Scripts Reading Text Files

[Wittz8]

I can't for the life of me figure out how to make a script read a text file for some extra data. This would be very useful, because if we could make mods read and write to text files, we could have separate programs read and write the same files and therefore talk to our Medieval II games. Does anyone know how to do this?

[Jurand of Cracow]

Depending on what you want to achieve, you may have a look at Belovese's work: this one, or maybe this one.

[Wittz8]

Thanks for the reply Jurand. I believe Belovese's tools reformat files that already exist as text -- I'm talking about making the game write to files that don't exist yet -- new text files that contain new information.

For example, let's say you want to make a mod that counts casualties in a battle real-time and does something with that data in a separate program. You could use the Units units() scripting line to get data on the units in the battle, but currently there's no way that data could leave the game. If there's a way to write text files in scripts, you can write that data to a text file and have the separate program look at the same text file for the data it needs.

I'm basically looking for a way to make my script write to a text file. I know scripts can do this -- they read and write to cfg files. Does anyone know how this is done?

Knowledge on which script looks at your config files in the beginning of the game would also be really helpful, as I might be able to figure it out by looking through it and post what I find here.

[Gigantus]

The script can create custom log entries in the log file which you can base on conditions. Not sure if that actually happens in real time or at game exit....

Only game options can be written to the CFG file, scripts can't do that. When I say scripts I mean the campaign script and show me scripts, no third party scripts.

There are a good number of battle script conditions that you can use directly in a script, depending what your precise goal is. It involves labeling the units which can then be tested individually for unit strength and other parameters. Battle scripts like that are a pain in the butt, just have a look at the one for the Agincourt battle.