
After downloading a bunch of NewGRFs and cycling through about six different Town Name packs for the games I've been playing, I was interested in compiling a NewGRF of my very own to experiment with combining different language roots into a single naming pack. This is where I quickly get out of my depth.
So I've been trying to follow this tutorial on how to write the NML script. I downloaded the NML for Windows .zip file from here. Do I need any of the .tar.gz files?
After searching around I also came across this reddit thread of someone wanting help with this same topic, and the creator of the Random English Town Names NewGRF linking to his GitHub page. Being further confused after reading the README.md, I installed Python 2.7.11 as well. But do I need to install it to the same directory as I'm using the NML executable?
So far in my journey, I have created a folder to work out of, a "lang" folder inside of it, and the required english.lng, custom_tags.txt and <name>.nml files as called for by the tutorial. The tutorial then suggest converting those into a NewGRF file and testing that it is recognised by the game client. I open command prompt to that folder to run the NMLC executable, and it obediently spits out a <name>.grf file. But when I put that grf file into my OpenTTD newgrf directory and load the game, it doesn't appear in the NewGRF Settings menu. Is this because I'm not running the Nightly version of OpenTTD?
This is really doing my head in, and the tutorial seems to intuit a lot more prior knowledge than what I have. The actual writing of the .nml file I think I'll cope with, particularly with the example to work from that I linked. I'd appreciate any pointers more experienced people may have relating to getting a NewGRF file to be actually recognised by the game.
Thanks in advance!