How MODDIR works

[ptan54]

1 - First put all files relevant to the mod into one directory inside your Program Files/Strategy First/Hearts of Iron folder.

2 - Call this directory TGW.

3 - Go to your Hoi.exe executable inside your Hearts of Iron folder.

4 - Right click on that.

5 - Click Create Shortcut.

6 - A shortcut, called "Shortcut to HOI.exe" has just been created.

7 - Rename shortcut to whatever you want, like shortcut to TGW or whatever.

8 - Drag shortcut to desktop.

9 - Rightclick on this shortcut. Click properties.

10 - In the Target: line, you will see this.
"C:\Program Files\Strategy First\Hearts of Iron\HoI.exe"
C can be D or E or whatever hard drive you installed HOI into.

11 - Alter this line to say:
"C:\Program Files\Strategy First\Hearts of Iron\HoI.exe" TGW

12 - Run the mod by clicking on this new shortcut. Whatever the mod can get by looking into TGW folder it will do. Whatever it cannot get, it will get from the original HOI. Therefore, any new flags or crap should go into the TGW folder.

 

[StephenT]

1 - First put all files relevant to the mod into one directory inside your Program Files/Strategy First/Hearts of Iron folder.

Into one, flat directory - which will have literally hundreds of files in it, in this mod? Or should you reproduce the Hearts of Iron directory structure within the mod folder, so you have separate leaders, ministers, etc files?

Also, does moddir take note of changes to the basic configuration files like text.csv?

Finally, not every installation will be in a "Strategy First" folder since they were only the publishers in a limited subset of markets...

 

[ptan54]

In that case, change "Strategy First" into "Paradox Entertainment" or whatever is the path on your machine.

All the files must be in the proper structure.

For example in my TGW file I have these directories:

ai
config
db
GFX
scenarios

And whatever is relevant to each directory goes there.

For example, db will contain
events, leaders, ministers, tech, units directories.
and the province.csv, unitnames.csv, country.csv, credits.txt, events.txt, revolt.txt

All the "new" files for TGW reside in this TGW directory and the game, once run with the new shortcut, will always look in TGW first for any files. If any information it needs cannot be found in TGW, only then will it look in the original HOI folder. So if you have text.csv inside the TGW directory, you will have the mod running on that, ignoring the text.csv in the original HOI.

Hope this helps.

 

[Johan Elisson]

Well, let us then take a look at possible problems with the moddir. I have never used it, so I have no knowledge on the stuff I am going to ask about.

Leaderfile names? I read somewhere that they have to have the same name as in vanilla HoI, is that correct? It would make it harder since we have some countries not included in vanilla HoI.

No Time Limit Mod? The player would probably have to change his HoI.exe file every time he will play HoI or HoI:TGW?

Text.csv? Someone said before that moddir didn't recognize this file, but that is incorrect, or?

/Johan

 

[MRAKoris]

Well, let us then take a look at possible problems with the moddir. I have never used it, so I have no knowledge on the stuff I am going to ask about.

Leaderfile names? I read somewhere that they have to have the same name as in vanilla HoI, is that correct? It would make it harder since we have some countries not included in vanilla HoI.

No Time Limit Mod? The player would probably have to change his HoI.exe file every time he will play HoI or HoI:TGW?

Text.csv? Someone said before that moddir didn't recognize this file, but that is incorrect, or?

/Johan

Leader files like minister files and ai.files and setup settings mentioned in mod directory will be used - that is if you have one file - let say, ministers.por - which exists in original HoI - so the mod will use the one it has in its own directory and will ignore the original file - the same scheme is applied to everythin else; i assume if you place in your TGW folder - config directory which will have text.csv - so the mod will use IT, and not the original one.

At least that worked for EEP AFAIK.

 

[ptan54]

Yes the filenames must match, otherwise the mod wont be able to read that over the original HOI one.

As for no time limit, I just patched the original HOI.exe in the original HOI directory, and made the new shortcut from there.

So before doing any type of moddir, just use the patch first.

Actually I'm using the "generic" no time limit patch, the one that goes up to 2199, and it works fine.

 

[unmerged(15561)]

Ok, I might be talking cobblers ere but , I, guessing you dont want to have the original ministers/leaders in TGW as they are for ww2. Will this mean that the original files must be replaced by empty ones? Possibly do a backup of the vanila files in their own directory through an installer!

Otherwise is there a flag that must be set on the executable shortcut, to ignore the files in the vanilla hoi folder structure?

 

[ptan54]

There's no need for the original WW2 ministers to be in the TGW directory. They just stay where they originally are, no need to meddle with them. As long as the new minister and leader files are inside TGW/db/leaders or ministers, and are named exactly the same as their counterparts from the original HOI, its fine.

I think Allenby's got it working as well, so it shouldnt be a problem.

 

[MRAKoris]

I believe the easisest move is just take EEP and decompile it, i helped Russians to do the same for the EEP they have translated.

 

[Allenby]

Seeing as we are using ModDir as the method of installing TGW, I think we ought to iron out the difficulties of standard HOI Second World War data managing to get its way into TGW on the basis that a file hasn't been installed for TGW, compelling the game to look to the standard game for data. In particular, I've noticed that in TGW various leaders from the standard game have appeared - Sweden and Spain in particular. Would this be solved by putting a blank leader file in TGW, therefore giving those countries no leaders?

Additionally, the game seems to run the normal credits in TGW, even though we created our own one and put it in the TGW folder - no public mention for our work then...

The same seems to be true for model names - our first version uses the standard WWII models. I'm sure this can be fixed by simply putting a models file in the TGW folder - and that's being done this week.

In short, if there's anything from the standard version that pops up in TGW when it shouldn't, then we ought to get them removed.

 

[Gwalcmai]

Would this be solved by putting a blank leader file in TGW, therefore giving those countries no leaders?

Well, when I got the game to load the A-H leaders I started getting a great amount of DB mismatches from clashes between A-H and SPR leader ids. Inserting an empty spr.csv into tgw\db\leaders fixed that, so I'd say that's the solution.

 

[Allenby]

Were there any other similar cases to that?

If I were to put in an empty Swedish list alongside the spr.csv file, would it stop the Second World War leaders appearing?