Editing Emporer

[Marauder1187]

Well, I have beaten Emporer. Actually, I beat it quite a while ago, all three campaigns up to medium difficulty. Then I quit playing.

Well, it's Christmas Break, and I have nearly nothing to do so I pulled it off the shelf, and started playing again. I want to change Emporer, give it a little bit of a "new" fealing.

I have tons of experience editing Westwood's Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge, as well as several of their other RTS games. I soon learned Emporer is based on the same type of rules settings, using a rules.txt and artini.txt. RA2/YR uses Rules.ini and Art.ini. Both game's rules files are in the same format, so I already know how to edit it.

I have made all the neccessary changes, but can't seem to get it working in campaign OR skirmish mode. I placed the rules and art files (only rules file has been cahnged) in a folder called model, as was the instructions I found somewhere, can't remember where. Nothing seems to be working. The folder "model" at C:WestwoodEmporerDatamodel

What do I need to do to get it working?

[IxianMace]

Check the Dune Editing forum, you'll probably get more help there. To edit the stats in Emperor, you'll need the Rules.txt file. This can be found in the MODEL0002.RFH file, which you can extract with a program called DuneEx2, found in the Dune Editing downloads section.

Additionally, I think you might like to take a look at this thread. There is another person that is in a similar situation to you, and the information in that thread will probably be useful to you as well.

[Marauder1187]

Yes, I know all the main points, but how do I actually use the modification in-game? I cant seem to get that to work... I have the files in C:WestwoodEmporerDataModel

Now what?

[IxianMace]

If you have the Rules.txt file in the folder you just specified, run the game as normal and the mod should work. Any changes you made (e.g. cost, build time, etc) in the Rules.txt file should show up in the game.

[Marauder1187]

But that is just the problem, none of my changes work.

[IxianMace]

What sort of changes are you making exactly?

[Marauder1187]

Extended build times, costs for atreides vehicles (the faction I was going to play as), and such to make Hard even harder...

[IxianMace]

I'm not sure what the problem could be here. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, unless I've missed something. ??? Delete the Rules.txt file and start again with a fresh one then.

[Marauder1187]

Well, I took your suggestion, and it finally works. Before I deleted it though, I noticed a single litte error on it. The line that says:

Version=1.23

was for some reason set to=

Version=1.23A76

Kinda funny that it didnt cause a crash in the game. In RA2 if this simple little number was messed up entire units would dissapear completely. Heh, whatever.

Thanks for the help, and man, hard is a huge challenge now....

[Apollyon]

I think that your problem was probably that the rules and artini had a date set on them that was earlier than the model.rfh, if this happens emperor will read from the more recent file.