posted 06-21-14 03:43 AM CT (US)
 Welcome to the AOKH Modders Guild. You can ask questions here, use it as a discussion board or simply use it as a reference when you need help; for both Steam and Userpatch versions of the game. However, please note, the majority of this topic is written for the Userpatch 1.5 edition of AOK. If you don't already have Userpatch, I would recommend you Userpatch is a fan made patch which adds a ton of new features to the vanilla game and is indispensable to the both the scenario design and the online community. It also opens many new doors to the modding capabilities of the game; these are just a few of the additional options Userpatch can offer: - Add the 5th resource to your mod - Use hidden resources for creating new effects or stats for units, creating limited buildings and more. - Creating many new tech effects, opening up a wide array of options, including techs which effect allies and enemies. - Add in HD style additions, such as revealing relics on map, creating Feitoria type buildings, add siege towers which send units over walls, garrison villagers and sheep into ships...and much much more. 
  First of all you need to understand the different file types of AOK and how we can edit them accordingly. Everything you will be editing is stored in your Age of Conquerors directory and might look something like this: C:\Games\Age of Empires 2\Data Within the data folder, you will see a list of files, including: This is incredibly important to note when creating new mods. It is much better to ADD files into the gamedata_x1_p1.drs rather than the original files. This makes it easier to keep track of new SLP's and also keep the file size when sharing your mod smaller. I'll go into more details on this later on. Drs files contain all the graphics and sounds etc you see and hear in game. Think of it like a zip folder and inside it is lots of other files. Inside each drs file are files called slp’s. These are the individual graphic files; each slp contains the graphics for a particular unit or terrain or menu. The empires2_x1.dat file is what stores all of the stats data in the game, i.e. it tells your archer how many hitpoints he has, it tells your building it can collect food, and tells your town centre it can research castle age at a certain point. Language files are editable .dll files which contain all of the text you see in game. For example, hints, expanded information, dialogue, menu names, unit names etc*. Language files are named; language.dll, language_x1.dll and language_x1_p1.dll. These are located in the main AOK directory.  For editing data the only file you need is This is the most up to date data editing software. You can use AGE to edit research, techs, units stats, buildings, gaia objects, add graphics, create new units, give abilities to other units/building (for example making a house garrison able) and so much more.  This is the way of changing the labels in AoK, such as the name of a unit or building, the main menu text and even the text of many of the scenarios. In order to change them, you need to edit the language.dll files. To do this, you need an editor (listed below). There is also an excellent language editing tutorial over at the SWGB forum This file is used for editing any .dll and works slightly better than reshacker as you can view what the strings say before scrolling through them all (unlike reshacker) and it contains a search function. The only problem is you can't add new strings. An easy and straightforward program for editing .dll files. With this you can add new strings.  Graphics editing is my favorite part of modding. It opens up a whole new world of creativity. Anything you can imagine, you can make. Best of all, now you can put it into AOK and play it. For inserting new slp's, editing current slp's, editing drs files and so on, you only need one program. This program is called Well first of all we need the right software to make the graphics. Good for us that it doesn't have to be that complicated and can be done to a good enough standard without using really expensive software. There are two ways of modifying graphics for AOK. Here are two rendering presets for AOK style camera angles and lighting. I will try to add more of these for different software over time. Over the course of modding I have come across many different pieces of software but to be honest a lot of them are useless or outdated so here is my version of what you should use. - -POV RAY – Another Renderer that can be used with sketchup. Pretty much anything by A tool for creating 3D characters. Great for unit design. Again, you can use whatever you want to model. There are loads of programs you can use like Maya, Zbrush, Lightwave, Vue (great for terrain creation and mountains and the like). There are also loads of fantastic plugins, tutorials and pre-made objects out there online you can download and use (ensuring they are free for non commercial use). For a good source of free textures I highly recommend  When making anything for use in AOK you will need to convert it to a 2d image and also render it to an isometric view with correct lighting (lighting in AOK comes from the East). You will then need to change the palette of the image to the AOK palette. I decided to upload them to the blacksmith, the download link is To use with GIMP. Load your image. Go to the menu bar, windows, dockable dialogues, palettes. Now in that box click on the back arrow looking thing and then go to Palettes menu, import palette. Then in the import palette box, go to palette file, search for where you unzipped the .act file and click import. This will add this palette to the palette box.  I will add a very short section to this to be updated with in depth data editing on the matter very shortly. Basically for now adding terrains works the same way as adding graphics. You can add NEW terrains to your terrain.drs file (for replacing none editor terrains) aswell as replacing the normal ones you see in game.  Righto. Just a quick update. All sounds can be edited in the game whether it is a unit sound or a building sound, or even the in game sound like main menu music or win screen music. To edit sounds you'll need mod pack studio. Go into modpack studio, you will find the sounds.drs in the location tabs. In here every single sound for every unit and every nation is there. You will find the sounds list in the mod pack guild zip. You can import sounds using the import button and click save. There are also sounds in the interface.drs. These will be your sounds for things like the 'your being attacked' sounds or the menu button hover sounds and so on.  (coming soon) |
[This message has been edited by Sebastien (edited 10-22-2018 @ 11:44 AM).]
), AGE has not given me a single problem with it. The few times that my dll was broken that happened after editing it with another program. But I guess that this is also a matter of personal preference.