Please, help me with some questions about modding

Are you in possession of a computer? The hex method is very outdated for World Conqueror 4. We just use the Map Editor nowadays. However, I can understand your issues with hex editing as a beginner, it's difficult, the instructions are not clear and you will likely not find a detailed explanation of adding a country with hex.

In my personal experience, I had to ask the modders specifically about adding countries since Canadian Modder's tutorial video was not reliable. It took me an entire month to finally get an answer. The hex method is inefficient, there are many steps to add a country:

1. Increasing the country total count +1 - There's a certain offset that needs to be changed. If you don't increase the total, your game will crash. (Note: the max limit of adding countries in a conquest is 128)

2. Look for the bloc that holds all countries' information - The trick is to search for the land color of the country in hexdecimal. And then you need to get used to the structure of a country bloc: it has a country code, a country id (refer to stringtables_en.ini), money, gear, atomic, alliance camps and etc.


3. Copy-paste the country structure, under the last country structure - You also need to make sure that the country code is the new value you put in the total count of countries offset. Then you need to make necessary changes to the structure. Important to remember: the country code and country id are not the same, this applies to the Map Editor tool. A country id is the id of the country you added in stringtables, the country code is sort of a separate id, that holds the country id and used for maps.

4. To place a country in your map, you need to look for the "city ownerships bloc" - This one is hard to find. This is where you have to learn about the "calculation code" or the "hex calculator", I myself still have no idea about how it works despite having using it a lot to find the city ownerships bloc and province bloc.
The calculation code goes like this: a big number in hexdecimal representing the size of the btl file, it's used to find the exact location in the offset you need to change. For that, you also need a WC4 World Map with all the coordinates. And there's this rule I find very annoying: since the coordinates are in decimal, you need to convert them to hex. You will use them to add to the calculation code's current number. However, when you converted the number to hex, you have to switch the last 2 digits with the first 2 for some reasons.

5. Once you find the correct offset, add the country code's value.


My explanation about adding countries in hex is not fully complete, as I mostly forgot about it 3 years ago.


In my past experience, I went through hell with the hex method when I was working on Europe, Africa and parts of Asia in the WC4 Nuclear War Mod before discovering the map editor.
To put it in perspective: creating provinces, adding cities, adding country ownerships for the whole continent of Europe took me approximately an entire week (tons of hours) to complete.

The same amount also applied for Africa. The hex method was slow, time-wasting and brain-breaking during the development of NWM.

With the release of the map editor in the middle of the pandemic in 2020, we managed to reduce our workload significantly.

Europe took me 1 week to finish with hex.
However, both North America and South America only took me under 1 day to complete with the map editor, including all the details: units, city levels, infrastructures, air defense, buildings, ports and etc.

Inside the map editor, there's a tool modifying excel and it's like a more understandable version of hex editing. I made a guide explaining each blocs' properties and how to add interesting mechanics into your maps.

Canadian Modder released a video with the map editor in 2020, you can look it up.

At this point if you want to progress in WC4 Modding, avoiding hex editor is the best solution, but if you really don't have a computer, you're forced to take the long route.

And one last question:
Canadian Modder has 3 videos about map editors: 10min and 7min are about map editor with some chinese name and "2.0" in the end, and 28min where he shows a program named "MainGame". Which to use?

The video titled "Map Editior" with an AMX tank mainscreen. Posted in April 2022.

Well, one question left. When i said that i have a computer i kinda lied because i havent built it yet (cuz i am living in big village named "belarus" and there isn't much computer parts especially ones that i need). The question is: in WC4 cities own its' territories, in the map editor i will toss cities to countries, or i can toss to them the specific hex of the map? Maybe this question is unclear, but ill explain: for example i created a Lybia. In the game the territory, that Lybian city has is more like a circle, but not a Lybia. I give the country Lybia this city and nearest territory Libya-alike shape (other territories are given to Algeria and other countries). If i capture the Lybian city, ill get only Lybian territory, or the full ownership of the city (parts of this ownership are owed by Algeria and other african countries)? Or i can change the territory, owned by city in the map editor? Why i am asking is as i already said, i dont have working computer so i cant try out map editor. (Well, i will have it in the nearest future)

Big thanks, CaptainStryker for sharing your knowledge and experience! As soon as.i obtain a computer i will use this information to create a mod!

Canadian Modder's google drive link to the WC4 no longer works, it got deleted.






Fortunately, I still have my map editor, but it's in NWM Edition. I don't have the older version.
I hope that helps:

MapEditor_CaptainStryker_NWM.zip
drive.google.com/file/d/18i7RDr-2G2EJoJ8YCKJWhjcSOMjiuhv_/view?usp=drive_link


You need Java to open the MapEditor.jar and FBTool.jar otherwise it won't open.

I find it much simpler to call the .btl when you open them "maps".