Hello,
I would like to share a mod that I've been working on, to always show units' HP (Health Points).
As you probably know, in AoE 2 the units' health bar is only visible if you click on a unit or if you select a group of your own units. Beeing able to always see all units' HP without clicking or selecting them would be a great help during micro-intensive fights, or for picking low-health enemy villagers during scout raids for example.
So, after a few hours of research about modding tools (in particular Advanced Genie Editor and Turtle Pack), I managed to developp a mod which always shows units' HP. The principle of this mod simply consists in adding a damage graphics to the units depending on their HP, just like buildings have different flame animations depending on their HP. Since flames would be to dazzling, I replaced them with little disks above the unit with a color depending on its HP (from green to red).
Below an example with men-at-arms (the disks will remain when you unselect the men-at-arms ; full HP units have no disk) :
Now the tricky part.
Since this mod only affects the graphics of the units, I hoped it could be classified as a visual mod on Voobly. However, it seems that the displaying behind it also affects the data files ("empires2_x1_p1.dat" file), which makes it - in theory - incompatible with other data mod, and thus impossible to play with Wololo Kingdoms on Voobly (see discussion on Voobly forum here).
However, I think there is still a way to get around that limitation, but it is very dirty : if you simply replace the Data folder in the WK mod directory, as well as the graphics.drs file, with the corresponding modifed files, you will be able to play WK on Voobly against players that have the original files... This is clearly unsatisfactory, but maybe some of you who are more experienced with modding could find a way to make this mod work as a visual mod, and make it interact properly on Voobly with other data mods.
If you want to test it yourself:
- dowload the files here (they are a bit heavy, the link will expire in a week)
- overwrite the "graphics.drs" file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age2HD\data
- overwrite the "Data" folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age2HD\Voobly Mods\AOC\Data Mods\WololoKingdoms
(adapt the directories as needed, the paths above are for Steam-based AoE II)
I would like to share a mod that I've been working on, to always show units' HP (Health Points).
As you probably know, in AoE 2 the units' health bar is only visible if you click on a unit or if you select a group of your own units. Beeing able to always see all units' HP without clicking or selecting them would be a great help during micro-intensive fights, or for picking low-health enemy villagers during scout raids for example.
So, after a few hours of research about modding tools (in particular Advanced Genie Editor and Turtle Pack), I managed to developp a mod which always shows units' HP. The principle of this mod simply consists in adding a damage graphics to the units depending on their HP, just like buildings have different flame animations depending on their HP. Since flames would be to dazzling, I replaced them with little disks above the unit with a color depending on its HP (from green to red).
Below an example with men-at-arms (the disks will remain when you unselect the men-at-arms ; full HP units have no disk) :
Now the tricky part.
Since this mod only affects the graphics of the units, I hoped it could be classified as a visual mod on Voobly. However, it seems that the displaying behind it also affects the data files ("empires2_x1_p1.dat" file), which makes it - in theory - incompatible with other data mod, and thus impossible to play with Wololo Kingdoms on Voobly (see discussion on Voobly forum here).
However, I think there is still a way to get around that limitation, but it is very dirty : if you simply replace the Data folder in the WK mod directory, as well as the graphics.drs file, with the corresponding modifed files, you will be able to play WK on Voobly against players that have the original files... This is clearly unsatisfactory, but maybe some of you who are more experienced with modding could find a way to make this mod work as a visual mod, and make it interact properly on Voobly with other data mods.
If you want to test it yourself:
- dowload the files here (they are a bit heavy, the link will expire in a week)
- overwrite the "graphics.drs" file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age2HD\data
- overwrite the "Data" folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age2HD\Voobly Mods\AOC\Data Mods\WololoKingdoms
(adapt the directories as needed, the paths above are for Steam-based AoE II)