posted 30 June 2004 08:06 AM EDT (US)
Welcome to N.M.A, an "academy" for all of you new Modders (or people who just want to brush up on their skills)! What happens is that I give you a task to mod. You do your best at the task and send the mod to me. If you completed the task, then you move up a "rank". After a couple of mods, you will definitely see improvement. After I mark your work I will also give you constructive comments on how to improve, or how well you did. What do you gain from this besides learning to mod Age of Mythology? You gain the knowledge and skill needed to make great mods that other people can download and enjoy "If you do so wish to upload your mods for the public to download". You gain the wisdom to help other future newbies in the forums. Last but not least, you get to take your ideas for great mods and make them a reality. Through Tasks 1-9 you will be putting together a unit mod. Once you have finished Task 9 you will know all there is to create a great mod. This Task will be graded on Texture shading, blending and quality. This Task will be graded on Texture shading, blending and quality. This Task will be graded on Texture shading, blending and quality. import norse_sword_anim.txt Just delete these two lines. Below this there should be a Define command set called "define hammer". This is where we will do are coding at. First off you will need to find out what the Egyptian priests staff is called. To do this all you have to do is look for the Egyptian priests anim.txt file "priest_anim.txt". Open it up and scroll down until you see the define command called "define Staff". You will see that the Visual command line is calling for the "Special E Priest Staff". You will want to aquire this file and rename it. I would suggest something along the lines of your units name then an underscore and then staff "IE: graywizard_staff.brg". Now go back to your units anim.txt file where the define hammer command set is at. Replace the "Tool Hammer" with "graywizard_staff" or what ever you named you staff brg file. Now just replace the "hammer" part that is right beside the define command line with "Staff". All you have to do now is scroll down to the Anim command sets and look for the "connect RightHand NorseSword hotspot" command line. This is telling the game where to place the object. In this case it was telling it to place the sword in the Hurkarl's right hand. All we want to do is replace the "NorseSword" part with our define name called "Staff". Should look something like this. connect RightHand NorseSword hotspot < Be sure to do this in all of the Anim command sets. Now to customize the staffs texture all you have to do is Convert it, Paint it, Convert back, but instead of placing the "ReplaceTexture" command in all of the Anim sets. Now here is where you will get your first taste of hex editing. When you rename your newly modified texture, you must keep in the bounds of the original letters used. Say for instance the priest's staff is called "special e priest staff". You just want to replace the letters of the name. Don't add extra characters or spaces. Like this for an example. special e priest staff < You will understand why you want to do this in a minute. Now take your copy of the staff model and open it up in a hex editor. A whole bunch of numbers and letters will come up. Just scroll down to the bottom until you see where the model is calling for the texture. It should be in the right colloum of letters and periods. Just replace each letter of the name of the texture with your own personal texture. Now remember that you must replace each letter one at a time. Involves alot of clicking I know but worth it in the end. Once finished just save your new model and you are finished. If you don't quite understand how to do this then I would recommend a article I wrote about special effects. It involves the same kind of hex editing by replacing the names of the textures. You will find it at the Age of Modding forums under the Tutorial section. There is a link below that will take you strait there. Once finished please just send me the ddt, brg files and your wizards anim.txt file. The name of the file/s needed for this task is: special e priest staff.ddt, Special E Priest Staff.brg This Task will be graded on texture shading, blending and quality. This Task will be graded on coding, and balance. This Task will be graded on color, blending, placement, and eye candy. This Task will be graded on color, blending, placement, and eye candy. This Task will be graded on coding, balance, icon quality and clearity. This Task will be graded on coding, and sound. If you are looking for some great articles then go here at Also Take your time on completing these tasks. There is no dead line or limit on how long you take. But I will not wait 3 months for you to complete one task "Unless it is one of the later tasks". Do not use someone else mods and claim you did them. Me, Argalius, Monkish Man and Dnas are regulars here. If you directly copy someone else mod for your task I will have no other choice but to kick you out of the N.M.A. with out warning. We will not tolerate cheaters here. We will grade the tasks once a week. So don't rush us to grade your tasks. Dnas one of my Head Assistants. He will be in charge of helping me out with questions that students may have and helping out with students who use the Gimp paint program. Argalius is my other Head Assistant, he will be assisting in answering questions about modding as well as model editing once I post the side tasks for that. Monkish Man will be answering general modding questions. All four of us will be grading your tasks...When you receive your grades you will have four sets instead of one. Once all the students have turned in Tasks 1-9, I will put together a mod pack and upload it here at AoMH. If you use Ms Paint to resize then the way to resize the texture isn't that much different. Just load your texture into ms paint. Click Image/Attributes, then make sure that pixel is selected. If your texture is lets say 32w and 64h and you want to double it's size. All you have to do is click Image/Stretch and Skew, in the stretch box just make the percentage for both height and width 200%. Once you click ok your texture will be doubled to 64w and 128h. Basically the numbers in Ms Paint read the same as PSP does. So just use the above graph for reference. Please visit the [This message has been edited by FlipBizcut (edited 11-20-2004 @ 02:39 AM).]
The Deadline for Tasks 1-8 is Feburary 1, 2005.
In this task you must change the beard and hair color of the wizard. It can be any color or design you like. Once you aquire the texture ".ddt" file just convert it with AoMed and write down the channel numbers it gives you "IE: 16-bit no alpha
Visual Infantry N Huskarl_IdleA
ReplaceTexture infantry n huskarl head standard/gray wizard head <
Now all you have to do after doing this is save the anim.txt file. Place it into the AoM directory inside the anim folder and put your new head texture in the texture folder. Once finished please just send me the .ddt file and your wizards anim.txt file. The name of the file/s needed for this task is: infantry n huskarl head standard.ddt
This task will have you changing the cape's texture of your wizard to any color/design you like. Just remember what Task 1 went through and you should have no problems. Once finished please just send me the ddt file and your wizards anim.txt file. The name of the file/s needed for this task is: infantry n huskarl cape.ddt
For this task you will be changing the body texture of the wizard. You may use any design or color you choose. Once finished please just send me the ddt file and your wizards anim.txt file. The name of the file/s needed for this task is: infantry n huskarl standard.ddt
In this task you will be switching the wizards sword with the Egyptian priests staff and changing the staffs texture to what color and design you want. Find the needed files and then open your units anim.txt file. At the top you should see the lines-
import Large_Norse_Shield_anim.txt
connect RightHand Staff hotspot <
greyxxx x wizard staff <
This task you will edit your wizards proto coding. You will have to edit his health, hack/pierce/crush armor, line of sight, speed, attack and what powers effect him. You may change these stats any way you like as long as your wizard isn't too powerful. He must have weaknesses as well, but be well balanced. Also you must clean up the proto code as well along with some lines in your units anim.txt file. In the pro(x) file under your units code you will find tag lines called "train". Delete these. Then scroll down till you see "<
For this task you will be editing the texture of a special effect and adding it to your wizards anim.txt file. The name of the special effect is hero glow. You can change the color or appearance of the texture any way you like. The special effect must be attached to the wizards "FRONTABDOMEN" but it can be on any anim command set you like. For instance you may have it so every time he walks he will glow green. This is up to you. Also you must rename your custom special effect, texture and hex edit the special effect so it will not replace any current existing effects in the game. For the reason of this boards sake I will not explain on how to do this. Instead I will give you a link
In this task you must choose two special effects of your choice, texture edit them and add them to your wizards birth and death anim commands in the anim.txt file.Also you must rename your custom special effect/texture and hex edit the special effect so it will not replace any current existing effects in the game. One last thing though before finishing this task. You must also place a birth animation into your units anim file. The reason being is you will need this anim section to connect the birth effect to. In order to do this all you have to do is copy the anim Idel section in complete and paste it at the bottom. Then rename the Idle part to Birth. Now you can connect your special effect for birth to the birth animation. Once finished just send me the special effects "prt" files, ddt files and your wizards anim.txt file.
This task you will be adding a lighting attack and customized icons to your wizard. You may use any attack range and strength you choose. You may also use any model animation from the hurkarl set to represent the action your wizard makes when casting the lighting. You must also create icons to represent your unit. You can use the Huskalrs icons if you do so choose. I will be putting together an article on proto editing soon. So if you get to this point and you feel like you know how to handle this then by all means go for it. But if you are uncomfortable with it then please be patient. I will have this article finished soon. Once finished please just send me the proto coding and icon files for your wizard and your wizards anim.txt file.
This is the final task for the completion of the wizard. In this one you must customize the sounds you want your wizard to make. You can only use sounds that are already in Age of Mythology. No modified and foreign sounds will be accepted. Don't worry. There are plenty of sounds in the game to choose from. Once finished please send me the sound pack file and the wizards sound xml file. NOTE: Please don't send me the sounds themselves. This will not be necessary.
This is the Final Task period. This final task you will make a completely new unit just as we did in the past tasks. The only difference is You get to decide on what to make and how it is made. The only requirements is that the following elements go into the mod. Texture editing, detailed proto editing, icons, custom special effects, sounds, read me file explaining how to install the mod and special powers. There is one rule though to this task. You can NOT base your mod on any media character "IE: Movie, book, game, ect.". You must come up with something strait out of your imagination. Once finished with this task you do NOT send it to me. Instead you must upload it on to the AoMH download section with the words "N.M.A. FT" somewhere in the title. Once everyone has completed this final task I will open up a thread here at the forums where all the students mods will be displayed and the modding community will grade your work. The student with the highest grade will receive the N.M.A. High Honors Award.
Don't worry, I won't adjust, modify or steal you work.
Making the texture bigger will greatly effect on how detailed it will look in the game. The bigger the texture, the better detail you can add. But you don't want it too big. Too big of an texture will make the game crash. If you are using PSP then all you have to do is load the texture into the program. Click Image/Resize in the top menu. Then a dialog will come up with some options. Pixel Size should be chosen already. If not then do so. Then adjust the size the way you want. Here are the pixel sizes AoM reads when loading the textures.
Sometimes looking at an texture can be a bit confusing. The best way to find out what part of the texture belongs to what part or limb of the model is to paint a color chart on a texture. Say for instance you find the legs part of the texture but are not sure on which part is the front of the leg and which part is the back. All you have to do is paint each part with a different color. Convert it to ddt and apply the needed coding to the anim file. Place the needed files into the certain folder of the AoM directory and start up AoM. When you look at the model in the game you will see which color is effecting which piece of the leg. Take screen shots of the model for reference. Just repeat this process for each piece of the texture you are not sure about. Waveslave made an article on this subject
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