Norseman
Joined: Oct. 2002
Norway
Posted: Oct. 25 2003,20:52
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How to add a specific castle battlemap; Brittany:
1) Go to the folder Medieval-Total War/Battle/Maps containing all the battlemaps. By taking a look at the names of the castlemaps you will see the system used.
An exemple: CastleHilly02_2_1
First in the name is Castle. Second comes the terrain(in this ex. Hilly, but could also be either flat or plain).
The 02 means the second map serie with a hilly landscape; in other words a map-serie with almost identical terrain, but with different castle levels and upgrades. The most series CA has used for a given terrain-type is 5.
The _2 tell us it is a keep => _1 is a Fort,_2=Keep, _3=Castle, _4=Citadel, _5=Fortress.
The final _1 indicates Curtain Walls upgrade => _
0=No upgrade to the castle-level, _1=First upgrade, _2=Second upgrade
2) Open the startpos file you want to use. Find Brittany under the header
//========================================
//Region Attributes
//The special characteristics for a region
//========================================
Here the region architechture, landscape, starting culture etc. is specified. For brittany you will find the landscape to be HILLY.
Notice the column MAPGROUP. All regions have the
number -1. This is the number that ties a battlemap to the region. -1 simply means random, that is; the game selects a random map among the castlemaps that have the correct landscape (Brittany:Hilly) and castle-upgrade(15 levels: Fort,Fort Motte, Fort Motte with Bailey, Keep ... and so on).
3) In the startpos file: Edit the mapgroup-nr. for Brittany to for example 7 (instead of random number -1).
What you then have to do is to make a map serie for your brittany castle; 15 maps, one for each castle upgrade. It sounds harder than it is, because what you do is to make a single landscape-map and just build a larger and larger castle while saving the map with the correct name at each castle upgrade. The names of the 15 maps must now be in this form:
castlehilly07_*Castle-level*_*Upgrade-level*
The reason for using 7 instead of 6 (as CA has used the 5 first ones) is to prevent the game from selecting your brittany map for another region with mapgroup-nr set to random(-1). Apparantly, if there is no nr.6 the game will not be able to select the nr.7 randomly. Only when you instruct the game to use map-serie nr.7 for a given region in the startpos-file will it then be able to select it.
I made this mistake in my first attempt, and ended up assaulting my Jerusalem castle when I was actually taking Scotland
4) The map-files you make in the battlemap editor are saved in this folder: Medieval-Total War/Savemaps
You must manually move them to the Medieval-Total War/Battle/Maps folder for them to be available for selection in SP campaign. Each map gives two files, so one serie will give you 30 files to move.
Good luck
Norseman
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i will add to this if further information becomes available - B.
