View Full Version : Campaign map - how to edit?
I'm currently trying to work some changes to the campaign map in accordance to historical realities (Tyrolia bordering to Burgundy - yeah, right! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif ).
I am assuming that the borders of all provinces are defined by lukmap2.lbm. Each province has 2 colours, one defining its shape, the other the placement of coloured borders. However, if I try to change that .lbm, the game will crash everytime. Now I found out my graphics software (paint shop pro) apparently can't compress .lbms as much as MTW's are (Just opening lukmap2.lbm and saving it right away as lukmap3.lbm - compressed - leaves me with a 1.5 mb file compared to the .7 mb original.
Does anybody know a solution for this?
from the orgs shogun tools section you can download an lbm editor,
read the readme file with the download
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Thanks - you're really quick! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
I'll check that out right away.
Another question: The .lbm format used for those files .lbm supports 256 colours. Seeing that each region is defined by two colours, this should only allow 128 regions max, even less than that considering that probably not all 256 can be used (background, ect.). However, MTW apparently has 135 regions including sea regions (which use up 2 collours as well). What goes?
Hmm... the .lbm editor refuses to load lukmap2.lbm - not enough memory, of all things. I assume that dos program needs xms or ems. Oh, well...
what id really like to know is how to add new tga maps so I dont have to overwrite the original one. Its easy to add a campaign but it would be very nice to put it on its own map. But have you see the size of those TGA files ?
35meg.
Giskard
Lord Krazy
09-08-2002, 15:38
I'v introduced some shield and flag tgas after
creating them in paint shop pro and they
work fine.I did not want to start work
on the map just yet as it was not my
priority but I was hoping that it would
have worked ok seen as my self an Black Adder
had made tgas in PSP after making all the
files to spec from MTW ,that's a bummer.
I ask LBA to look into it soon.
C ye
LK
Er... this isn't about the .tgas - they're no problem. It's about the .lbm files. I can't make any changes there without crashing the game http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
Yup, I know the files Moorkh. I dont have a solution for that. If I understand it correctly the LBM files provide so sort of colour region overlay or something for the campaigns or perhaps define the borders more clearly.
If it helps i believe LBM is an old amiga file format called ilbm. It was popular about 12 years ago and widely supported. If this is the case we might find a plugin for psp that will do a better job.
Giskard
[This message has been edited by giskard (edited 09-08-2002).]
The .lbms likely actually define the borders of each province - I doubt there is another reference to their in-game shapes. There must be, I assume, possibly hardcoded ( :O ), a reference that assigns each color to a province, and there are the castle and units positions defined within the startpos .txts, as well as a definition of which province borders on which. If you change the latter and add new borders, you can, for example, actually move troops directly from milan to switzerland (I did that to my game, as I consider it more appropriate).
I do remember .lmb graphics very fondly. I used to draw with Deluxe Paint, which had .lbms as its main file format. Still, I can't seem to find a find either a plugin for PSP that offers to compress .lbms to a the same size they are in MTW or another editor that does. However, there seems to be a similarity between .lbm and .iff formats - maybe I'll find something going in that direction.
Edit: you can apparently even freely exchange .lbm and .iff file endings. Still, I cannot seem to compress lukmap2 to 700kb even if I just open it and then save it under another name. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
[This message has been edited by Moorkh (edited 09-09-2002).]
*bumb*
(I'd really like to have an answer to this one... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif )
In another post (i can't remember), one of the dev's said that the campaign map is hardcoded and that it is NOT very likely to change (because of the work i guess).
Ofcourse i hope someone can find a solution but i fear.........
MagyarKhans Cham
09-10-2002, 20:41
our Wolf mapdesigners made a campaignmap which is hex-based, see http://home-4.tiscali.nl/~t543201/web-campaign/campaign-maps/medieval-map.jpg
if u have some skill in photoshop painshop or whatever u can make anything
I'm afraid that pretty campaignmap itself isn't doing anything yet - it's just a nice background. You might just as well replace it by a scan of Mona Lisa and then move your troops out of her nostril to beat up the rebels on her cheeck - however, the borders would still be the same, and if you'd look closely, you'd recognise you're actually still conquering Europe. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
To change the shape & placement of the provinces, you need to not only make a new lukmap.lbm and lukmap2.lbm but the run those through a special tool CA has come up with - but they haven't released that, yet :O
Moork: I did some digging and it looks like Linux and Gimp actually have a lot more LBM support than the PC. If you have access to a linux box or can download the windows version of gimp you might want to try it. Which i believe is a gimp.org site, not sure though. You may be able to get PC plugins for that instead.
Just an idea.
Giskard
[This message has been edited by giskard (edited 09-10-2002).]
Thx - I'll give this a try. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Still, I think we might have to wait for that tool Target spoke of...
Hmmmm... still found no way of doing this.... :P
@Devs: Please release that tool Target mentioned - any chance for that at all? :O
LBM in PSP7 seems to have a compression setting you can change in the options menu. Cannot remember where it is, think it appears when you save the files. But it does make the LBM files much smaller than the original ones.
Giskard
Are you sure about this? Because when I try to do this, the result is just as I described above - the file ends up about twice the size of the original http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
And, to be sure, I am using PSP7, too...
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