Mod creation

This small guide will holds some useful tips and tricks for creating your own Men of War modification. Note that this information might be equal to the process necessary for previous Outfront parts and may differ when when using an add-on as the base of resources.

This page deals with the creation and publishing of modifications.General information about mods can be found in the article: ModificationFor a list of all Men of War mods see: Men of War - Mods list

Introduction
Playing Men of War is no bad occupation for free time. Even if it is not that realistic, there can be much fun from playing singleplayer missions or playing online against others. Perhaps you have made some experiences with Gem-Editor, the official map/mission editor for games using Gem-Engine, such as Men of War does. In order to get some time away you created a map free of choice, for one or more players, or you edited some code snips hold in game archives to customize the game and make it become as in your wishes. Finally, you are proud and even impressed of your own work and you want to publish it to make it usable for the whole game community But how?

On this page, you get to know what is important before, while and after creating a Men of War modification or Mod, as most community members call the artificial manipulation of game resources by addition, subtraction or changing of game stuff. Note that there is no guarantied "right" way of creating a mod. What decisions are necessary in detail, that depends on what your priorities are set.

Requirements
Before you start with creating a mod, there are some basic requirements for that. Without them, a creation of a mod is not technically possible or very hard. Those things are listed down below.
 * General topic: What is the mod about? What are your content plans?
 * By that you need a modification name which should not use spaces or special characters. This one my only be temporary, not final.
 * If I want to include maps or missions: What kind of mission shoud they be?
 * How long will it take until the mod is finished?
 * When is a good time to announce the developement?
 * Will I need assistance or am I able to complete this project by myself?
 * If I need some, for what kind of work (ie. scripting, modelling,)?
 * Am I allowed to use some stuff from foreign mods for my own one? If so, under what conditions of use?

Announcement
Directly after the begining of your development process is the last recommendable time when you should inform the community about your plans. This alleviates any kind of help you will need to get in the future while working on that project. If you get to know at this moment that an equal or a similar mod already exists, your work is not completly senseless. In this case, you can change the modification's topic, name or content without many losses in time or work. Another important aspect which should be handled is the right time for updates about the current modding progress. A mod, which was begun but never was given an anticipated release time will soon become forgotten or even seen as "dead". Another hint is to include some preview material in the announcements where interested community members can see multiple information they normally want to know: Note that, if you publish any preview meterial, these aspects are clearly visible for interested people. If not, it might bring the opposite result from what you wanted to have.
 * What level of quality is your mod stuff?
 * What will the mod introduce?
 * Is your project realizable? Can you keep your promises?

Technically
Even if you do not need it, creating a security backup of your Men of War directory is recommended not only for newbie modders. Also if you are more experienced in mod creation you play it safe if you create a backup of your Men of War directory and the  folder in your documents'   folder. It is never quite sure that you will not demage, delete or change any of the original game data. The most important files for backup is. Without this archive the game is not able to run stably, and it is the most imprtant and most frequently used game archive during modding process.

In Men of War such as in most other strategic games, modding is the description of placing new content in a special way so that it replaces the default one. Like its predecessors, Men of War uses an easy folder system to simplify the creation of modifications for less experienced users. Basically, you do not need additional applications, but to avoid limits in 	barrier-freedom you should own the following applications:
 * A text editor program (ie. Notepad) for script editing
 * An archive opener/comprimizer/extractor (ie. WinRAR) for working with *.PAK files
 * TIP: To save time it is recommended to mark this program as default for PAKs
 * A *.TGA/*.DDS-ready image editor program (ie. Adobe Photoshop) for texture editing/creating
 * NOTE: If using Adobe Photoshop or TheGimp you need special plugins
 * An *.MDL-ready model editor program (ie. Autodesk 3D Studio Max) for model editing/creating
 * NOTE: If you want to export MDLs you need a special export plugin

Process
After you completed the step of preparation there is no reason to do not start with the most interesting part: The main part. It is recommented to work in steps while creating a mod. That means: If you decided to begin with creating some missions you should not begin with ie. editing textures before you have not finished with the first task. This pevents you from creating an uncontrollable construction site where you can easily lose the orientation during longer breaks of work. If you are more experienced in modding you can also work on several tasks at the time, this can increase the fun factor. Important is only that when you decided to go one way you do not switch to the other one.

You should begin with the mod folder in the game's  folder. Use the mod name (without special characters or spaces) as the name and open your text editor. There you need to type in the following text and save it as  in the mod folder. {mod {name ""} ;Between these two "s you write the name of the mod folder 	{desc ""} ;Between these two "s you write a short description of your mod }

You also need to create sub folders for the content to be replaced (PAK files are supported, too):
 * (general folder for game resources); Sub folders:
 * (folder with models and some textures of game entity)
 * (folder with interface stuff)
 * (folder for maps and missions)
 * (folder with menu and in-game music files)
 * (folder for entity properties)
 * (folder holding some setting files)
 * (folder with shader engine files)
 * (folder with in-game sound files)
 * (folder especially for texture files)
 * (folder holding the menu and ingame video files)
 * (general folder for all localization text)

After you have created or modified any stuff you should test it directly (before continuing with another file) by using Gem-Editor (for entity or maps) or the game (for localization or interface changes). That helps you to directly detect unwanted effects or bus and to fix them. When you have not finished with a single file or a certain project (such as a new skin) you should mark it anywhere, so that you can continue with it next time. Recommended methods for this are:
 * Directly creating a Changelog file (not only when the mod is finished)
 * Copy the incomplete file(s) into an obvious directory (ie. you create a folder named  (Work In Progress) in the mod's main folder