How to make a PROPER Xml Mod

[SomeDudeOnTheW3B]

I, My name is SomeDude.

And I am currently in a holy war against overriding XML Files in the Sandbox and the SandboxCore module.

I noticed that pretty much every single mod on the nexus that edits xml does it the wrong way!

If you know exactly what I am talking about and are developing a mod, please go to my tutorial here:

https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/61

If you don't know what I am talking about let me explains!

Pretty much every single piece of data in MountAndBlade2 is put inside a xml file.
Xmls are basically list of items (inventory items, troops, characters, factions, dialog lines ...)

What mod authors do when they want to modify one item, say a hero npc called Svana is to edit the file inside Sandbox/ModuleData/lords.xml and modify the NPC "lord_2_12".

What they do then is to upload the file to the nexus.

The result is that EVERY SINGLE NPC in that file will be overriten instead of just Svana !

To deal with that in a mod compatibily fashion is not to override ANY xml files inside Sandbox or SandboxCore BUT to make a new XML Module that will only override the Svana Character!

I made a tutorial that go quite in depth about how to make such mod, any mod authors that override a NativeMod XML should use my method to deal with 90% of mod compatibility issues!


https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/61

Have a nice day!

PS: I hope my post is appropriate and in a good section, first time ever in the nexus forum

[LatchoDrom42]

The game is new. A lot of us are not really modders but figuring things out just by poking around. IMO, posts like this are a massive service to people like us who are learning it just by dissecting and teaching ourselves.

 

Thank you.

[nicx274]

Thank you for this! Like LatchoDrom42 said, I'm no modder, but I also noticed while trying to fix some mods that their xml structure is always correct. That or they are missing things that require the mod to work.

[Arkimedex]

There are a ton of issues with overriding code in this game. I wish there was some documentation or some tutorials covering all xml issues and exceptions.

 

For instance, your example doesn't work. id="NPCCharacters" exists in a lot of files, dunno why and dunno how the game knows what to access. But if I simply make a copy of spnpccharacters, call it spnpccharacters_mod, and copy your code...

 

<Xmls>
<XmlNode>
<XmlName id="NPCCharacters" path="spnpccharacters_mod"/>
<IncludedGameTypes>
<GameType value = "Campaign"/>
<GameType value = "CampaignStoryMode"/>
<GameType value = "CustomGame"/>
<GameType value = "EditorGame"/>
</IncludedGameTypes>
</XmlNode>

 

...this will not work, the mod is ignored by the launcher, or will crash the launcher. If I exclude the game types, same.

 

Also, there are xmls that don't have the same structure, meaning they start with a

<base xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" type="combat_parameters">

and then have a first element. I didn't manage to understand how these work, so it's a different case scenario for overriding. Everything I tried, like overriding banner colors, is simply ignored in game. No crash, the game launches.. but nothing will happen.

 

I also tried the no-id xml example, that uses project.mbproj, and... shockingly, also contains an ID... as in:

<file id="soln_combat_system" name="ModuleData/native_parameters_mod.xml" type="native_parameters"/>

I have no idea where that soln_combat_system came from, for example.. It's an even more obscure way to override code.

 

And dunno, there could be more exceptions..?

Edited November 30, 2020 by Arkimedex

[Arkimedex]

Edit.. because I can't edit my previous post for some reason. I was wrong about the first example, that was my fault, I dind't close the </Xmls>

The second and third case scenario tho.. no idea how that works. If anybody is willing to write a tutorial, that would be superb.. ^ ^