Looking for a Beginner's Guide to Modding DH?

[stevefitz744]

Hello all,

I've been playing DH for over a year now and was thinking of getting into modding, only issue is I haven't been able to find a general beginner's guide for total noobs such as myself who've never modded anything before (gotta start somewhere right? XD) all the guides I've been able to find are about specific parts of modding the game and probably requires people to have a bit of knowledge going into it.

So if anyone could point me in the direction of a handy guide, something along the lines of "DH Modding for Dummies" it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[novapaddy]

Hello all,

I've been playing DH for over a year now and was thinking of getting into modding, only issue is I haven't been able to find a general beginner's guide for total noobs such as myself who've never modded anything before (gotta start somewhere right? XD) all the guides I've been able to find are about specific parts of modding the game and probably requires people to have a bit of knowledge going into it.

So if anyone could point me in the direction of a handy guide, something along the lines of "DH Modding for Dummies" it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

What part of the game are you interested in modding?
Unfortunately there is no overall modding guide. If you look in the Modifications thread, pinned above are some guides. If you try something and get stuck, you can always ask in the events thread. Lots of guys here to help you out. We would encourage you getting involved as it can be very worthwhile.

 

[stevefitz744]

What part of the game are you interested in modding?
Unfortunately there is no overall modding guide. If you look in the Modifications thread, pinned above are some guides. If you try something and get stuck, you can always ask in the events thread. Lots of guys here to help you out. We would encourage you getting involved as it can be very worthwhile.

Had a look at some of those there, wanting to start with creating nations and placing them on the map so started looking at the guide for that...It's probably a bit dated being from 2012 but sure will start poking about with it and see how things go. Thanks Nova

 

[Timur Khan]

I'm also interested in modding DH. At my free time I'm developing my own medieval strategy game driven with events too (sounds similar, huh)? But after playing almost every major mod for DH found on this forum here I asked myself - can I try to mod this game and the answer is - yes, I want to do it.

@novapaddy My question to you is how to make at first my own mod folder. What files exactly I need to have there to make a working game (like the 1933 DH Full scenario)? After that I'm interested in changing the starting date and as @stevefitz744 said how to add new countries, placing them on the map, adding cores, claims and so on.

Making events is described well and if I have questions about that, I know where to ask them

 

[novapaddy]

I'm also interested in modding DH. At my free time I'm developing my own medieval strategy game driven with events too (sounds similar, huh)? But after playing almost every major mod for DH found on this forum here I asked myself - can I try to mod this game and the answer is - yes, I want to do it.

@novapaddy My question to you is how to make at first my own mod folder. What files exactly I need to have there to make a working game (like the 1933 DH Full scenario)? After that I'm interested in changing the starting date and as @stevefitz744 said how to add new countries, placing them on the map, adding cores, claims and so on.

Making events is described well and if I have questions about that, I know where to ask them

Darkest Hour itself is your best teacher.

The easiest way to make a new scenario is to make a copy of mods/Darkest Hour Full folder, rename it to your mod name, and put it into the dh/Mods folder. Now your new mod folder and the DH Full folder are in the Darkest Hour/Mods folder.

Of course all the files are still for darkest hour. So your next job is to go to Your Mod/scenario folder. See all those 1914, 1933, 1936 folders? These are the different scenarios within dh. Open up one of these folders, see all those countries? So these files are the set up files for each country on the game map.

The 1914 scenario has the country files for the 1914 map, with all the provinces set up for whatever country's owned them in 1914. And so on for 1933, 1936 etc etc.

IMPORTANT: These country files all hold individual provinces. Most important is that you understand, that if you remove a province from one country, you must put that province into another country. ALL the provinces MUST be allocated to a country, or the game will crash.

#######################

Choose the dh scenario which best suits your mod. Notice it also has a .EUG file of the same name? Simply delete all files except the year scenario folder plus the .EUG file you wish to keep. This will now be your mod scenario folder and .EUG file.

Open up the .EUG file, see the top?
You can name your mod here and change the start date for your mod also. Have a look around. This is a very important file, so be careful. See it might be calling countries for the map, or events, or AI flies, or setting up wars, or peace.

#######################

ALWAYS work with copies. Make a copy now of your new mod folder. Every day or every hour, depending on what you are doing, update your back up copy, so if there is a crash (and there will be) you can recover things quickly.

#################################################

Making a new country?
Go to your mod/config folder, see the file world_names.csv. Open it and look. See all the TAGS which tell the game what country is what. So GER is Germany etc. See also there should be lots of unused tags.

Best way to check is to open up your .EUG file again. See all those TAGS at the top of the file? These are being called for use in the game. Do a quick search and see if you can find a TAG that is not being used? I mean compare the world_names.csv file to the .EUG file.

Found one? Now you can use this tag for your new country. ...

EDIT:
There is still lots more to do, but I don't want to swamp you, please just post a question and I'll do my best to answer.

 

[Timur Khan]

@novapaddy Big thumbs up! I will try my luck with modding DH and if I have questions I will ask You. Thanks a lot and let's see...I used to mod a lot F1 Challenge 99-02 AI files and cars, modding DH seems to be more logical.

 

[NukePL91]

Well, there are some guides to modding for dummies https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...modding-useful-tools-and-list-of-mods.615942/

 

[Van der Gent]

When I began morning HoI 1 many, many years ago at the age of 13/14 I just went around and checked all the files to see what was in them, then I started tinkering around and learned through trial and error. Most of the stuff are rather self-explanatory, so it's rather eany to get started.

The easier way to beginning is having a separate installation so one has one to mess around with. Creating a separate mod folder is kind of unnecesary (and time consuming) when starting out. Downloading a DH data editor is something I'd recommend, that's the easiest way to beginning modding as the tool does a lot of the work for you.

 

[stevefitz744]

So, after a few days of busy real life stuff, I finally got a chance to do some work on creating countries this morning. I created my own nation and assigned it provinces on the map...but when I loaded up DH it froze on the first loading screen every time. Any particular reason it would do this? I'll detail the steps I took below, I mostly followed the country making guide from the Guide to Modding: Useful Tools section.

- Created copy of DH Full Folder, removed all scenarios apart from 1936 one
- Created nation using one of the tags in config/world_names
- Changed the tags stats in db/country
- Created a HoS in Ministers but only changed his name and stats, no picture
- Created a Military Leader, same story as above
- Renamed the tech teams but otherwise did nothing else to them
- Added the nation into db/revolt complete with stats
- Added the nation into the scenarios folder, assigning it its national provinces and making sure to remove those provinces from the original country.
- Played about with resources (I used another country file and save as for my country) lowering numbers and taking away some armies and tech teams as well as assigning the ministers from the minister file and randomly changing the policy slider numbers.

I also made a flag by downloading a pic from Google Images and opening it in paint, reducing it to below 176x70 in size (I'm not even 100% sure that's the right size), saved it as a BMP File and put it in gfx/map/flag, naming it flag_U99 (Yes that's the tag I used) I'm fairly sure thats wrong...is it even possible to create a country flag using paint or is Photoshop or a similar program absolutely needed.

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks

 

[novapaddy]

So, after a few days of busy real life stuff, I finally got a chance to do some work on creating countries this morning. I created my own nation and assigned it provinces on the map...but when I loaded up DH it froze on the first loading screen every time. Any particular reason it would do this? I'll detail the steps I took below, I mostly followed the country making guide from the Guide to Modding: Useful Tools section.

- Created copy of DH Full Folder, removed all scenarios apart from 1936 one
- Created nation using one of the tags in config/world_names
- Changed the tags stats in db/country
- Created a HoS in Ministers but only changed his name and stats, no picture
- Created a Military Leader, same story as above
- Renamed the tech teams but otherwise did nothing else to them
- Added the nation into db/revolt complete with stats
- Added the nation into the scenarios folder, assigning it its national provinces and making sure to remove those provinces from the original country.
- Played about with resources (I used another country file and save as for my country) lowering numbers and taking away some armies and tech teams as well as assigning the ministers from the minister file and randomly changing the policy slider numbers.

I also made a flag by downloading a pic from Google Images and opening it in paint, reducing it to below 176x70 in size (I'm not even 100% sure that's the right size), saved it as a BMP File and put it in gfx/map/flag, naming it flag_U99 (Yes that's the tag I used) I'm fairly sure thats wrong...is it even possible to create a country flag using paint or is Photoshop or a similar program absolutely needed.

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks

There is an error checker in dh. If you go to the main game folder, see 2 files, one is settings.txt and the other is savedebug.txt.

Open settings and change the 0 in front of the errors entry to 1. Save and try loading again. Now open up savedebug and it will tell you what the problem is.

You made an entry in revolt.txt.... There may be an entry for u99 already, so delimit using # to cancel the other.

In the country Inc file, the unit type number, if you have any units there? The number must be different to all other country numbers.

 

[Van der Gent]

So, after a few days of busy real life stuff, I finally got a chance to do some work on creating countries this morning. I created my own nation and assigned it provinces on the map...but when I loaded up DH it froze on the first loading screen every time. Any particular reason it would do this? I'll detail the steps I took below, I mostly followed the country making guide from the Guide to Modding: Useful Tools section.

- Created copy of DH Full Folder, removed all scenarios apart from 1936 one
- Created nation using one of the tags in config/world_names
- Changed the tags stats in db/country
- Created a HoS in Ministers but only changed his name and stats, no picture
- Created a Military Leader, same story as above
- Renamed the tech teams but otherwise did nothing else to them
- Added the nation into db/revolt complete with stats
- Added the nation into the scenarios folder, assigning it its national provinces and making sure to remove those provinces from the original country.
- Played about with resources (I used another country file and save as for my country) lowering numbers and taking away some armies and tech teams as well as assigning the ministers from the minister file and randomly changing the policy slider numbers.

I also made a flag by downloading a pic from Google Images and opening it in paint, reducing it to below 176x70 in size (I'm not even 100% sure that's the right size), saved it as a BMP File and put it in gfx/map/flag, naming it flag_U99 (Yes that's the tag I used) I'm fairly sure thats wrong...is it even possible to create a country flag using paint or is Photoshop or a similar program absolutely needed.

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks

You didn't add the tag in the scenario file. (I'm not on a computer so I can't tell you the name, but there's some file in the scenarios folder where all tags must be added to be a part of the scenario)

 

[stevefitz744]

Thanks for the advice guys, have been reading country files from other mods to help...I'm gonna start over and take my time with it, last time I may have been slightly overeager to see my country on the map, probably made a few stupid mistakes so will give things another go in a while.

You didn't add the tag in the scenario file. (I'm not on a computer so I can't tell you the name, but there's some file in the scenarios folder where all tags must be added to be a part of the scenario)

Is this the file you're talking about @Van der Gent ?

 

[Van der Gent]

Yes.