This guide is based on swapping weapons of specific units in Rome: Total War. This is very useful for editing units without modifying/creating a whole new unit.
You need the following programs in order to follow this guide:
•3ds MAX (I am using student version 2016 in this tutorial)
•.CAS Import/Export plugin for 3ds MAX (download it
You also need a complete version of Rome: Total War, because we are editing some of those files.
In this tutorial I am going to use the Roman Triarii, and make them like common swordsman.
The files with their location we are going to edit:
export_decr_unit.txt( ../The Creative Assembly/Rome Total War/data/ )
descry_model_battle.txt ( ../The Creative Assembly/Rome Total War/data/ )
Open your 3ds MAX with the installed importer (you already installed it huh?)
With this .CAS Import/Export plugin you are able to load the model of an unit.
Import the unit which is carrying the weapon you want on your own unit. Now you see a white formed unit with one or two weapons (see below).
The only thing you need to do now is saving this unit as a 3ds MAX project.
Follow the steps using the images below:
After you opened 3ds MAX, click on the ‘hammer’ icon, telling utilities. You will see this screen:
Click on ‘MAXScript’, and then select in the dropdown list R:TW Import/Export.
You can now scroll down further.
Select R:TW Import, and then select ‘Import CAS…’
Go to your Rome Total War directory, and then go to models_unit.
I want the Triarii to have swords, so I am using the Hastati.
Select the model you want, and hit open.
After 3ds MAX opened your model, you see a small box in the centre of the box (hint: select the view you want and hit ALT+W. It will enlarge that view).
Zoom in and you will see something like this:
In this case the spear is the primary weapon of the hastati. We need to change it, so dubbelclick on the spear.
On the left screen you will see something like this:
Now delete the primary weapon. Then rename the secondary weapons as ‘primary weapon’. Now the sword is set as the primary weapon.
Save the project now:
Save it with a name and close and create a new empty project.
When it asks this:
Select New All and hit OK.
Now do the .CAS import work again (step 1), but now import the model of the unit you want to be modified (In this case we use Triarii, remember?)
After importing and zooming, you see this:
In the case of the Triarii, there already is a sword as secondary weapon. So you know now how to change the secondary as primary weapon.
It spares a lot of time just deleting the spear, and copying the sword and renaming it as primary weapon.
But this tutorial is how to import weapons from another units. Not all units do have multiple swords.
Hit the 3ds MAX button on the top left corner of your screen. Then hover over Import, and select ‘Replace’.
Now select the project you just saved and hit Open:
In the list below, select the primary weapon:
Hit OK. You will get this box with the question:
Click on NO
You are now done modifying weapons. If you load the texture of the unit, you will see this:
I am not going to tell you how to do that, because there are tutorials on the forums already (also for adding the texture to the unit)
Now save the unit by going to the RTW Export Cas… script, and saving your model as another name in your directory:
Now save it with a name you like:
Now you are done with modelling the unit. Open descr_model_battle.txt
Hit Ctr+F and search for ‘roman_triarii’.
Select the text area of the triarii, and copy the text.
Now scroll at the bottom of the file, and paste the code there.
Now change the name of the type. In this example I changed it to ‘roman_triarii_swordman’
Now you have to change the skeleton. In this example, we changed the unit to a swordman. Change the skeleton to ‘fs_swordsman’
The next step is to change the model seen in battle. We just created it with 3ds MAX. As you can see in this file, there are 4 lines with something like ‘model_flexi’.
This path where each line refers to, is the location of the model.
Most models are located in ../data/models_unit/textures.
So we need to place the created unit in the models_unit folder (otherwise the model won’t have a base texture).
Now change each line of the model_flexi so it refers to your model. In this case, we created only one model for all distances, so we use the same path for all lines:
Now you are done with this step. In the next step we will actually add the unit to the game.
Now open export_descr_unit.txt
Search again for ‘roman triarii’.
Once again, copy and paste it to the bottom of the file.
Then change the type and the dictionary:
Now, change the soldier model. This is the new model you created in descr_model_battle.txt.
In our example, the name was ‘roman_triarii_swordman’. Now your file will look something like this:
Next thing is to change the category and the class. Change the category to ‘infantry’, and change the class to ‘heavy’:
The final step is to change the stats_pri and stats_sec + attr. Just replace these lines:
stat_pri 7, 3, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 25 ,0.73
stat_pri_attr spear, spear_bonus_8
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
With this lines:
stat_pri 9, 2, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, sword, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
Now your text looks like this:
So I changed the formation in:
You can now start a custom battle with the new unit (it will show up grey without a description.
You are done with this part of weapon swapping.
Enjoy!
[This message has been edited by Dagovax (edited 03-06-2017 @ 08:28 AM).]