Well, by now most of us know how to change the range or hitpoints of a unit, or even maybe its graphics with genied1 or 2. Well, for the last 4-5 months I have been doing stuff a lot less people do, creative stuff. Oliver's work is an excellent example. A few others do it, and this is certainly not anything original to me, but I thought I should post a little tutorial to open up this crazily addicting and fun world of AoK to some people. So here goes:

Genied1?
I am no going to explain the basics of this, that would be a waste of my time. Get it, figure it out, learn the basics. BTW, there are always a few differnet ways and programs that will do what I do, so do whatever you like; this isn't rules, just guidelines.

what exactly do I need to modify?
Well, the files you will be spending the most time in are civ0units.txt and graphics_other.txt. Not enough people fully realize how many great things can be done with the latter file.
other files can be modified and I will show an example of this as well.

What do you try to create?
Simple: things that you need/want in AoK that are impossible to get. Things that add visual or gameplay appeal. Anything that adds to the fun of the scenario.

Examples?
The best way to show what is possible is with examples. Let us stard with my recent entry to the screenshot competition:

Merry Christmas

Now first thing everyone asks is "OMG, blue sky, how?". We will get to that but first let us look at something easier like the snow on the tree and the rocks. Recognize it? Sure, it is the snow on towers and walls that are placed on snow terrain. So how do we get this?

1. let us choose the snow from the guard tower (unit id 234)
2. Open up civ0units.txt and find unit 234
3. find the line "civ_0_unit_234_graphic_snow: 6286"
4. we now know that the snow graphic is 6286
5. Create a unit (or modify one you will not need). Make it something like a rug or flower bed, a gaia object basically. Give it a standing graphic of 6286.
6. that is it. It can be placed on top of trees or cliffs because the attribute of the snow to go on top of everything instead of under is stored in the graphic.

That was a simple one, lets look at the blue sky now (yippee!):

1. First creat a unit AND a graphic (or alter ones you don't need). the unit should be some nonattackable gaia object, and the graphic should be like the standing graphic of path, rugs, or some object that goes UNDER all other objects.

This is where graphics_other.txt comes in; if we use path1 (unit id 339), we then open civ0units and find its standing graphic is 2287. So our new graphic should be a carbon copy of 2287. Copy everything written about 2287 in graphics_other.txt into your patches file.

2. The only difference will be slp. It is so importsnt that you undersand the difference between slp and graphic. slp's are the artwork ONLY; graphics tell how the act, if they go above or below for example.

So what slp do we use? Well, hidden in the drs file is an slp 50230. it is a big square solid blue; well actually if you change player colour it changes to red, green etc. Cool Huh? Use that as the slp for your new graphic. You now will have a unit which is basically a sky background for you to use.

Those two examples have all the technical info you need basically. ANything else is more or less a variation of those. The logs on the road? Same thing, just a different slp (and you have to change the graphic to have as many rotations as the slp has and 1 frame per rotation-all in graphics_other.txt).

So how do you know which slp's to use?
Well, the title says creative in it, so open MPS and look through all the slps and use your imagination. I have seen every single one, and when I get to one that I have an idea for, I write it in a text file like this:

3406-splash

Now if I want to add a fountain or rain or a splash (how ingenious to think of that one ), I follow the above steps, changing certain properties in graphics_other.txt to suit my fancy.

You said something about other text files?
You can alter ANY file. try pcolours.txt. It contains info on all the different player colours. the line "playercolour_0_playerpalette: 16" tells us that colour one starts on colour 16 of the 0-255 colour pallete. The next seven colours are assumed. So colour 1 (blue) is from 16 to 23. Change 16 to another number and you have chage the colour. While it is hard to get new player colours out of the pallette, a darker green and a brown are possible. I found these two in a hour or so of fiddling. Here are some brown units:

brown units

Closing comments?
Mix everything together and create confusion! No Seriously, experiment around. The possiblities are endless, there are many more cool tricks I could show but this is too long already. So here are a few screenies to show some more ideas:

About to board a raft...

...Now same unit sailing on the same raft

A mighty lord looks down from his high tower

Norse Axemen prepare to defend their wall

To finish this all off, I want to encourage everyone to try to use dat editing for a more creative use like Oliver, Aggamemnon, and others have. It is only a 1 meg file and it adds an incredible amount of options and opens new doors that you could never imagine.

WARNING: THIS IS TERRIBLY ADDICTIVE AND YOU WILL HAVE A HARD TIME DESIGNING WITH THE NORMAL EDITOR AFTER YOU SO THIS. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LEARN ABOUT DAT EDITING IF YOU HAVE A REAL LIFE WHICH ACTUALLY REQUIRES YOUR ATTENTION.

[This message has been edited by matty12345 (edited 12-19-2007 @ 05:08 PM).]