Fix method of mod unit invisible bug

[TinyTooth]

Actually I found this solution some time ago, but I'm lazy so I didn't post it here in the first place.

I'm not a professional, so I don't know what the real problem is. I'm just stating my personal guesses about the cause here, and the solutions I'm currently using that are confirmed to work.

The cause of the problem is that the game cannot properly read any new assets added by modders. The weird thing is that it's not completely unrecognizable, it can read and load mods correctly, apparently because it recognizes the correct Docs location, but it doesn't recognize the new material in it. It will create a new but invalid "Documents" on the drive where the "Documents" folder is located, and then treat this place as the recognized location of the model assets.

Steam does not put mod files in this place, so there is a model loss.

But if it's just that I think most people can actually spot this problem and fix it themselves, because it's a very common situation and many games have this kind of problem caused by the location of the Docs. But the problem is that the name of the folder created by the game itself is a string of garbled characters. It's hard to realize that the game itself created an invalid "Documents" folder because it wasn't called "Documents" at all.

So now that we know the cause, the solution is simple. Find this folder and put the mod files in it. Problem solved. There may be multiple of this folder, but they will all have a "My Games" folder, so searching for My Games or AOW3 can quickly find them.

That's it.

[tazarbill]

Thats nice but i couldnt spot any folder with wierd characters somewhere in c drive..from your expirience in which folder you found it"? c:'/users'/appdata"? somewhere else"?

[golfleme]

C:\Users\<your_login>\Documents\My Games\AoW3\UserContent

[tazarbill]

golfleme thnks for response.. well in my pc C:\Users\tazar\Documents inside there is no folder or anything else its just blank..so what do we do"? copy paste everything from C:\Users\tazar\OneDrive\Documents\My Games\AoW3\UserContent where all the mods are located into C:\Users\tazar\Documents ?

[Mel]

Originally posted by golfleme:

C:\Users\<your_login>\Documents\My Games\AoW3\UserContent

Isn't this the default mod folder where the mods are supposed to be?

I don't see any secondary Documents folder the initial post is talking about into to which you'd need to move the mod folders for them to work.

[golfleme]

in my UserContent, most of my subscribed mods are in subfolders.
like this one
C:\Users\<your_id>\Documents\My Games\AoW3\UserContent\AGE OF WARDROBE [76561198119748999]

If I've understood OP, sometimes the downloaded are not fully present and need to be manualy updated

[Mel]

Yeah that is the way all my mods are shown in the usercontent folder.

But how are you suppose to manually update them?

[Gladen]

TinyTooth 14 aug, 2022 @ 14:48
The problem with the location of the game's Documentation was present in Age of Wonders: Planetfall, and that was because the game launcher only recognized the C drive as the documentation location. When the C drive has no documentation, it will create one by itself, and only recognize mods in this folder. But steam will only put the mod into the correct file, so it will cause the mod to not load properly. But this is not the case in AOW3.

Does the non-stam version also load the mod by putting the mod in UserContent in My Games and then using the launcher? If yes then I have tried it and the result is the same. The problem should not be in the location of the file, if it is in the location of the file then I shouldn't be able to read any mods in the launcher.

TinyTooth 14 aug, 2022 @ 14:22
My game files are on the C drive. . . Are you referring to the location of the game documentation? If that's the case then the location of my game documentation is really not on the C drive. . .

TinyTooth 14 aug, 2022 @ 14:01
And I found that the missing parts were actually fixed, like some kind of machete, some kind of firearm, some kind of spear, etc. I'm pretty sure this problem didn't occur when I used this mod and many other mods years ago, but don't know why the problem appeared when I installed the game again. I'm wondering if these missing pieces are all new stuff you added to the mod instead of what was already in the vanilla version, because if that's the case then most likely my launcher isn't loading the mod correctly. In other words, it can only read the existing materials in the game and cannot read the newly added materials in the mod. (because I noticed that the missing pieces in other mods are actually stuff that wasn't in the vanilla version of the game) (even though I don't know how to fix this, but at least I'll know why)

TinyTooth 14 aug, 2022 @ 13:50
I'm having issues with units being invisible. I'm pretty sure it's not a mod conflict because I've done a bunch of tests. Actually I found that not only this mod, but many unit mods have this problem, but I can't find the reason. I've tried reinstalling the game completely, changing the graphics quality, and changing the language, but nothing has fixed the problem. I highly suspect that the files of the game itself are missing on the server, causing all subsequent newly installed games to have problems, because the vanilla version also seems to have problems with certain body parts of the units being invisible. But I'm not sure because I don't know if I'm the only one having this problem.

TinyTooth 16 aug, 2022 @ 9:44
The Documents folder is a special folder. Its icon is not a normal folder. If your system is not in English, the name will change, but the meaning is "document". Its location defaults to the C drive, unless you manually change its location. The one under OneDrive is not the "document" we are looking for.

The mod files are automatically placed in "My Games\AoW3\UserContent" in the "Documents" folder, and the problem is that the game's launcher may not recognize this location. When it cannot be recognized, it will generate a "Documents" folder on the drive where the document folder is located, but the name of this folder is likely not "documents" but a string of garbled characters, this is what we are looking for. Finding it is actually very easy, you just need to search for "My Games" directly on the drive where "Documents" is located. Then put the mod files in "Documents\My Games\AoW3\UserContent" into each "My Games\AoW3\UserContent". Problem solved.

TinyTooth 16 aug, 2022 @ 2:13
I found the reason, you are right, it does have something to do with the location of the game documentation.

It should be because of the system language. Although the game can correctly locate the location of the document, it will still create a useless document folder in the drive where the document is located. This is why the game cannot read new models and effects created by modders.

And I don't know why this new folder is not called documentation but a string of garbled characters, it should be because of the system language. The gibberish name took me a long time to find out, but now it's over, I put the mod files in this folder and the problem is solved. . .

Other people with the same problem should also be for this reason. . .

Taken from the discussion on Chivalrous Intention mod.

The issue is likely that the content is stored on two different locations on your computers. The author likely moves everything from the "wrong" folder to correct folder or new one by creating the right location.

It's possible to use registry editor and manually put the direction of the mod content in the right direction actually but that's little bit beyond my knowledge. You can search for regedit how to learn or do it on Google.

[Mel]

The mod files are automatically placed in "My Games\AoW3\UserContent" in the "Documents" folder, and the problem is that the game's launcher may not recognize this location. When it cannot be recognized, it will generate a "Documents" folder on the drive where the document folder is located, but the name of this folder is likely not "documents" but a string of garbled characters, this is what we are looking for. Finding it is actually very easy, you just need to search for "My Games" directly on the drive where "Documents" is located. Then put the mod files in "Documents\My Games\AoW3\UserContent" into each "My Games\AoW3\UserContent". Problem solved.



I've looked everywhere and searched all my drives but a second Documents folder made out of garbled characters does not exist neither does a second My Games folder anywhere on my PC.

[Gladen]

Try change the computer language to ENG and remove the folder from OneDrive etc.

Then press update to see what's happening

[Mel]

Originally posted by Gladen:

Try change the computer language to ENG and remove the folder from OneDrive etc.

Then press update to see what's happening

What happens is that the exact same folders with the exact same names as I deleted them are created again in the exact same location in the OneDrive folder from where I deleted them every time I launch AOW3 again regardless of computer language.

[Gladen]

Originally posted by Mel:

Originally posted by Gladen:

Try change the computer language to ENG and remove the folder from OneDrive etc.

Then press update to see what's happening

What happens is that the exact same folders with the exact same names as I deleted them are created again in the exact same location in the OneDrive folder from where I deleted them every time I launch AOW3 again regardless of computer language.

I believe your case is OneDrive. You need to find a way to remove user content from One drive which is a cloud service? Since it need to be on harddrive. I believe that is your issue. That game cannot read files from a cloud. Depending on operations system you should be able reroute folders to new harddrive.

[Mel]

Originally posted by Gladen:

Originally posted by Mel:

What happens is that the exact same folders with the exact same names as I deleted them are created again in the exact same location in the OneDrive folder from where I deleted them every time I launch AOW3 again regardless of computer language.

I believe your case is OneDrive. You need to find a way to remove user content from One drive which is a cloud service? Since it need to be on harddrive. I believe that is your issue. That game cannot read files from a cloud. Depending on operations system you should be able reroute folders to new harddrive.

And how am I going to get Age of Wonders 3 to read files from whatever new location I move the UserContent folder into?

[tazarbill]

C:\Users\tazar\OneDrive\Έγγραφα\My Games\AoW3 guys"? could be it"? inside aow 3 folder there is only config and logs file . Its missing campaign maps profiles and user content..so i should copy them from C:\Users\tazar\OneDrive\Έγγραφα\My Games\AoW3 into C:\Users\tazar\OneDrive\Έγγραφα\My Games\AoW3 ???

[Gladen]

Originally posted by Mel:

Originally posted by Gladen:

I believe your case is OneDrive. You need to find a way to remove user content from One drive which is a cloud service? Since it need to be on harddrive. I believe that is your issue. That game cannot read files from a cloud. Depending on operations system you should be able reroute folders to new harddrive.

And how am I going to get Age of Wonders 3 to read files from whatever new location I move the UserContent folder into?

Since I'm on windows 7 still I cannot point you in direction for Windows 10.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-move-default-user-folders-new-drive-windows-10

On windows 7 I would right click on the user content folder and select it property and reroute it.

In regedit I could move whole and User Content folder from C drive to D drive and set destination to route all files on D drive on a new user folder do it never saves anything on C drives.

It's very tricky since I cannot do this process for Windows 10 on a windows 7 system to test this if it's the same. You could potentially disable storage on OneDrive.

I think the core functions is kept on windows 10 but cannot be sure.

[Gladen]

Originally posted by tazarbill:

C:\Users\tazar\OneDrive\Έγγραφα\My Games\AoW3 guys"? could be it"? inside aow 3 folder there is only config and logs file . Its missing campaign maps profiles and user content..so i should copy them from C:\Users\tazar\OneDrive\Έγγραφα\My Games\AoW3 into C:\Users\tazar\OneDrive\Έγγραφα\My Games\AoW3 ???

Most likely add "documents" in text