Problem with LMM4 and the province/castle sizes

[Gregoshi]

New patron Pat posts the following in the Entrance Hall:

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For some months ago I tried to use the STW map in MTW v.1.1 (using LMM4v1) - it crashed (CTD) when running MTW because the (MTW) castles etc were too big for this
STW map or more precisely the castles were too big to fit in in some provinces.

I saw that Barocca has created a new STW mod for MTW and I'm very curious how you managed to do that

I've sent an e-mail to Wellington and he gave me some hints about this problem. Something about (a quot from Barocca):

"you can have a maximum of SEVEN distinct campmap castle pieces,
the lines
SetCastleFlagPos:: 81 20 82 24 84 19 93 26 95 16
SetCastleSelectorPos:: 52 11 53 4 53 4 52 11 52 11

can have a maximum of seven sets of entries, 8 crashes the game,
the SetCastleFlagPos is the Y and -X of the castle flag - where you want the top left corner of the flag to fly from,
remeber first digit is Y and second digit is -X (negative X)
so if image is 120 pixel wide and you want flag in 100(X), 80(Y) the entry
is 80, 20...
weird, but thats CA for you...

the SetCastleSelectorPos is the little circle of arrows that floats below a campmap piece, you need to set that AND fiddle with the extra setting in buf files - bifreader22B works best for that, it takes a bit of fiddling to get it correct - but you CAN make perfect
castles, flying flag 100% perfect with selector 100% perfect, ALSO new campmap army and agent pieces will require fiddling with same "extra info" setting for buf file versions too :-)

SUBNOTE - campaigns will NOT run with less than EIGHT castles defined, am using seven castles and one upgrade here...upgrades count as defined castles, a BIG bug in my opinion, startpos wont accept more than seven distinct
campmap castle pieces, campaign wont run with less than eight defined castles http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif"

and later on...

"\..ALSO you may need to move some origins and castles to see "province" names
you paint on the tga,
that will require some fiddling to get the hang of it,
i suggest 200 pixels at a time in one direction until you figure it out."


If I understand this correctly - you have to "shrunk" (make it proportional) the castles and "expand" the borders
a bit in order to make it work and look right?
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You can find the original post here (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=15;t=12290).

[Wellington]

Hi B,

Er ... in the words of Pink Floyd ...

... "is there anybody out there

[barocca]

??

am working very hard to have my rough beta available within 5 days of this post,
not here too often,

you have a Q??

B.

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (barocca @ Oct. 29 2003,06:07)]??

am working very hard to have my rough beta available within 5 days of this post,
not here too often,

you have a Q??

B.
Yeah

Just wondering if you experienced any problems using LMM to create a shoggy map - specifically in regard to the castle images in MTW being larger than the ones for STW and thus having any 'image overlapping' problems when using your map in MTW?

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[LOTR-Helper]

This is Helper from the METW mod.

This is crucially important for the Middle Earth mod.
Some of the provinces are very small (Tolkien's layout) even after I have enlarged them. I need to know the facts on the ground, if I need to make provinces even larger to "fit" castles and troops on the map.

Cordially,
Helper

[Wellington]

New info from Barocca regarding image sizes in STW and MTW -

Hi Welly,

i know what Pat's done :-)
he's left the castles on the bases,
I betcha

I wanted more castles than shogun had,
rather than try and put new castles on the bases I took the base away and gave them an MTW castle flag instead.

The base is at least half as wide again, than the castle by itself...

B.

Hope that makes some sense to others - it almost does to me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (LOTR-Helper @ Oct. 29 2003,11:46)]This is Helper from the METW mod.

This is crucially important for the Middle Earth mod.
Some of the provinces are very small (Tolkien's layout) even after I have enlarged them. I need to know the facts on the ground, if I need to make provinces even larger to "fit" castles and troops on the map.

Cordially,
Helper
Hi LH,

I really dont think this will be a problem for the ME:TW map you are in the process of creating (a magnificant map also - may I add&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Obviously, I don't know how large exactly your provinces will be but that is NOT, primarily, the key issue. The key issue is "how close are such images, as positioned via a user indicating this to LMM, placed together in a newly created LMM campaign map? - and will the MTW engine have problems if such images are TOO close togethr?".

I've added a new post in the LMM stickied thread in order to clarify this somewhat.

Welly

[LOTR-Helper]

Welly,

I read your LMM FAQ several times and I think I probably do have a significant problem. Due Tolkien's narrative purposes, he tended to pack lots of detail into litte areas. Minas Tirith - Osgiliath - Minas Morgul; Isengard - Fords of Isen - Helms Deep; Lothlorien - Moria - Dol Guldur to name the 3 most obvious.

I am going to have to rework the map (again) to assure that the respective castles and army "pixels" do not short-circuit each other.

I am so happy to have discovered this discussion and your tips. This community and your obvious benevolence make so many great things possible

Regards,
Helper.

BTW pink and/or blue pixels? Is this a Miami or a baby gender thing?

[LOTR-Helper]

Quote[/b] ][FROM THE LMM FAQ] RULE 1: Every region on your map MUST represent something. A land region, a sea region or a water on land feature.

QUESTION 1: What is a "water on land" feature?

QUESTION 2: I would like to make the mountain ranges of Middle Earth (mostly) impassible, province-like areas, like sahara is in MTW. I figured I would just leave the SET_NEIGHBORS "empty" so that nothing goes in or out (except for Goblins). Is this right?

Helper.

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (LOTR-Helper @ Oct. 30 2003,11:44)]
Quote[/b] ][FROM THE LMM FAQ] RULE 1: Every region on your map MUST represent something. A land region, a sea region or a water on land feature.

QUESTION 1: What is a "water on land" feature?

QUESTION 2: I would like to make the mountain ranges of Middle Earth (mostly) impassible, province-like areas, like sahara is in MTW. I figured I would just leave the SET_NEIGHBORS "empty" so that nothing goes in or out (except for Goblins). Is this right?

Helper.
LH,

A "water on feature" is any area on your map that is a block of pink pixels.

The MTW map has such water on land areas. Look at the Nile delta in Egypt - the MTW engine does not hightlight this water area when moving units in Egypt and it's represented by a pink block in the original MTW LukMaps.

Normally LMM does NOT like such blocks of pink pixels on maps as LMM expects such pink pixels to be either castle origins (1 pixel) or borders (continuous lines of ideally 1 pixel width). Therefore LMM's normal processing interprets such blocks of pink pixels as 'problems' that it automatically corrects.

However, it's quite possible you may have INTENTIONALLY drawn large blocks of pink pixels in order to represent an inland sea/lake area (or suchlike) that is neither a land nor a sea province - just as the MTW engine 'treats' the Nile delta.

In this case you MUST tell LMM that your map contains such areas of pink pixel blocks (that really are NOT an error but represent a "Water On Land" feature). By telling LMM ytour map contains such LMM changes it's processing and creates the LukMap correctly representing such areas (no longer interprets them as probable erros on your map).

You tell LMM to interpret such areas of pink blocks of pixels, as water features, via coding the parameter "WaterOnLand=Yes" in your "Parameters.txt" file

NOTE: one other interesting usage of such pink blocks of pixels (by adding "WaterOnLand=Yes") is to allow LMM to 'ignore' any other areas in a map that may represent None-land/sea provinces. For example, if you have a map with a nice border (you'll know what I mean from the initial maps proposed in the ME:TW team) that looks good and you want to retain it on your campaign map BUT you don't want such a border to be a land/sea provinces, then just fill it all in with pink pixels on your map - and LMM ignores all of that area Hence, the "Water on Land" feature is not just for water areas - and such areas don't have to be land either A multi-use function

As for impassable areas this is catered for in LMM5 (not yet released) but not in previous versions of LMM. However, the solution is simply to remove the lines in the LMM generated "Script.txt" file ('SetBorder:' I think). This is very easy - don't worry about it for the time being. Wait until we have the map finished and working THEN we can remove the appropiate lines in "Script.txt", as the generated "Script.txt" MUST be added to/amended for buildings/units etc after we (er ... you http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif ) have the map finished. Such issues are secondary to getting a finshed map working in MTW, and don't impact on LMM usage.

regards,
Welly

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (LOTR-Helper @ Oct. 30 2003,11:22)]BTW pink and/or blue pixels? Is this a Miami or a baby gender thing?
Neither

Such colours were chosen as a result of my interpretation of typical American dress-sense. They were based principally on a randomly sampled mathamatical interpolation of physical adornments worn by all US competitants in the 2002 US Open.

Such colour (whoops ... I mean 'color' ) schemes served as a principal aid, when writing LMM, in order to ensure our American 'buddies' felt comfortable when using LMM, and, after all, ...

... we have to cater for all tastes (nationalities?) don't we

Welly http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Pat]

Quote[/b] ]
New info from Barocca regarding image sizes in STW and MTW -

Hi Welly,

i know what Pat's done :-)
he's left the castles on the bases,
I betcha

I wanted more castles than shogun had,
rather than try and put new castles on the bases I took the base away and gave them an MTW castle flag instead.

The base is at least half as wide again, than the castle by itself...



Hi,

I've been away a few days...

I had a look at Barocca's Shogun Mod (the pics) last week and saw that he had changed the 'Shogun' castles to be more MTW look-alike. I tried this too (after seeing that) and it works too - but not for my STW map http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

However, I've tried all types of castles and still have no clue to how Barocca solved that problem... There must be a way to make the castles more scaleable...

The labels: 'SetCastleFlagPos' and 'SetCastleSelectorPos' can't be used in MTW 1.1 (only in VI). I don't know how important these labels are or if it's just about 'cosmetics'?


regards,
Pat