Viking map?

[USMCNJ]

Ok, i've read in the main forum that the Viking invasion map will have 40 land masses.

Now going back on the whole map having 100 regions, 100 colors, and 100 colors for borders, 40 sea regions, etc.... (i think you know what i'm talking about)

My question is => will we able to add new regions. (i have already made a new map of europe, and it works fine. About a week ago i started to work on an English Map. But i want france to be a big part, and use all 100 regions. So if we can add new regions to the viking invasion map, idon't have to go crazy making my own)

Question two (if question one is true) => if we can add new regions will the map use the same pallet. What i mean is are colors that represent water now going to represent water in the new map, is land still going be land?

[Wellington]

"Question two (if question one is true) => if we can add new regions will the map use the same pallet. What i mean is are colors that represent water now going to represent water in the new map, is land still going be land?"

As far as I'm aware I don't think it matters. The colour is not too important. What IS important is the order of the colour in the palette.

If you consider the 256 colour palette as a table (0-255) of identifiers you get a table that basically consists of a specal colour in slot 000, followed by land/sea identifers/colours (and several unused slots) -


000 ID_REGION_ZERO (sea border colour)
001 (unused)
002 ID_SCOTLAND (colour)
003 ID_SCOTLAND (border colour)
004 ID_NORTH_UMBRIA (colour)
005 ID_NORTH_UMBRIA (border colour)
...
(etc)
...
216 ID_NORTH_ATLANTIC (colour)
217 ID_NORTH_SEA (colour)
...
(etc)
...


My understanding is it does'nt matter what colours are actually used BUT the order or the colours in the palette WILL determine which identifiers are associated with which areas of the Lukmap/Lukmap2.

Can anyone confirm this for certain?

[PanthaPower]

I can confirm this Wellington. It only looks at the slot in the palette to find the right region_id in your starpos text. I have a test campaign running which doesn't use the original colours so I am 100% sure about this. The only colour in my palette which is the same compared to the original palette is the pink sea border colour but I have heard that others also changed that colour.

As far as I can see with my knowledge you can not use more then 98 land provinces and 36 sea lanes. I know that there are free slots in the lukMap but I cannot see how we would be able to fill those slots with new provinces.
This is because of the simple reason that we don't know how to refer to those slots. E.g. we know that slot 002/003 are for Scotland. But what about slot 202/203? If we don't know the related Region_ID for that slot, we cannot add them in e.g. SetNeighbours::

Concerning question two, it will only work to add provinces if they use the same slots and Region_ID references which are now used in MTW. If slot 002/003 becomes e.g. wessex instead of Scotland, you will never know again what region_id to give to the slots after province number 40 just the way we now don't know what comes after region 98 in the current MTW version...

Hope this helps.

[Wellington]

Panthapower,

That's what I thought. Thank's for the confirmnation.

One minor point. There are indeed 36 sea regions but there are actually 99 land regions. The land region ID_AFRICA ("Sahara")isn't used in the MTW Campaign map but it has still to be represented in the palette - it uses slots 154 and 155.

If you don't consider it in the palette you'll find all the identifiers from ID_TUNISIA (156,157) to ID_SICILY (198,199) appear to be in the wrong slots/position ... you'll know what I mean.

[PanthaPower]

Quote[/b] (Wellington @ Jan. 10 2003,15:01)]Panthapower,

That's what I thought. Thank's for the confirmnation.

One minor point. There are indeed 36 sea regions but there are actually 99 land regions. The land region ID_AFRICA ("Sahara")isn't used in the MTW Campaign map but it has still to be represented in the palette - it uses slots 154 and 155.

If you don't consider it in the palette you'll find all the identifiers from ID_TUNISIA (156,157) to ID_SICILY (198,199) appear to be in the wrong slots/position ... you'll know what I mean.
Ah, yes, forgot about this ID_AFRICA again... Thanks for making it clear for anyone else who reads this topic http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

But I'm sure you know what I mean with the fact that we cannot use the other slots which we don't know to what Region_ID it relates to. We can only add the sahara to our maps because ID_AFRICA was mentioned in the startpos files...

[Wellington]

Panthapower,

Absolutely. In fact not only do we not know the identifiers for these unused slots I seem to remember Gil (or another CA guy) confirming in another thread that any attempts to use these slot's would bust the MTW engine code.

In the LukMapMaker table these slots are defined as "UNUSED" and I suspect they always will be (have you tried it yet?).

[PanthaPower]

Quote[/b] (Wellington @ Jan. 10 2003,15:50)]Panthapower,

Absolutely. In fact not only do we not know the identifiers for these unused slots I seem to remember Gil (or another CA guy) confirming in another thread that any attempts to use these slot's would bust the MTW engine code.

In the LukMapMaker table these slots are defined as "UNUSED" and I suspect they always will be (have you tried it yet?).
Wellington,

haven't used your utility yet. Haven't had the time yet. Haven't seen a MTW playable computer in 3 days... But I will try to have a look at it this evening. I should have a free hour or two this evening to test some things with my own mod and also your utility.