux
43702


Iroquois
43703

Step 1

Start by copying a piece, let's say you take the first one, paste it somewhere and rename it to Scandinavian.

And incredibly fast, you're done in cultures.xml . Convert it back to .xmb, and place it in your
"...\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires III" folder

step 2

This is another easy and short part. Go to civs.xml and search the following tags (Danish is an example):
Danish

1

DU
objects\flags\danishWesternEurope80000
80001
26446
26445
26444Change 'WesternEurope' into 'Scandinavian', and you've finished the second step.

step 3

This is the slightly duller part of the tutorial. You'll have to edit the visual xml files of all buildings you want to use in your civ. As an example I'll use the Barracks.

Search Barracks.xml (It's in one of the art.bar's, I thought art1, but I'm not sure) and open it. You'll get a big amount of text, so don't browse to search the following tags, but use Ctrl+F. The tags to search (promise me you won't type this all into the search box ):
west_age2

collapse_smoke

collapse_smoke

effects\smoke\collapse_smoke_a.particle



Idle
collapse_smoke



base smoke

smoke base

effects\smoke\collapsesmoke01.particle



Idle
smoke base



base smoke2

smoke wave

effects\smoke\collapse_smoke_wave.particle



Idle
smoke wave



base smoke3

smoke wave center

effects\smoke\collapse_smoke_wave02.particle



Idle
smoke wave center



west_age2





buildings\barracks\west\age_2\west_barracks_age2_damaged




buildings\barracks\west\age_2\west_barracks_age2






buildings\barracks\west\age_2\lp_west_barracks_age2




default
buildings\barracks\WEST\AGE_2\west_barracks_ground
shadows_selections\selection_square_128x128
9.00
9.00

This is, as visible on top of it, a Barracks which can be built by the WesternEurope Civs in the Colonial and Fortress Age. Beneath this big piece of text are 3 others, called west_age2_death, west_age3 and west_age3_death.

If you want to make your new building based on this one, copy all this info, and paste it somewhere else. Edit the textures (described in other tutorials) and go to the bottom of the file.

step 4

At the bottom of the file you'll find this:








































Copy and Paste it, and change WesternEurope into Scandinavian. Also change the bold tags, if you edited the parts of this file they're pointing to...

step 5

Do the same as in step 4 with all other buildings you might want to be appearing in your civ.

GOOD LUCK


peugeot407

[This message has been edited by peugeot407 (edited 09-30-2010 @ 11:22 AM).]