So... One of the planned features of the mod I'm developing is adding hero types to factions... So for instance, you can get Broken Lords support heroes and such... My main dilemma is cavalry heroes... I can make them, and I can see how to build a skill tree for cavalry heroes even, since that doesn't exist at the moment... But I'm not sure if it's possible to say, have the game put a Broken Lords hero model on a Ryder's mount. Are the mounts separate models from the riders, or were they modeled as a unit, and can you even control such things from the xml?



I suspect the "model=" numeric strings in UnitDesigns.xml sets a unit's model, and that would be easy enough for me to check, but that doesn't include heroes, and seems to suggest that either the cavalry is modeled as a single unit, or the game has a hardcoded mapping of indexed model combinations...



So basically my question is: Can this be done? And if not, is there any possibility of having this functionality exposed in the xml files?

Hello,

If I understand well you would like to be able to mix different models parts in order to form an entirely new model.

Unfortunately, models of units are of one structure, one shape you cannot easily modify. At least, there is no way an xml could change that.

The only thing an xml can do is to "call" a 3D model and linked it to a unit reference.

Otherwise, importing your own models is not possible at the moment. We still don't have the resources to allow it, even if we are aware that it has been asked for.

Darn, I was afraid of that. Oh well, thanks for answering anyway. I guess I'll just have to make cavalry heroes be walking cavalry like the Dawn Officers... Well except for the Roving Clans obviously... Either that or see if it's possible to link a normal unit model to a hero profile...

Actually I suppose that's a good follow-up question...



In UnitDesigns.xml, normal units are declared with a model string like so:

[code][/code]



But heroes--as far as I can tell--are defined in UnitProfiles[Hero].xml, and their declarations don't include a model string:

[code][/code]



So would it be possible to define a Hero and add a model, something like this:

[code][/code]



I'll probably just go test it anyway, but if that doesn't work, is there any way to do this?

In the UnitProfile there is no "Model" because anyway it has little to do with the 3D representation of a unit.

For heroes it is linked to the following:







As I said earlier, you cannot modify the structure of the models.

You can only switch between them or create a new unit from an existing model.