Demo Editor (not Rob\'s editor)

[Kraellin]

ok,

i'm starting a new topic for the demo editor. the 'map editor' topic has mostly stuff about rob's progress on his editor. this new topic is for info on how to use the editor built into the demo game.

first off, you HAVE to have the demo game to use the editor. it is NOT in the full game. you can download the demo from www.totalwar.com (http://www.totalwar.com) (EA's official shogun site).
the bloody thing is just under 100 megs in size, so prepare for a bit of a long d/l.

unip the demo and run the setup file in a folder COMPLETELY separate from the full-blown version of the game! you do NOT want to overwrite STW with the demo or vice-versa.

once the demo is installed, run it, pick 'tutorial' and pick ANY of the 4 tutorials to work with. as soon as the tutorial loads, click off the voice explanations by hitting ok or whatever it is and immediately hit the 'j' key. this freezes the game and puts you into edit mode.

by hitting the 'j' key you can cycle thru the various editing 'modes'. i think there are about 5 or 6 modes you can cycle thru. each mode allows you to do different things with the map. there is raise/lower terrain mode, a change texture mode, a 'models' mode, a 'tree bit' mode, an odd 'spline' mode, and maybe one other, which i'm forgetting right now.

the raise/lower terrain mode is pretty straight forward. put the cursor over an area and the right mouse makes the terrain go one way and the left mouse makes it go the other. if you lower the terrain all the way you end up with completely flat terrain that looks somewhat like water. i'm not yet sure if it is or not, but that's sort of what it looks like. after raising or lowering terrain you can hit the backspace key to somewhat smooth it out...i'm still looking for a button combo to make terrain completely flat at a given height, like a bulldozer, but havent found it yet. tosalnu's cntrl click method of raising or lowering the entire terrain DOES work. thanks tosalnu :)

the change texture mode is a bit goofy, but it does work. tosalnu said there are 127 settings, but in fact there are 256. you cycle thru these textures just as he said, by using the - = keys and turn the texture 90 degrees by using the [ ] keys. the goofy part is that as you cycle thru the textures the textures already on the map begin to change, especially if you go over texture # 127. and again, an oddity, as you go past # 127 the number reading on your cursor wont change to # 128 but rather will go to 0 and start counting from there again. however, if you look in the text file that show texture settings (i think it's a .cfg file), you'll notice that the range of texture numbers goes all the way to 255, so there are actually 256 diff textures.

to change a texture just click on any map 'tile' or square. the last number showing on your cursor is the number of the texture of the tile your cursor is over at that moment, but not necessarily of the one you clicked. once you click a tile you use the - = keys to cycle thru the various textures. as you do so the texture of the tile you clicked will change. to rotate that tile simply use the [ ] keys to rotate it 90 degrees.

now here is where tosalnu and i seem to have found different things. he says in his post that some textures seem to have models attached. i didnt find that at all. i found some very odd textures but NO models attached to any of them...or trees. i'm not sure of why this is and i'm NOT saying tosalnu reported incorrectly. there may actually be diff demos out, a u.s. version, euro version, i dont know. i have the u.s. version. there may actually be dated demos as well. maybe tosalnu's is older than mine. again, i dont know.

i found that textures 3-8 were all green grass types with no trees at all. tosalnu said some of those on his had trees. i found no monastary or castles or houses where he found them, but i did find the roads. at texture 42 thru about 50 i found rocky ground. at about 54 - 58 i found more green.
so beware that there may be diffs in the demos and act accordingly.

in models mode you use the RIGHT mouse button to place the various models. when first placed they come up in 'white highlight'. while still 'white' you can rotate them by using the [ ] keys. to change which model comes up when you right-click, cycle by using the - = keys. if you add a second model, the first one becomes un-highlighted and is 'set'. once set it shld save with the map just fine. if you change modes with the j key, the model will also become 'set'. things like castles are made by using several diff models arranged in that manner. to erase a model, click on it so that it's highlighted again (it's now the active model again) and hit the backspace key. poof, it's gone. if there is a way to minutely adjust the position of a highlighted model i havent found it yet, which is too bad because it's quite a trick to line up walls EXACTLY with some of the other models in order to make things like castles.

you CANNOT erase trees that come up with a given map within the editor. to erase trees that come with a given map you have to edit a text file called TREESUV.txt. i just experimented with this today and found i could erase all trees that came with a map by simply erasing all text in that file. now, this is different than the trees you CAN edit within the editor. by again hitting the 'j' key you can go into 'tree bit' mode. to place a tree simply left-click on the map and voila, a tree. to change that tree's size or type use the - = and [ ] keys. watch the numbers on your cursor as you do so and watch the tree to get the size and type of tree that you want. use the backspace key to erase the last tree placed. if you keep hitting the backspace key it will keep erasing any trees you placed while in the editor.

the 'spline' mode is a very weird mode and i'm not sure i completely understand it yet. you'll recognize you're in spline mode because your screen will change to an almost split screen with the lower half being a light blue or whiteish color...at least mine is. there will also be one to three flashing trees and the upper half of the screen will show whatever part of the remaining map you were on. apparently this mode is for altering the 'splines' of the tiles. the splines are those little 'edges' you can see on a map on any given tile. the flashing trees correspond to your right and left mouse buttons. by moving the splines of a tile you thereby alter the tile shape and can therefore change the shape of the tile from being a square to something not quite so square. again, i dont have this one down yet, but by clicking with the right or left mouse, you apparently set the flashing trees to a position which when you click and drag, the spline will attempt to alter itself to. thus you can 'drag' a spline over another tile. it's pretty weird and i'd stay away from this one for a while till more is found out about it...except for experimenting to find out more about how it works.

to save your map hit the 's' key and change the name of the map to something other than what it was. we dont want 13 different tutmap3 maps out there.

the 't' key is also an active key and apparently has something to do with the ai speech. t = talk, i guess. i havent played with this one yet but i'm guessing you can add your own voice/sound to the game.

the demo tutorials rely on 2 types of files for the scenario setups. the .bdf and the .adf. .bdf means: battle description file and .adf means: army description file. each tutorial will have one .bdf and two .adf's. two armies, two .adf's. the bdf and adf are text files and can be altered to change the scenario. i'm going to guess that to remove the units from a map you want to edit you would simply remove or erase the .adf to erase the units from the map. erasing the .bdf i'm not sure yet. havent studied that part yet.

ok, this post has gotten quite long enough. please post anything you know about the demo editor in this topic. if we can compile a full list of the edtior's features then we can all make better maps quicker. thanks.

Kraellin

[Kraellin]

hehe,

ok, seeems tosalnu and i posted 'manuals' on the demo editor at just about the same time. after posting mine i just read his and i now understand why there were differences in our stated terrain textures. he was saving his maps and re-loading. i wasnt. this explains why his textures had models 'attached' to them and also means that you shld follow his texture assignments as the correct ones. it might also alter my explanation of the removal of base trees on a given map. you might want to NOT remove or erase that TREESUV.txt file if indeed there are textures that put or remove trees from the map. the TREESUV.txt might just be a database file used by the textures. i'll have to explore this a bit more. thanks tosalnu :) that makes more sense the way you said!

K.

[Kraellin]

ok, here's some more data on the demo editor.

if you put 2 castle textures side by side you get one HUGE castle with the middle wall removed. dont ask me if this removed wall is still there but invisible or if it's really removed, but in tests, at least to the visible eye, it was gone. theoretically then, 1 could put 4 castle textures in a block for a titanic sized castle. (no, i havent tried that yet)

i have mapped out textures 1 - 57 so far and will be posting results on those when i've got more.

i've made my first working map...it rocks ;) as soon as i tweak the textures to a more professional look i'll ask tosalnu to post it on his site.

you dont have to edit any text files to get the starting postions worked out for multiplay. i simply saved my map roughly where i wanted my defenders to start (the camera postion) and when i copied it over to the full game the starting position was set where i had saved the game with that camera position. i wont swear this will work all the time, but it did on this first map i made.

when in the editor and you're viewing the #8 texture it will show a few trees as if it were a light forest. when you move it over to the full game it will be dense. i believe the reason for this is that the full game uses 2 TREEUV.txt files to fill in that texture where the demo game only uses one txt file.

the .jjm file is the map itself. in the full game every map has 2 files, the .jjm and the .tga. the .tga file is the picture that is displayed when you start a custom map game or a multiplayer game. it's a screenshot of your map used to display your map to the players. you can make screenshots as tosalnu describes in his doc. you then edit the size to match the size of the other .tga's used by other maps. i think it's about 300 x 204 pixels. just load any current .tga into paint shop pro and check the file specs to get the exact size your screenshot shld be for the map pic. then simply rename the file to the same name as your map, keeping the .tga extension and put it in the same folder as the map file.

the hardest part of the editor is the textures, altering, arranging and tweaking them all so borders blend well into other tile borders. follow tosalnu's advices on this and do a lot of tests to get the hang of how things work. it's the most difficult part but it's not impossible.

good luck and have fun :)

K.

[TosaInu]

Ohayo gozaimasu Kraellin and all others,

Yes, you can make bigger castles by placing adjacent castletextures. I mentioned that in my readme. You can also make 3 * 3 tiles 30. Then you'll get an donjon in the centre too (it might also need a combination with 31/32). Also possible are gates, a wooden castle or stone (depends on # on size). Check tutmap1 (the one with the casle) to verify the used textures. I made an insane huge (ugly) castle (Hugecastle.zip) some time ago.

I would love to up your map to my site, also recall that sonic-nights site is the most complete site for stw related files on the web: he would love to get your map.

About the starting positions aka deployment sites. You can not edit deployment sites.
Forgive me for confusing you, but when I explained the bdf files I did so to provide some background information.
The bdf files are important for demoscenarios and historical battles: both need a different way to go!

The only thing that might be important about the bdf files for mapmakers is MAPNAME::
One can also forget about this and work with backups of Tutmap (I find this a clumsy way).

Renaming a map can also be done via windows rename file.

And yes, we can do without 10 different maps named totomi.


Is your problem with MAPNAME:: solved?



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Ja mata
Toda TosaInu

[Kraellin]

hi tosalnu,

nope. i'm still having the same problem with the mapname thing. if i save the newly edited map to something other than tutmap3 and then edit the .bdf, it wont load back up into the demo. it will load fine into the full game, but not the demo. quite odd. i tried NOT pressing the return key but that didnt make any diff. i made sure i had EXACTLY the right file name in the .bdf where it says mapname:: " " and made sure it was inside the quotes but i always get the same result. in fact, i edited all 3 .bdf's for the M0_3_x_x series with the same new map name and got the same results...error.

but, i did take your advice about simply copying the original tutmap3 to another dir and then went on and edited the copy of tutmap3 without changing the name. i could then save it and load it back with no problem, which suggests that i dont need the converter but that i'm just doing something wrong when i save a map to a different name. i'm careful about making sure of case when i alter the .bdf and making sure i get the name exactly right and that it's in the right place so i'm not sure what it is that i'm doing wrong.

here's what i do:

load the demo game.
load 'learn from the past' tutorial
edit the default map, 'TutMap3'
hit the 's' key to save
backspace out the 'TutMap3' name
enter my own map name, e.g. 'kraemap1'
hit 'ok'
hit esc, ok
quit the demo
load win explorer
open battle\batinit
open M3_1_2 and edit mapname::" " w/ my name
open M3_1_1 and do the same
open M3_1_0 and do the same
at this point i leave the files open and
re-load the demo...i wonder....hmmmmm....

that could be it. i may be getting a 'file open' error since the demo will try to load one or more of those .bdf's and if the file is still open it may be saying 'sorry, that file is in use'. hang on, gonna check this....

nope. that wasnt it either...data files corrupt, please reinstall program.

if i change the .bdf's back to tutmap3 it works just fine and will load tutmap3. if i alter tutmap3 and save it as tutmap3 it will work just fine. if i try to alter the .bdf's to anything but tutmap3 it doesnt seem to like it. not sure why. any insights on this would be appreciated. is there another file i have to change somewhere perhaps so that it matches whatever new map name i'm trying to use?

i can make maps and save them using the other method. in fact, i just finished one. all i have to do to it now is make the screenshot .tga file and put em both in the full game dir. quite fun http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

K.

[TosaInu]

Hi Kraellin,

Yes, very strange. You could try to 'install' Thorgrims shogcrack. (The same errormessage pops up if you try to play a mod without having patched). Yes, you should try.

You need the convertor made by Rob to make maps from the full game editable by the demo.
This way you have 'endless' starting material for new maps!
In your case you have to rename output.jjm to Tutmap3.jjm.

I converted 4th Kawanakajima and I found some 'generic' textures (still with a ID below 100): shouldn't be. That might indicate that there are indeed 256 (or so) textures but that the demo doesn't recognize them. If you alter some heights in the map, save it and load it again in the full game, then you'll see the normal 4th Kawanaka with some changed heights.

This is a good thing, as it convinces me to believe that there are textures with a bridge attached and textures with an opening instead of a road. Using the last textures just above the underlying sea level thus gives a meandering river.

On the downside, it's an other pitfall when working with the demo-editor. As long as you leave the 'generic'/strange textures alone, everything should be fine.

It would be nice to have screenshots of all textures along with their ID, so anyone could easily check out the right ones.



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Ja mata
Toda TosaInu

[Kraellin]

um, fraid i didnt understand all that, tosalnu. what does:

"...This is a good thing, as it convinces me to believe that there are textures with a bridge attached and textures with an opening instead of a road. Using the last textures just above the underlying sea level thus gives a meandering river."

mean? ...last textures just above the underlying sea level... not sure what ya mean here.

K.

[Kraellin]

more data on the demo editor:

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER allow water in your map! NEVER! if you save a map with even the tiniest amount of water (sea level) showing it can do very strange things to your map and make it almost un-editable from there on in.

that's what seems to be the problem with the map i posted earlier, attdwn2for1.jjm. there is a tiny patch of sea level over on one side within the woods. i missed this when i finished the map and sent it to tosalnu. when playing the map online several folks crashed while using that map. some did not. today, i went back to see what was wrong with the map and could not edit certain portions of the map any longer. thus, i couldnt remove the water.

it seems that if you save a map with ANY patch of sea level showing the row of tiles that that patch is in will 'LOCK'. you can no longer edit that entire row of tiles, even though the 'water' is only in that one tile the whole row of tiles will 'LOCK' and become uneditable in height. you can still change texture types but not height and the game may crash when you play it.

luckily i had an earlier save of that map with about half the editing done and am currently re-doing it. i'll post it with tosalnu when done.

one tip comes as a result of this then:

after editing height on a map, particularly if you lowered a lot of heights, use tosalnu's info about cntrl right-click. this raises ALL the land at the same time and keeps ALL the relationships between tiles exactly as is. this will help eliminate any stray water sections that you may have missed.

it's too bad that we cant use the water (sea level) stuff cause i had some nice ideas for lakes and such, but there must be another way since some of the full game maps do have rivers.

see tosalnu's earlier post in this thread. he says something about rivers in there.

one new thing i've found also with the demo editor: hitting the return key does ...something. hit it once, quickly. the cursor will lock up for a few seconds; you cant move it around with the mouse, but then it frees up and 'something' happens to the entire terrain...i think it may round off heights on hills and such. i played with it a bit today but wasnt quite sure what it was doing, but i did notice a change at times.

someone with a bit of bravery can try this also: i found several version .jjm files in my TGA folder of the map editor. i'm not quite sure how they got there. they were named same as my map name but at the end of the name there was a sequential numbering to each of the diff maps. thus i had a tutmap3.12.jjm, a tutmap3.13.jjm, tutmap3.14.jjm, tutmap3.2.jjm, tutmap3.21.jjm and so on. i had 17 maps in the TGA dir that were that way. i did at one point hit several of the F-keys in trying to figure out how stuff worked in the editor and perhaps one of them is a 'save' key. not sure. maybe it's an autosave thing. again, not sure. someone could check this out.

hitting the 'home' key will take you to a very specific camera location/view.

when using the height mode you can move your cursor around and the height changes will follow under your cursor...very handy for making broad sweeping height changes in a hurry.

when changing textures keep your cursor over the tile you are changing, otherwise you wont see the numbers on the cursor change and you may end up changing tile textures you didnt want to change.

castle and pagoda textures will NOT automatically level the ground under them, so make sure you put these on level ground. otherwise folks will think the mad architect has been at work again.

be careful near the edges of the map when lowering land. it is VERY easy to lower an edge and not be able to see that you lowered it all the way to sea level.

K.

[TosaInu]

Hello Kraellin,

What I meant is: making rivers is not done by lowering heights below sealevel, but by placing proper textures at an height above the sealevel (as normal). Instead of a texture with a road there might be textures that have a transparant road (so the water below the landlayer becomes visible).

I did some experiments with Rob's mapconvertor and anagawa (the map with tree bridges). When loaded into the demo-editor, everything looks normal, except for the three bridges (weird textures). Every bridge consisted of ID 126, 104 and 125.
I did remove one of the bridges (placed trees -treebit- first to be able to locate the original position later). I saved the map. restarted the editor, saved the map to anagawa 2, put back the third bridge and saved that to anagawa3. I loaded ana2 and ana3 to the full game. I saw two bridges and three bridges respectively! Maybe the ID's are polymorphic/syntax sensitive?

Making a bridge across the river at a different location didn't work yet (missed proper allignment?).
By using ctrl click (no patch moused) the river became wider. Saving it to ana4 and loading it in full gave a playable map with a huge river and large bridges.



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Ja mata
Toda TosaInu

[Kraellin]

ok, that makes more sense, tosalnu, and somewhat fits what i suspect also. i think rivers must be textures also, not sea level. rivers with bridges must be like castles, textures with models attached. i just dont know yet what texture numbers they are.

also, i've confirmed that there are 256 textrues. there is a file in the main dir called 'textures.txt'. when i opened it after saving my last map i found a list numbered from 0 to 255 with how many of each number texture had been used in my map. it listed EXACTLY the number of all the textures i had placed in my last map and what numbers they were. this is an easy way to find if you have any hidden errant textures on your map, you know, like if you have a texture on your map that is hidden behind a hill or something.

a few days ago when i was first learning to edit i had opened this file after doing some editing and found 1 texture with a number like 242 being used. the rest were all below 127, but that one with 242 confirms in my mind that the textures above number 127 do do something. it may also be the case that there is a double list of textures or rather that the list is divided in half, 0 - 127 and 128 - 255. in one half a given texture would do one thing and in the second half it might be the exact same texture but be doing something slilghtly different. for instance, texture 4 is grass and texture 132 might be the same grass but also have a river running through it. this might account for why the cursor just shows 0 - 127 when you scroll through all the textures. dont know really yet, just speculating.

ok, i've got a question for ya, tosalnu. when i'm editing textures and i click on a given texture, say #6 (woods edge), and i want to change it or rotate it, almost all of the other textures will change appearance, in cluding the one i'm working on as soon as i do make any change. visibly, this makes it almost impossible to then see my results as they would be on the finished map. the texture numbers dont change, but the appearance does, thus rendering a completely new look to the map. so if i want to then edit another # 6 texture i cant really tell its current orientation since the appearance has changed. it will still be a #6 but might look like an 86 or something else. the only way i can then see the true appearance is to save and reload the whole thing. this then makes changing textures a VERY tedious job, since i have to save after EVERY change and re-load. you know of any way to avoid this or does your editor not do this in the first place? when i made that first map i could get it to a point where i could at least rotate a texture without having the whole map change appearance on me. in this new map, i cant. and i'll be darned if i know why.

also, you had better take down my map from your web pages. it's bugged worse than we thought. it seems there's an area on the map where a spline or something else prevents troop movement completely. when troops hit this area they either get stuck or cant cross it. and if the troops happen to be running away they will form a nice little line right along the errant spline and sort of hang up. this errant spline cuts directly through that small patch of sea level that exists on one side in the woods. so again, another reason to stay away from sea level areas on a map.

just remove the map from your downloads and i'll send you a new one to replace it when i get finished with it.

but maybe, before you toss it completely you might want to run it once in 'winter'. this thing really looks good in winter http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

i still havent figured out the mystery of why .jjm's are being somehow saved into my TGA folder but it's still happening. perhaps the creator wanted an autosave feature and a separate place to put them as a backup. i dont know, but i've now got about 30 saved .jjm's with an extra sequential numbering as part of the file name. oh well.

one last thought on the textures; might it be possible that the higher numbered textures, 128 - 255 are relational? in other words, might they somehow set the texture itself by what is around it or maybe set models depending on what's around it. bah, i'm tring to explain this goofy editor with weird speculations now... lol.

K.

[TosaInu]

Hello Kraellin,

Changing/rotating textures is a tedious job for it's not wysiwyg. Save and esc and replay the scenario (relaunching shogun is not required) is the only solution. Also a little memory and 'skill' is usefull. You can change many textures in one go. If you see that 6 ID 6 on a row must be rotated 180 degrees, then you can click the 1st, hit [ twice, click the 2nd, hit [ twice and so on, finally you save.

Sad to hear that your map is bugged, I will remove it. Please rename the new one.

'one last thought on the textures; might it be possible that the higher numbered textures, 128 - 255 are relational? in
other words, might they somehow set the texture itself by what is around it or maybe set models depending on what's around it. bah, i'm tring to explain this goofy editor with weird speculations now... lol.'

I said about the same thing: 'Maybe the ID's are polymorphic/syntax sensitive?'
Yes this is speculation, but we need speculation to make discoveries.

The enter thing is new to me. Indeed something seems to change.



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Ja mata
Toda TosaInu

[Kraellin]

Save and esc and replay the scenario (relaunching shogun is not required) is the only solution.... i was afraid you'd say that. the reason i ask this at this stage of my work with the editor is that in my first map i was able to get the appearances to NOT change as i rotated textures. if changed the texture number the others would change, but not when i just rotated. now i'm thinking that that may have been just related to my bugged map somehow. oh well, back to the grind....rob, hurry up with that new editor! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

K.

[Kraellin]

ok, got a question here: we've all seen the map pics that show a small pic of the map you're going to play when you start a game. and if you click on that little icon you also can get a text description of the map. does anyone know how this text description is stored and where? i looked all through the shugun directory today and couldnt find them anywhere. i also couldnt find anything in the map editor for making one or storing one. is this part of another file, maybe even a combo pic and text file somehow? i suppose i could get out my hex editor and find it but it seems odd that that would be stored so 'deeply'. anyone?

K.

...\shogun\loc\eng\maps.txt
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

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the great lord http://www.geocities.com/vinyljock/monn_t.gif jd

[Kraellin]

for any of you who have added water to your map and then saved it and then gone back in to edit it again, you may have noticed that some of the heights are no longer alterable. here is the fix for that.
load your map again and hit control-left mouse button (the one that raises the land.
raise it (all the land at once) until the
water no longer shows. save and load it
again. you can now edit ALL the tiles.

one additonal advantage to actually adding water to your map and saving it is that the textures become much more wysiwyg. they wont change nearly as much. some may still change but it will be a lot fewer in most cases. then simply follow the trick stated above and edit out the water. by doing this with a recent map i was able to set all my trees and treelines without ever having to save and load and save and load and save and load and so on.

i'm still avoiding using water in a final map due to that first bugged map, but it may be that something else happened during one of the saves or loads or edits that caused that bug in that map. i'll play with it more and let you know.

oh, btw, i'm more convinced than ever that you DO have to use sea level in order to get bridges, though i still cant get a bridge to load from a scratch map. i can import bridge maps from the full game using rob's converter 2 program but i cant add one into a from-scratch map. quite perplexing. if anyone has been able to do this please post here how you did it.

one last feature i found and even though it may be worthless.... if you place a model, say a bridge, on a map you can alter its size by using the < and > keys. still dont know how to save the bloody things though. ah well.

K.

[Kraellin]

i am really beginning to hate this demo game editor (lol).

i have found out some new things though. texture 21 has a pagoda attached to it, but even if you save and reload in the demo editor the pagoda wont show up. you have to run it in the full game to see the pagoda. which, btw, makes me wonder if bridges dont work the same way. *groan*

if you put 2 castles on a map, (which i wanted to do for a particular castle war i had in mind, the game will interpret this as one castle and you'll have a bugged map. even if the castles are separated by a fair distance the code still thinks it is only one castle and will have some more of less 'invisible' walls. when you march troops over those 'invisible' walls the game will crash.

now, and this is the really interesting part, i've discovered a way to bring in reinforcements from off the map and not only that, but it is supported and intended (or was at some point) as part of the game! i know this because as the new troops arrive on the map (during play) you get a message that says 'reinforcements have arrived'! that message wouldnt come up if they hadnt coded it in there so, there IS, presumably, a way to have your units come in from off the map as reinforcements. the bad part of this is that you can still only buy 16 units and if some of them are reinforcements then you are starting with fewer units on the map than you originally purchased. in my tests it would give me 4 of the 16 units i purchased and start ALL of the others off the map. they would march in one unit at a time and each time a new unit came in as reinforcements i would get that message. unfortunatly, i cant predict yet where they will come in, or how many i will start with or even IF it will work every time. i have to run some more tests, but i've done it twice now and it's pretty interesting. the ai i was playing with tends to go a bit bonkers when he sees reinforcements. and when they finally all get on the map he is forced to change his original tactics and divert to handle my new troops. quite interesting. i'll keep ya posted.

K.

[Kraellin]

ok, here's a couple more tricks with the editor:

1. to edit textures more efficiently and to make them a touch more what-you-see-is-what-you-get (wysiwyg), simply lower one tile till it shows a touch of water. save the map and esc. load it again edit your textures. the textures on the rest of the map wont bounce around nearly as much as they do normally. they still will to some extent, just not quite as much. this makes it easier to change many textures without having to save so often. it also helps if you edit all like textures at one time or edit to like textures all at the same time. save and esc then load again. each time you do this and get your textures more to what you want it shld get easier to alter more textures at one save and load sitting. once you have all your textures where you want them simply raise the land with the water back up to where you want it. if for some reason the water wont raise with the normal mouse click while in raise/lower mode, then simply hold down the control key and then use the mouse. the whole map will raise at one time, bringing your tile out of the water. the relationships of all your heights will not change when you do this, so, it's perfectly safe to do so. doing this also ensures that you wont have any missed water tiles somewhere.

the other trick i've found is that if you are 'sitting' (having your viewpoint in a given location) on a hill, let's say, and you want to raise another hill somewhere to the same height as the one you are currently on, you can hold down the shift key and hit the mouse button. it will raise the terrain wherever you clicked to the same height as where you are sitting and viewing things from. i havent used this one a lot yet but it may also lower an area in the same way. try it out.

the return key definitely does something, though i'm not quite sure what yet. and it seems to check every tile on the map for whatever it is doing. i 'think' it's doing some sort of global smoothing thing because at times i can see mountain peaks change a little bit when doing this. and that it is doing it to every tile on the map is prolly the reason the mouse cursor will hang for a short while during the process.

DOCS! someone get me some docs!

oh, and though i'm not sure he's posted it, tosa told me that he's edited the entire demo package in order to make a more easily downloaded map editor. seems he removed all the movies and other non-essential files and folders from the demo game and got it down to about 33 megs, instead of the bulky 97 megs that is on totalwar.com. so, check out his site and see if it's there for a much easier download of the editor: www.boy-co.demon.nl (http://www.boy-co.demon.nl)

K.

[Kraellin]

in an attempt to get castles to work on my game demo editor i imported the models from the main game. if you look at the folder in the main game and in the demo game you will see that there are more model files in the main game than in the demo. i was hoping that by importing these to the demo game i could get castles to show up right in the demo game. didnt work. oh well.

the return key is a 'rounding' tool. it only works in raise/lower mode. if you hit the return key while in this mode it will 'round' the splines. hitting the space key sharpens them, the return key rounds them. the only goofy part to this is that when you hit the return key it 'rounds' ALL the tiles on the map at once while the space key works with only your last raised/lowered tile. not sure why they did this this way, but there it is.

K.

[Kraellin]

well, i've come across yet another new feature with maps and this editor. in making Unzen2 i never tested it in single play and i was quite surprised when i first played it in multiplayer. the map had areas that were restricted to the troops! these show up in the radar map as gray ovals or gray areas. this was quite a surprise!

it seems that there is something in the code that restricts your troops from moving into a given area based on height or the incline of the terrain or the texture type. unzen2 has some rather steep grades with that mountain sitting in the middle of the map. and apparently the code restricts movement based on this. i 'think' it's the grade of the terrain that is doing it because i've since made a 2nd map that uses these sharp inclines and can adjust the restricted area by changing the grade of the terrain.

one caveat on this however. if you run your troops up to the restriction line your troops will tend to string out into a single line or have trouble moving at all. in one game that i was told about the player had to rout troops that had run into this line in order to get them to move at all. there may also be instances of crashes that occur due to this, but we're unsure of this at this time since other things can also cause the game to crash or time out.

however, this does add one more feature to map making and i'm hoping i can figure out exactly how the code inperprets when and how to make troop restriction areas. so far it seems to be based mostly on the grade of the terrain but i've run into some exceptions on this, so i'm not completely sure yet.

if you do add height restrictions to your map i recommend that you also try to make your textures reflect this difference so that the players can easily and visibly see where their troops cant go. the restriction is not visilbe anywhere but in the radar map as a gray area and it doesnt comform to the exact dimemsions of a tile. that is, a restriction can cut right through a tile and doesnt just follow the spline lines.

so, this one is a tricky one to use and may cause difficulties to troop movement or even crashes. use it accordingly.

and still no word from the dev team on docs for this editor so report anything new you find out here, please.

thanks,

K.

[Kraellin]

ok, here's yet some more info on the game demo editor. after a lot of testing i've found out that to make a restricted area it does take 2 things working together: height and texture. at least so far that's what i've found out...lol...have i mentioned that lately how clumsy this editor is? ah well, i'm still glad to have it.

i raised a couple of mountains on the 'green' map and didnt change the textures except for a few for markers that i just changed to #3 texture. i ran the map in the full game and there were no troop movement restrictions. i then added texture #18 to the tops of each of the mountains all along the high points. voila! movement restrictions. no other changes were made to get this.

i then tweaked the textures along the mountain to get the exact (or as close as possible) movement restrictions i wanted and it worked fairly well. the textures i used to restrict were # 17, 18, and 19, the mountain textures. ok, so that sort of makes sense.

i didnt test these 3 textures on flat ground to see if they would restrict all by themselves, but i seem to recall on other maps that they didnt. it seems to require both height above other points and those 3 textures. there may also be other textures that will accomplish this but i havent tested for it yet.

docs....i'd kill for some docs!

K.

[Kraellin]

after a lot of testing i've found that you can only put 32 models on a given map at one time. that means houses, castles, pagodas and that ilk. total, add all your different models and it can only display 32 in combo no matter what the different ones are. this does not include trees and roads. roads are textures and trees are handled separately.

if you shld happen to put more than 32 textures on the map that also load in models, the textures will remain correct and visible but the models will NOT be loaded on any number over 32.

there is also a screenshot of the new map editor on: www.pczone.co.uk (http://www.pczone.co.uk) it looks like they are doing a nice job of it but hard to tell too much about it at this point. the pczone site makes you sign up before you can get to the page with the screenshot, which is annoying, but it is there. pick the menu item 'reviews'. pick shogun and then page to the icon with the screenshot. click on it and it will give you a full size shot of it.

also, our clan site is up and new maps are now being put there first, rather than on boy-co.demon.nl. the clan site is: www.takiyama.cjb.com (http://www.takiyama.cjb.com) just click on 'files' and you shld be there. there is one new map up that i posted yesterday, farmvillage-2.

enjoy,

K.

[Kraellin]

well, i've found yet another undocumented feature of the demo game map editor. of course, ALL of the features are undocumented, but, oh well :)

to put the same texture on the map over and over on different tiles, get into the texture adjusting mode (see above docs), click on a tile of the texture you want to copy to another tile, hold down the shift key and click on the new tile. it will turn to the texture you previously clicked on.

example: you want #4 textures all over your map. go into texture mode with the J key. click on any #4 texture (left click) or make one tile a #4 texture if none currently exist and then simply hold down the shift key and click on any other tile and it will turn to a #4 texture. simple. you can simply keep on clicking on other tiles while holding down the shift key and turn each of them into #4's also. fast.

K.

[Kraellin]

nothing new to report, i just wanted to keep this thread on the front page of the forum :)

lol,

K.

[Kraellin]

well, i'll be damned. i've found yet another bug in the demo editor. it seems some of the textures in the 50 range are NOT the same in the demo as they are in the full game. i was making a map for terazawa and put some nice rocky hills near the back of the defender's area and used some of the textures in the 50's. some were fine, but when i transferred the map to the full game things had changed a bit. and what do you know....i found some more tree textures! lol.

i dunno how i'm ever going to use the new editor...it just wont be ...weird... enough.

K.

[Kraellin]

well, i've done a little more playing with those new forest textures i found in the 50 range. it seems we have another relational thing going on there. i forget the exact texture numbers right now, but by putting something like #53 next to #58 i ended up with 2 forest textures of a sort never seen before. when i changed one or two of those numbers to something slightly different i got yet another new forest texture, one that was slightly less populated with trees. the trees were also of different types within the same texture. NONE of these show in the demo itself, they only show when you xfer the map over to the full game. using the same textures by themselves in other places, the forests would NOT show up. another weird relational texture feature going on here. i'll have to play with it some more and see what else i can get.

K.

[TosaInu]

Hello Kraellin,

Nice coincidence! I used texture 53 which is medium/dark green with some rocks (nu machi). I inserted it on a hill amongst textures 42-45.

It showed up as a light green texture with trees on it.
Some trees are choped down: I saw some logs.



------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.com

[Kraellin]

tosa,

logs eh? cute. all i saw in the textures i got was stumps and a mix of tree types. it was also on a hill with 2 of the 50ish textures side by side. when i adjusted one of them and checked again, i got the same thing only the trees were more sparse...another texture. when i used them singly between some of the 50ish rock textures all i got was a sort of muddy green texture mix.

all of this makes me wonder if we're still missing something on the models, like bridges. since these tree textures are relative to other textures it just makes me wonder about the models.

K.

[TosaInu]

Hello Kraellin,

I experimented with Anegawa (Robs mapconverter)some months ago. Anegawa has 3 bridges. I can remove them by changing textures save it and put them back again at the exact same spot. Every change results in a working map. However I can't make a bridge at a new spot (I might have missed some other prequisites). For a bridge at least 3 textures are needed: roadtextures. If I recall it right those are 102, 103 and 84/104.




------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.com

[Kraellin]

tosa,

yes, i believe i ran into the same thing a while back. i could remove and add bridges back to maps that came from the full game, but couldnt put them into new maps. i tried putting the EXACT textures near and under bridges that i found in other maps that already had bridges and still couldnt get it to work in a new map.

not quite sure why this is, tosa. but i also tried putting the exact same textures in that were around other bridges and using the models mode in the editor. still couldnt get even one model to stick. i tried a LOT of stuff to try and get bridges to work in new maps and never did find anything even close to making it happen.

K.

[Kraellin]

ok, i've found 3 new tree types in the 50ish range of the textures. each of the 3 look fairly similar, but the background or ground on each is different, to match up with other textures. i've also found that one of those 3 also has some other partial tree textures to help with blending.

51, 52, and 53 all seem to belong together. 53 is the full tree texture, while the other 2 are partials.

54 has a different ground color and no partials that go with it...that i can find yet.

and 58 is the other one. this one blends with texture #4, and also has no partials that i can find yet, so it sorta looks a bit strange in places when using by itself.

55 and 56 are rock outcroppings and dont seem to change to trees when near other textures. they are always rock...so far.

um, i forget what 57 is at the moment, as well as 59, but i seem to recall that one is blank of any trees but matches up with 51, 52, and 53.

58 when you place it looks like a group of rocks, but when you load it into the main game it changes to trees. in fact, all of these 'new' tree textures do.

if it wasnt for the new editor supposedly coming out soon, i think right about now i'd start tearing into the file structure with a good hex editor and find out just what the heck is going on with water, castles, models, relative textures and so on. we've found out a lot about this editor but there's still a lot we havent.

happy hunting,

K.

[Kraellin]

rather than try and edit that last post, i'm just adding an addendum to it here.

texture 54 is the full tree texture for 51, 52, and 53. it originally fooled me due to its slightly different ground color, but upon closer inspection i found that the partials also blend to this ground color at the edges of the texture where the trees are, and 53 is actually a partial.

the textures that match up to the partials to blend them back into grass are 99, 100, and 101. these wont work with texture 58. 58 blends to 4. and i still cant find any partials for 58....oh well.

K.

[Catiline]

You probably already now this, but hitting f when in no patch mode flips the tile your working on, and gives a mirror image of it. Useful for getting some of the road verges to match up I found, and getting a bit of variation in there

Also are there road textures that give a dead straight bit? I've only found one that wiggles between two opposite edges, and my Roman instincts fancy the occaisional straight highway http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

------------------
It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Kraellin]

actually, no. i didnt know about the f key. i usually just use the rotate keys.

as far as i know there are no straight road textures. seems the japanese never heard of roads. lol. even 104, which is a seldom used road texture is curvy. so are the ones that match up to 86, 87, 88, and 63.

K.

[Catiline]

The f key just gives that extra bit of variation instead of rotating twice, mirrors rather htan rotates.

------------------
It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Kraellin]

oh, that's pretty cool then. thanks :)

K.

[Kraellin]

well, it's been a while since i updated this topic and we've found a few more things out about the editor.

primarily, tosainu discoverd how to make bridges in maps! you may have noticed that some of tosa's and my new maps are bridge maps. thanks to tosa we can now do this.

the downside is that there are a number of rules that go along with the bridges:

you can only have 3 bridges on a map (with one exception that i'll try and explain later).

all bridges face north and south, never east and west and never diagonally. 'north' here is defined as the attacker's side, or, the top of the radar map. no matter how you have your water, bridges will always make a true, straight, north/south line.

currently, any water on the map must stretch from one side of the map to the other and be contiguous. no lonely ponds or lakes unless they are also joined to the main 'river'. a map will be bugged if you dont follow this and troops can end up doing very strange things because of it. i'm not certain yet if you can run a legitimate river from say, north to east, or south to west, but best results seem to be east/west.

you may not have 2 separate rivers if when drawing a straight line from a bridge ending it would also bisect the 2nd river. e.g.

----------------------------
&#0124; &#0124; river 1
----------------------------
brdg

----------------------------
river 2
----------------------------

all bridges are created by using road textures over where water is or will be when you lower the terrain. some of these are texture 102, 103, 104 and i believe tosa mentioned some others. i havent tried all these out yet, but i believe just about any straight road texture will work.

bridges over a VERY large body of water will produce a 'flat' bridge that may end up bugging the map. i tried this on one map with varying results, the worst of which the game simply crashed and the best of which was units fighting before they were ever deployed.

the one exception to the 3 bridge rule is that sometimes you can get away with more than 3 bridges by violating the rule about not bisecting a 2nd river, but it's actually a trick and there are still only 3 real bridges; it's just that you cant see all of it because it's buried underground. i have gotten as many as 6 bridges this way, but again, the map was badly bugged and very odd things occurred. if you do do this, you can raise the terrain WAY up and see the single continuous line of the bridge and you may then also understand why the map is then bugged.

like i said, finding how to make bridges is tosa's discovery, and that's one of the features not discovered that has been bugging both of us for a long while.

mapping out the rules for them is mostly my own work. feel free to add your own as you find them.

hopefully, all this will be moot in a month or so when we get the new editor, which is prolly just about right, since by then we shld have the old one all figured out. murphy's law wins again ;)

K.

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

84, 125 and 126. 125 and 126 are the textures which should be used if you want a bridge without a road (like the bridge near the village in Mura ga Mizu).



------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.com

[Kraellin]

the maximum and minimum heights used in the game would seem to be 32,768 and -32,768 (32k).

there is one odd thing, though, in going to these limits and then going over them. i made a 'mountain' that was higher than 32k and it inverted on me when it went over the 32k. it 'rolled over'. it went to a minus number as it passed the 32k mark and suddenly i had a hole in the top of my mountain that was -32k deep, with water.

i dont think this is a particularly useful feature, but perhaps someone else will think so. at any rate, there it is.

K.