Modding Emperor - Need Help Please !

[Yeti]

I am trying to make a few changes to Emperor, in particular to the Rules.txt to change unit attributes, but I can't find it in the Emperor directory. Also, I have downloaded the basic rules.txt and art.txt files from FED2K, but I don't know what I am meant to do with them. Can anyone help? I would be most grateful.  :)

If it makes any difference, I am quite experienced with editing CnC Generals and ZH in a similar way

[Staude]

i dont know much about modding emperor.. but you should see as it is for most westwood games (and more games) the ini/txt and other files are probally packed in another format (f.eks. .mix files) meaning that when you have modded the files you downloaded, you should simply need to position them in the correct directory and it will read them instead of the old ones.

[JulesG]

The two downloaded files (rules.txt and artini.txt) should be put in a directory called [MODEL].

The tree should be:

c:/emperor/data/model

if you want to add new buildings, or units, or textures etc:

create a directory [3DData} then {Buildings], or [units] or [textures] so you have:

c:/emperor/data/3ddata/buildings

c:/emperor/data/3ddata/textures

c:/emperor/data/3ddata/units

then any unit.xbf in [units] and defined in artini.txt will be called and used

if it has special textures (defined within the unit.xbf) these should be put in the [textures] folder, though if you put an existing texture file (.tga) in that folder and change it the new texture will be used by default throughout EBFD.

Hope this helps get you going.

[Yeti]

I was mainly wanting to change existing values to tweak the game (sorry, modding wasn't really the right word for this topic) and I have downloaded DuneEx 2 Beta. I have tested it by changing some things in the HK Assault Tank's entry in both rules.txt files (there are 2, one in MODEL0001.RFH with the Art.txt file and another on its own in MODEL0002.RFH). When I started Emperor on a skirmish the changes had not taken effect. What has gone wrong? Yes I did remember to make backups and I did save the changes to both files.

[Yeti]

Ok , I now know the problem. When I make changes to the files and save them, then open the file again, it has reverted back to the original version.

[Yeti]

The rules.txt and art.txt are already in the "model" folder.

[Caid Ivik]

I'm not sure, but it should be somehow like rules.ini.txt, or was that another game?

[Yeti]

What I was doing was copying the contents of the files as viewed in DuneEx (they are read only from there, but they can be added and removed) into a blank Notepad document, modifying them and saving the new document. I then used DuneEx to remove the old Rules.txt file from the model0001.txt and put the modified document in its place under the same name. It was working fine for an evening or so, then just stopped. It now uses the original unedited versions of the files, even though they have been replaced and are no longer in the directory (Yes, I did check they have been replaced. The files now in the directory have the changes in them but somehow Emperor is using the old ones).

Oh and by the way the .ini extention is used by CnC Generals. It doen't need extracting or anything, when you make changes to it you can just save it and you're done.