I am getting an error when merging, it says Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at AOM_XML_File_Mod_Merger.frm_ModMerger.PatchUp(String originalFile, String diffGramFile, String outputFile) | at AOM_XML_File_Mod_Merger.btn_Merge_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)

I think using notepad fixed it, I'm just trying to figure out how to see the mods I wish to see.

It keeps saying my Mod-status.txt is in a messed up format.

Does it need to be on the main drive to work?

Great! Thanks a lot for letting me know.

Changed AoM to my main drive. Got it working now. Thanks!

@RobinW00T
I took a look and with the mod folder being in mods, I was able to run the exe from withing the zip, extracted and moved to the desktop, and it found the AoM installtion each time.

I assume you use a steam version of AoM?
Do you use multiple hard drives for your Steam Library? The tool was developed without that possibility in mind, so if AoM is not on your main/first connected drive that might be an issue (not tested).

If you get the message that AoM can't be found, the tool tried to find this folder in your Steam installation folder: "SteamApps\Common\Age of Mythology"

The steam installtion folder is looked up in your registry here:
(go to your windows search and type regedit and look up)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Valve\Steam
(for me on Win10, in SOFTWARE, it automatically uses the subfolder WOW6432Node first instead of going to Valve directly.
There you will find the Key InstallPath.

If the combination of that install path value and \SteamApps\Common\Age of Mythology is not the correct installation path of AoM, there is not much you can do besides making sure AoM is in that location as the tool does not allow you to pass any other path.

If this is no solution for you, I can take a look to make the tool able to work with a split up Steam library, I can't promise an exact time frame though.

@DerFlammenwerfer
Sorry for only answering now.
If you still want to try and have this issue, can you try to unsubscribe and resubscribe?
For me I get the correct "Ozharas XML-File Mod-Merger" folder in mods, that contains a zip file, that contains the programm exe.

For some reason, the program won't recognize my AoM installation. It won't start, no matter what I try, it keeps saying it can't find a copy of AoM. Would you be so kind to give me some instructions on how to make it work?

I can't seem to figure out where this tool gets installed, because no archive appears in my mods folder after subscribing.

Hello, i found this tool today and was very excited to give it a try. Whoever no matter where i place the .exe or what i do all i get is this error https://prnt.sc/10d2jnk .

Saying that the tool cant work without an AoM installation, despite the game being installed and playable. How can i get the tool to recognize my installation?

That error comes up whenever something to do with techtree comes up.

Hi PugLyf

There went something wrong while merging the files you had selected. ;)

To analyse it better, I need those files you tried to merge.
You can send them to me at aoe-modmanager@web.de

That said - I cant remember having merge errors back when I first released the tool. Now while reworking it, there were errors trying to merge proto xml files.

Errors I can't just fix, because for the actual merging I'm using a class from microsoft that is supposed to be able to do this. I don't have access to that class and it doesn't give me good errors so I would know what exactly it can't handle.

The error from your message is the same I got with the proto files - they just mean, that the merger is trying to access an object that is supposed to exist but doesn't - pretty generic.

The only real solution here would be to develop the whole merging logic myself - and that's nothing I'm really looking forward to doing being honest.

Really cool you got it working. I'm still having issues it seems. If you end up finding the time perhaps you could take a look and tell me what this means? https://gyazo.com/d1098116b2bdc4f6cb5ba85df6539221

That's good news indeed.

Good news, I fixed the Mod Merger and also added a little more options. :)

If you actually fix this I might get back to more modding of this game.

I sort of also came back because of AoE2:DE but yeah...

2.7 kinda broke a lot of shit sadly.

Well ... I don't say I won't check this - but AoM is actually much less important to me personaly than AoE - and I wasn't really active on or even using Steam for the last year.

I honestly don't want to activly abandon my mods, but I still can't tell any time frame.
With me being back and hopefully more active right now, I will try to make this one of the first mods I take care of though.

For my own taste this is much too uncertain but I won't promise anything I don't know I can stick to.

Has this been abandoned?

Was any progress made on determining the problem of why this no longer works? Or are there any other programs/methods to do the same thing this does?

Yeah I'm in no hurry so don't worry about it, life has me on the ropes right now as well.

I didn't do anything AoM related in the last two years, so I will have to take a deeper look at this to figure out what happens/needs to be done. I can't give you any timeframe for this right now though.

Can confirm that the program won't even open anymore, same as Henry.

who are you???

So after a year, I came back to this to see if I could resume where I left after the last disaster, to find that now the tool won't even detect ANY xml file in the game folder

Ok, When I tried it even tho the file merge xml was a mess it still worked so no real issue for me there, however the file still needs something to do about merging the protox files because it will always crash like that

^^
I didn't buy the expansion for now - thought to wait until I knew it's not bugged/unbalanced too much. Seems I have to wait a little longer...
In theory the different protox versions should be no problem unless their structure got changed for the dll literally just scans all nodes and everything not present in the 'main' file gets importet from all other files you want to merge. In case the same nodes exist but with different values, the values of the file with the highest priority get used.
If there are structual changes made to a file and you try to merge versions with different structures, this approach will mess the merged file up though.
It then really depends on the actuacl structure changes if that merged file will work or not.

Sounds reasonable about the formatting. However the cause of crashing might be because protox 2.4 and 2.5 are of a new update and the program is not made to mix those or something? Dunno just talking air here, don't know much about that kind of stuff, but as long as I dont mix any protox xml it wont crash. Had to manually edit the protox in order to mix the new mods, which made me lazy at some point and I just copy pasted all protox, resulting in titans in vanilla campaign and the Chinese getting fucked up, but they got fucked up since they came up to existence, so no loss there

I don't know what causes that error right now, but will take a look at it.

For the formatting - yes, the dll I'm using for the merging right now doesn't return that in a formatted way and since xml file modding wasn't officially supported for a long time (didn't check if this changed in the meantime) - resulting in less use for this tool, I descided to further use that dll instead of writing my own merging routines or searching for a way to apply formatting afterwards until xml file modding became better supported.

Not that one, that same happens but goes away when I do exactly that, resave it. However I can't merge mods that have proto 2.X xmls, in trial and error, I tried merging those, but any mod that uses those proto files, crash the program. I can however merge techtrees and proto 1.0. Another Issue is that the new merged tech and unittrees xml are a complete mess. Since I wanted to use mods for vanilla campaign, I wanted to copy paste the content of those to the original files, however they are not with blanks, spaces and tab spaces as the original files. They are all completely put together as with glue, which makes the game crash if you decide to just copy paste.

Do you mean BlueishTigerDK?
Did you try the solution mentioned in the error message? To resave your mod-status.txt?

I also have that issue when I try to merge mods the tool just crashes with a system log error like the dude on page 3-4

great to hear it helped

yes - files can become corrupt for various reasons just from patches or even just playing sometimes - so forcing steam to verify each file is ok and reload them if necessary should always be step #1 - makes every further investigation much easier - or fixes the problem by itself.

@Ozhara Thanks for such a quick reply. I verified my game cache and that fixed whatever problem was going on. I suppose that is always a good place to start if I ever have problems with modding, eh? Anyways, even though it was a rather simple fix, thanks for your help.

I'm at work right now, but I'll take a look at it when back home.
Never encountered something like that for now - but it's some time since I last worked on the tool - and maybe the last expansion or a patch changed something...

Did you try to verify your game cache?

I merged my mods and they were put into a Custom Xml Merge folder, but when I get into game, up the priority of the folder, then try to reload assets it doesn't actually change the priority of the folder, so it is stuck at the bottom of my priority list. Any help would be appreciated.

I already did it manually, I just recommended it to other people up to that point until I decided to try it out myself, seemed like a nifty tool to save some time, nonetheless, thank you for your efforts on behalf of the modding community, Ozhara.

@ste4mp1pe
Thanks for the hint.I'll take a look at that at some point (AoM isn't my main priotity right now to be honest - I still have a huge bunch of mods for AoE that need to be updated for AK)

@BlueishTigerDK: I encountered the same problem you wrote about some months ago. This error seems to occur when you try to merge disabled mods. After I enable the mods I wanted to merge the tool worked correctly.

Alright then, thanks. And yeah I'll try out what you said but couldn't understand it correctly when I saw it at first and was confused about what filters it was talking about since I couldn't access them within the program.

This message occurs, in case you either have no mod subscriptions - or the mod-status.txt, that holds your mod info is saved in a wrong text format - I took a look at this with morness, but we didn't find the reason for this behaviour.
In that case you need to do what the message tells you - open the file and save it in the correct text format using the 'save as' option.
Without doing this, my tool won't work.

Keep getting this: http://imgur.com/05m7nTn

thank you!

You need to rename the tools file extension to .exe
Seems this information 'vanished' from my description at some point.

When I open the file in notepad, it tells me this file cannot be run in DOS mode. Any suggestions?

thanks for letting me know, that you have received the files, take your time to find and fix the error, im takeing a break on playing AOM EE, and insted im playing some civilitation V

Sorry I didn't answer before. Was very busy last days.

I got the files and took a look. Sadly the error occurs in a third party dll I'm using for some stuff and for now I can only say that when the two files are merged for some reasons I still need to discover, there are a few xml-nodes missing to rebuild everything correctly.
Therefore the merging process quits at this point.
So I will need some more time to find the real cause of this issue... :(

ozhara, have you received the files, that i sendt you?

For some reason there seems to be content that causes this error when beeing merged.
It also seems to be something I never encountered while testing, for as you can see the error is not covered by my tool but shows a system error message instead.

Can you send me the two files at aoe-modmanager@web.de, so I can take a look at what's going on myself?