M2TW Engine Overhaul Project
The M2TW Engine Overhaul Project, known more concisely as M2TWEOP is an active project to expand the limits of modding in Medieval II: Total War through a special executable that hooks into the game's memory upon launch. It was started on Total War Center by youneuoy, and has since pulled together a team of like-minded developers. It has seen use in major mods such as Elder Scrolls Total War and Warcraft Total War, among others. It was initially founded to offer unique scenarios for hotseating, allowing users to play battles on the strat map online and see the result accurately appear ingame. It is released under the GPL-3.0 License.
It is built in a way that allows easy use and reuse including just copying the executable from one mod folder to another, although its use is limited unless the mod has been built to take advantage of its abilities. Without understanding exactly what has changed it may not be ideal to keep M2TWEOP on the latest version; for example certain mods will linger on previous versions because what they did was optimal for the needs of the mod that used it. On occasion, especially with older versions, there may be false positives from antivirus due to the way it hooks into the game's memory and the behavior of your antivirus.
Current features
As of release 2.2.0 this project offers but is not limited to:
- A Lua scripting system with a custom console, debugger and hooks to play nicely with the usual campaign_script.txt file
- Options to place and change models and add new sounds
- Expanded use of the vanilla console commands
- A Rome TW style tactical map viewer (see settlements without being in battle)
- Ability to integrate custom GUIs into the game
- Play hotseat battles online and port the results back into the campaign
- Set custom limits on a multitude of game options including amount of cultures, religions, unit size, ancillaries and more
- Various engine fixes (ie: crash using the berserker attribute)
- Ability to create your own addons to the project for further expansion
- More described in detail on their site
There are distinct limits that have not been breached due to their complexity. Most notably, the limit of factions allowed in the game is still 31.
Locating the project
The mod was started on Total War Center and is represented in this forum. Its active development has since extended to a custom github.io site and its own discord server. The site includes documentation on how exactly modders can use M2TWEOP, and the discord server is the primary venue used by the developers for suggestions, troubleshooting and development.
