Modding campaigns and scenarios
From AACWWiki
General Principles
Scenarios in AACW have the .scn extension. They are to be placed in the ACW\Scens directory. If you created some events tied to this scenario, a file named as the scenario, but with the .sct extension must be placed to the ACW\Events directory.
You first create a scenario by using an existing one, in Excel format (XLS extension, if you don't have Excel, the free Open Office suite is perfect for that too). The scenario XLS is made of three tabs: the Setup tab, the Events&Reinforcements tab (also called Events tab), the Cities&Regions tab (also called the Cities tab).
Each of these three tabs contains commands for the game. When you are finished with your edits, you will export these three tabs in .CSV format (do a 'save as..' in Excel), choose 'save as .CSV'. Don't bother with the warnings, respond yes to all questions. Be sure to save the three files generated with different names.
Each of these three files will have to be converted into the scripting language the game understand. This is very important to understand that the commands you type in the XLS are not the final language, but a more convenient and user friendly one. The only language understood by the game is the scripting one. So theorically, you can type your scenarios directly in the scripting language, to be in touch with the 'real' things, but fortunally you don't have to do that (although this is basically the same language, but with some simplifications done for you when you are in the XLS format).
So the next step is to convert these CSV files into the scripting language. You do that by using the CSVSplitter utility, provided in the AACW DB archive.
The CSVSplitter has several tabs, one for each kind of data to be interpreted. The Setup tab and the Events tab use one, the Cities tab use another.
The Setup (in CSV) is thus converted in another file, always named script.ini. Put this file in the ACW\scripts directory.
The Events (in CSV) are converted into a file which should be properly named (youscenarioname.sct). Put this file in the ACW\events directory.
The Cities (in CSV) are converted into a file which is called cities.inc. You will have to rename this file (with the name you gave to the cities include in your scenario, for example CitiesBullRun.inc). Put this file in the ACW\includes directory.
Once you have done that, you are ready to try your new scenario. Launch the game. As soon as you see the splash screen with the AACW logo, hit F9. You should see in the top right the text 'Edit Mode'. In this mode, the game will look for a script.ini file in the scripts directory. If one is there, it will interprets the commands and create the scenario.
If you manage to get to the map without error, you can save your scenario. Just hit 'save turn' and you will have a new .scn file created in the scenarios directory. You can now quit the game and launch it in normal mode.
If you get error, see the Handling errors in Scenario Creation section.
