Adding New Provinces?

[SicilianVespers]

I have been working on a Sicilian Verspers mod. I plan a few campaigns starting in 1282 (when the Angevins are all powerful), 1302 after the peace of Caltabellotta, 1311 or higher (not sure of the exact start date for this one) after Sicily aquires the Duchy of Athens via the Catalan Company.

1282 and 1302 are just about complete.

And here is my problem, I would like to modify the campaign map, to break up Greece into the following provinces:

Athens -------------> Duke of Athens
Morea(Peloponese) --> Prince of Achaea
Thessalonika -------> King of Thessalonika
Epirus -------------> Despot of Epirus or Duke of Durrazzo

The Greek provice is just way too big, game play from the 4th Crusade thru the fall of Constantinople would be much better with more options in Greece.

Is this possible?

Can someone explain how this is done? or better yet, create the new provinces for me?

I would really appreciate any help...

[Lord Of Storms]

Stavka

Mercenary




Group: Junior Member
Posts: 16
Joined: May 2003
Sweden Posted: June 11 2003,09:08

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Well, it's pretty simple once you know how do to it. What I did was I painted new provinces in Ultimate Paint found in the downloads on this site, then saving it as .gif with palette. Saving it as .lbm would mess up the palette completely, which is bad.
Then, using Imageconverter also found in downloads, I just converted it back from gif to lbm. That's pretty much it.

Then, of course, comes the editing of the startpos file, adding settings of all new regions and such, which is much more time consuming than the painting part.
This is a post I found awhile back while looking into the very same subject Stavka is talking about editing the MTW Lukmap LBM's and then adding the regions info to the neccessary files, which is no small task, while the info is briefit will give you an idea of whtsa involved.
I think there is another post on the subject I will find it for you and post it LOS

[Lord Of Storms]

Stavka

Mercenary




Group: Junior Member
Posts: 16
Joined: May 2003
Sweden Posted: June 14 2003,10:38

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Yes, I created new provinces in the europe map. I've just split a few large provinces into two smaller ones.

For example, I gave Denmark Skåne (The southern part of Sweden, which they historically had) and also split the Denmark province into two, resulting in a three province Danish faction who now actually can perform pretty well (never seen AI Denmark do ANYTHING with the original one province).

Added 8 new provinces which brings the total to 107, which seems to be the limit. Added new sea zones as well.
This is Stavka's second post , The Ultimate Paint program and The Image Converter he used can be found on the ORG's download page. Again read the related Map threads in the Dungeon, lots of good info before you experiment. Good Luck LOS

[SicilianVespers]

Thanks for the help.

This is what I have done so far:

1) Painted my new province (Morea) in LUKMAP and LUKMAP2.

I was unable to get image converter to work. When I opened the GIF file, the program just disappeared. I tried opening the LBM in Paintshop Pro, made the changes, and copy/pasted the new map into the original LBM. Then saved. This keeps the palette for the Steel Panthers LBM's. The game loaded, but I lost the shift/loyalty display, and I couldn't right click Greece (in other campaigns).

2) Updated the STARTPOS.TXT

I screwed something up here because the campaign isn't displayed in the selection list. I am going to redo STARTPOS from scratch.

What about the castle info? can I just call it Morea and Morea_Castle_XYZ, as long as i add this the the NAMES.TXT?

3) Updated NAME.TXT

Do you add the new provice info after the original provinces? In other words does it need to be at the end of each section, or can I place it after the Greece entries? (which is how I have it right now)

Does anything else need to be changed?

Since the game loaded with the new map and non updated script, does that mean my map is OK? visually it looked ok, but Greece was still one big province, and no info parchments.


Once again thanks for all the help.

[the Black Prince]

info parchment informationwill need to be written by yourself obviously - the files are all in loc/eng or whatever language you might be playing in.
i think its default_region_specific.txt you need to edit.
you can edit it direct, or copy and edit a new one calling it mod_region_specifi.txt then you need to change the startpos file to say regionspecificfile:: mod_region_specific.txt

that should give you all the parchment info

[SicilianVespers]

Black Prince,
I am still using 1.0 with the MedMod. It works fine for me, so I haven't upgraded yet.

Regarding the castle/port/origin coordinates in the startpos campaign.txt file. If these are wrong will this prevent the campaign from displaying in the selection screen?

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (SicilianVespers @ Aug. 06 2003,05:53)]Regarding the castle/port/origin coordinates in the startpos campaign.txt file. If these are wrong will this prevent the campaign from displaying in the selection screen?
If they are too close together it won't just stop the script showing up in the campaign selection screen.

It will stop MTW from loading at all

How far apart should they be (in pixels) to ensure MTW loads? I'm still working this out - trial and error

Welly

[SicilianVespers]

I am using the pixels x16 or x8 to calculate the coordinates. Will this actually give me the correct coordinates, or is there a better way?

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (SicilianVespers @ Aug. 06 2003,14:29)]I am using the pixels x16 or x8 to calculate the coordinates. Will this actually give me the correct coordinates, or is there a better way?
Using a x16 multiplier (from the top left hand corner of the map) is the correct way - for both Lores and Hires map versions - and will give you correct co-ordinates.

However, it's important to understand that IF you place port/castle/origin co-ordinates too close together, in any startpos type file, then MTW will NOT LOAD

One of the Orgs patrons (don't know his moniker) discovered this problem a couple of months ago whilst using LMM to build the Shogun campaign map for MTW. The problem was that the Shogun campaign map has smaller graphics (no large MTW 'castle15' type images) and therefore the co-ordinates for the Shogun map work fine for the Shogun Engine, but transposing these to MTW is a definate no-no.

Trying to use the exact (or near enough) same Shogun co-ordinates within the MTW engine (for an MTW startpos file) failed totally ... because images on the MTW campaign map are larger than in Shogun. It took us a week to discover what the problem was.

Our conclusion was that when the MTW engine renders images on the campaign map (ports, units, castles) it expects sufficient spaceage between images. Exactly what this spaceage is is the 64k dollar question

I'm still trial and erroring this as I want a solution (error messages or warning messages) for the LMM5 release. I want to know what the minimum distance is between co-ordinates in different map provinces, for MTW, but it really is a pain to trial and error this type of problem.

Why does MTW refuse to load in such cases (as opposed to to just refusing to display the offending startpos file in the campaign map selection screen)? Don't ask me MTW (and VI ... cough, cough, throwing up in droves) is undoubtadly a great game but it's hardly the most modder friendly PC game that has ever been produced.

Still, that (for me) is the challenge http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Lets all hope RTW is just a little more 'moddable friendly' that MTW and VI have proved to be, but ...

... don't hold your breaths

Welly

[kataphraktoi]

Is there a full instruction document on making changes to the campaign map???

I remember one for making new units from existing bif files by Wellingtonl I wonder if there's a similar one.

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (kataphraktoi @ Aug. 08 2003,22:30)]Is there a full instruction document on making changes to the campaign map???
Depends what you mean. If you mean how do I add a completely new campaign map (with different regions, borders, new map image etc) then there is no document as such.

The reason is that, although a lot of people know exactly what is required, it's nigh on impossible to do by hand.

We do have something to do this (LMM) and the stickied thread in the Dungeon Automatic Lukmap .... provides a lot of info in terms of how it's done - but this thread can be a bit heavy going if you ar'nt familiar with all of the requirements.

There is another stickied thread that has some good info regarding the startpos files, and a downloadable document in the Orgs downloads that details the parameters in an MTW startpos file.

Welly