PDA

View Full Version : Has anyone messed with the map?



tombom
10-03-2004, 15:32
It seems to be stored in the data\world\maps\base folder in tga files. The important file seems to be map_regions.tga. I'll report back later once I've messed with it.

EDIT: Damn, it doesn't do anything. ~:( Has anybody seen anything in the other files that could give any clues? Or is it just kept in that lrage looking files in that folder?

Encaitar
10-03-2004, 16:15
There's a couple of interesting txt files in the base folder.

desc_regions.txt
As it says in the header, "contains a variety of region information". It then lists the format, however is missing a line (there are 7 lines in each region's info, but only 6 in the fomat explanation). The un-labelled line I'm fairly certain is for the name of the rebels that come from that particular region. So the format explanation should read as such (new line in bold):
; region tag
; settlement tag
; default culture tag
; local rebels tag
; map RGB value
; comma-seperated resource list
; triumph point value
; base farm level

desc_terrain.txt
Contains a number of data values relating to the campaign map. Most of them are fairly self-explanatory what they are, but the impact they have I'm not too sure.
'dimensions' is pretty simple, by adjusting that you'll get a campaign map with different dimensions (number of 'tiles' high/wide).
'heights' is probably to give the game reference values so it can do calculations. e.g. from other files (the .tga files possibly) the game knows that x spot on the map is higher than y spot on the map which is in turn higher than z spot on the map. But it doesn't know precisely how much higher/lower they are, only relative to each other. But if it has min and max values, it can work out everything in between.
'roughness' and 'fractal' I have no idea about.
'lattitude' (sic) is of course the actual latitudes of the northern-most and southern-most parts of Europe shown on the map. Maybe this is used in climate calculations, or working out what areas of the map get snow in winter. *shrug*

But to me, the most interesting thing I've found in the files regarding the campaign map is in Data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign\descr_strat.txt
The comment at the top of the file reads:
; Custom campaign script generated by Romans Campaign Map Editor

So what we really need is this 'Romans Campaign Map Editor'. It'll be possible to make some minor adjustments to the campaign map just by editing the text files, but I suspect it will be extremely difficult to do anything of note, let alone create a new campaign map, without it. If we can get ahold of it from CA however, it sounds like it would be an extremely powerful modding tool, generating many of the files required all from the one interface.

Amongst other stuff, the descr_strat.txt file has x,y coords (see dimensions) for the wonders of the world ('landmarks') and resources. It's also pretty much the R:TW equivalent of the startpos file.

One other interesting thing in this file is that it has a 'diplomacy section' and an 'events section'. Both are empty, but it gives some hope that perhaps it might be possible to pre-set diplomatic relations between factions, and include new 'events'. It might also be though that the relevant places to make edits in these two sections are in another file(s). The 'regions section' in the file is also empty, but obviously that info is somewhere else.