Ok, here’s how to turn the howitzer into a buildable turret for allies.
Step 1:
Copy the ebps for the machine gun nest (as a base for the howitzer building), and rename it to 105_mm_howitzer.lua (or rgd, depending on which file you copied).
Step 2:
Now open up the modstudio and do the following:
1) Open up the newly created building, and find the weapon names (green) and change the weapon name (red) to: weapon\allies\ballistic_weapon\howitzer\m2a1_105mm_gun.lua
2) Remove the hold_ext entry from the file. Right click on hold_ext and select delete.
3) And since we really shouldn’t have a bunker enclosing the howitzer, it’s a good idea to remove the animator line. Same procedure as above.
4) Now we will change the icon to the one used for the howitzer upgrade. Navigate to the ui_ext and down to icon_name (green) and change the value (red) to: abilities\ability_allied_howitzer_upgrade
5) Now for the ingame name of the howitzer. We will be using the name “105 mm howitzer There are 2 ways to do this:
a. Add it to your mod’s .ucs file, and then putting the number from the .ucs into the ebps under ui_ext in the screen_name entry (red) like this:
124001 being replaced by the number from your .ucs file
b. The other and somewhat less time intensive way of doing it is adding the name in plain text under screen_name. In other words, instead of the numbers in the above version, enter the name of the howitzer in plain text in the red area of the above pic. (I will be doing this in the sample file that accompanies this tutorial since I couldn’t get my ucs to work in DOW, so I’m pretty sure I won’t get it to work now either). But when you do this, you also have to change this (green) to say text:
Get to this by clicking on the + beside ui_ext and clicking on screen_name, then click on CoH UCS Ref and choose “text” from the dropdown menu. Then it will read what you enter as plain text and display it as such
6) Now we will change the help_text of the building. You can do this in 2 ways too, same as above, only with help_text instead of screen_name (found 2 entries above the green in (4)). So I don’t think it’s necessary to go into more detail here. Just change it to what you feel it should say. I wrote this: “A 105 mm Howitzer Gun”.
The following steps are optional and are only present if you want it to have better FX for when it is hit, plus hitpoints if you want to edit that.
7) This step will make the hit fx for the building display as being metal and not a sandbag, this is purely for aesthetics. Find hit_object_ext and then hit_material (red). Then change the value (green) to hit_material\metal.lua
8) No we will edit the cost of the howitzer. Locate cost_ext, then time_cost and finally cost (green). Then edit the different values (red) to suit your needs. I chose 200 manpower and 50 fuel.
This concludes my first CoH tutorial (or my first one ever for that matter). Hope it serves its purpose well.
Below you will find this tutorial in a .doc format, along with a sample version of the howitzer.
If this by some strange accident of fate shouldn't work, please let me know and I'll get right on to fixing it.
The file goes into \yourmodname\dataattrib\attrib\ebps\races\allies\buildings\
Links to files:
105 mm howitzer.rar
howitzer_tutorial.rar
Linkified because forum won't let me attach a file to two separate posts.
Originally Posted by Moe
