geography and climate map

[MagyarKhans Cham]

for people who like to build home made campaigns with friends

http://home-4.tiscali.nl/~t543201/web-campaign/campaign-maps/medieval-map-geography.jpg

dark brown = mountains
light brown = hills
beige = flat to hills
green = flat/plains/steppe


http://home-4.tiscali.nl/~t543201/web-campaign/campaign-maps/medieval-map-climate.jpg

dark green= temperate
light green = lush
yello like= arid
beige = rocky desert




[This message has been edited by MagyarKhans Cham (edited 09-19-2002).]

[Kraellin]

nice cham, magy,

but on the 2nd one, going from top to bottom, i see dark green, light green, yellow green, and beige. the top one i see the dark brown just fine and seems right.

what do the different colors of blue in water signify? just a way to distinguish them one to the other or some other significance?

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[dclare4]

Hi there Magyars!

Will this supercede the MTW map? Will each hex be an individual area? Can't wait if the answers are yes!!

Gilbert de Clare

[ShadesWolf]

Good work guys

I feel an online campaign draws near http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

[barocca]

Quote Originally posted by dclare4:

Will this supercede the MTW map? Will each hex be an individual area? Can't wait if the answers are yes!!

Gilbert de Clare[/QUOTE]

Interesting Q!!!

GilJay, (etc.)

what do the the LukMap.lbm's in ..\Medieval\Textures\campmap\
actually control?
is the shaded difference the definition of the border?
at least for display purposes,


and what do the numbers in these lines mean?

//region from //region to //terrain //architecture //land lie //vista //river
SetBorderInfo:: ID_NORTH_UMBRIA ID_SCOTLAND 7480 4496 0 TEMPERATE AT_WESTERN_EUROPEAN INLAND HLL2MNT NO_RIVER

SetBorderInfo:: ID_SCOTLAND ID_NORTH_UMBRIA 7688 4632 0 LUSH AT_WESTERN_EUROPEAN INLAND HILLY NO_RIVER

i can't get them to match any colour code, or make sense of them as co-ordinates either...

they look like co-ordinates, but the numbers are way too large, the largest of these files is 4096x3072,
yet some of these number go above 10,000

also there are 3 numbers, the last is most commonly zero, but not always!

???

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 09-19-2002).]

[Target]

Relegated to an "etc." after Gil's name already http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif

The lukmap.lbm files have 3 purposes. The first is to highlight the selected regions. The second is to display the borders between the land regions. The third is to act as a hotspot map for mouse interaction on the stratmap.

This is how the interaction works:

Each land region has two unique colours and each sea region has one unique colour. When the player uses the mouse on the stratmap, the x/y co-ordinates of the mouse on screen are translated to x/y coordinates on the lukmap.lbm file.

The game asks for the colour that's at that particular x/y position on the lukmap file and compares the answer with a table that then tells it which region is associated with that particular colour. In this way, the game can find out which region you've floated over or clicked or dropped pieces into, and so on.

The numbers in the SetBorderInfo:: lines in the startpos files aren't used for anything any more. Originally, there was a stratmap piece either side of each a border between countries, and right clicking on it would bring up info about that particular border's characteristics. Then, the whole border characteristics thingy was incorporated into the region border info parchment (where you select a border, rightclick to bring up the parchment and then float the mouse cursor over the border's neighbours to get information about what the terrain would be like if you crossed the border in that direction ).

These pieces were in the shape of arrows of 16 frames. The numbers you're asking about are the x/y placing coordinates on the map for these pieces, followed by the orientation. Pretty much exactly the same way the SetPort:: command works. The numbers are huge because they've been converted to the coordinates that the game uses, rather than those of either lukmap file. Oh, and most of the orientations are 0 because the whole process was abandoned before it was completed, thank God.

Edited to correct a whole slew of spelling mistakes.

(etc.) of GilJay, (etc.)

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"i even suspect Target is coming here to hype things up."
MagyarKhans Cham

[This message has been edited by Target (edited 09-19-2002).]

[Kraellin]

etc., er, target,

so, would it be correct to say that one could edit the shape of the map and that as long as the same colors were used, one could ..reconfigure.. europe? i'm assuming the table you're referring to is hardcoded, yes? ("The game asks for the colour that's at that particular x/y position on the lukmap file and compares the answer with a table that then tells it which region is associated with that particular colour.") and if we had access to the table, ..if.., we could edit things like the names of provinces and so on?

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[Target]

I was probably a bit misleading because I was trying to keep it all in laymen's terms rather than get overly complicated.

Yep, you can change the shape of the countries and move their position around and whatnot so long as you stick to a few rules.

The lukmaps are in lbm format which is a file format that supports a 256 colour palette. This palette acts as our lookup table and it built into the picture file rather than the game itself.

So, you float over the map and the game goes to find out which colour corresponds with the mouse's current coordinates. Once it's found that it then searches through the palette, looking for the colour, and then returns with a palette index. The index is run through a quick calculation and end up with a region number, which is what tells the game which region the user is currently interested in.

It's very important that the palette is made up of 256 different colours, because the search will return the first index that matches the colour we've got and then stop. If the colour in palette slot 46 is the same as the colour in palette slot 22, the game won't be able to tell which region is which and invariably mess up.

The land regions get 2 colours each (one for the main body of land and one for the border) and the sea regions get one colour each. We allowed for a maximum of 40 sea regions, which left enough space for 108 land regions. We only use 100 land regions, and that's the limit for the game (and any mods you guys decide to make). Someone asked in a different thread why we didn't have more regions in the game and one of the reasons is the limiting factor of the 256 colour format of the lukmap file.

What else? Nothing's stopping you from editing the names of the provinces, since these are all found in the translation files. These can be found in the loc directory and are completely defenceless, allowing you to hack them to bits to your heart's content.

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"i even suspect Target is coming here to hype things up."
MagyarKhans Cham

[Kraellin]

ok. that's pretty cool. so i could edit the map any old way i wanted to as far as shape and locations of land and sea masses, then alter the 'neighbor' fields to set border crossing abilities, and voila, new continent and seas. sweet :) thanks target!

one question though if: "We only use 100 land regions, and that's the limit for the game..." there are 108 alotted regions for land, why only 100 possible? 2x108=116+40=256. what happened to the other 8 regions?

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[Target]

Yep, that's about the size of it. You'll need to find an application that'll output your adjusted lbm file in a compatible format. We've discovered that Paint SHop Pro says it will but it doesn't really - it tends to screw it up a little bit. You may get lucky and it may work OK. If I come up with anything really useful toolwise, I'll let you know but, as I've said before, all the tools we used for the Total War games are archaic and not exactly focused on user-friendliness.

It'll probably only be 107 land regions because we use the colour in palette index 0 (which I think is the tasteful neon pink colour) as the colour to indicate the dead spots on the map, such as the breaks between sea borders, lakes and bits of unplayable regions that intrude on the map.

There is a reason why there's only 100 regions available for modding. If I'm honest, it's probably down to short-sightedness by the programmer responsible, whoevert that was ... alright it was me.

We've only got 100 land regions in the game because thats all the land regions in the game. We went up to 100 regions, saw it was working, said "Sweet, that's all we need then" and stopped. By we, I mean me.

I'll check to see if anything gets affected if we fire up the last 8 regions and make them available even if we don't use them.

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"i even suspect Target is coming here to hype things up."
MagyarKhans Cham

[Kraellin]

that's cool. target. much thanks :)

i believe we've got an .lbm editor posted somewhere on the .org, so if psp doesnt work, i may try that one. i think it was the file compression in psp that didnt match up with whatever you guys are using. psp .lbm's were larger, for some reason. havent fooled with it much myself yet, but this may inspire me.

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[MagyarKhans Cham]

that looked sophisticated, but its safe in teh hands of the Mizus.

The ordinairy Mongol Wolf will use the hex based maps

using both maps u can determine the map-type and climate when hosting a map. check your ingame mp maplists.

each hex will be an individual region/map

the sea cloours refer to sea areas we will use in teh campaign.

we are still brainstorming. for serious people willingly to peek inside, email our Khan at magyarkhan@hotmail.com

[barocca]

Kraellin
We do indeed have an lbm editor,
it's called GFX2 (Grafix2) and it's downloadable here
http://www.totalwar.org/maps/Tools.shtml

it works with all of the other lbm files in shogun, warlords and medieval - i see no reason why it should not work with this map,

(it's NOT particulary user friendly, if you intend to play with a file and save it to another format FIRST make a "dummy" file to save it to, and overwrite the dummy
- i do this to save to paint(bmp) and fiddle in paint, then make another dummy and use gfx to convert back to lbm format!)
mspaint doesn't muck up the pallette - photoshop can!

====

Thank You very much Target,

i had been puzzling over HOW did the game know which region was scotland...

Knowing those SETPORT:: co-ordinates are the games own co-ordinates is quite usefull, an intrepid person could decipher the games co-oridinate scale by taking a few screenshots of highlighted provinces containing ports and comparing the resultant overlay to the lukmap file...
(fiddle with opacity in photoshop and overlay the images, scaling until you get a match! then mark the ports position on a copy of the lukmap file, do this with 3 or 4 ports and you'll have the co-ord's solved)
meaning you will be able to accurately set a port location on a revised Map!!!

====

kinda embarrassed about the etc now...
- Giljay is the most frequent visitor to the Dungeon, and i was too lazy to go find all the programmers names...

[Kraellin]

ah, the setport. yeah, guess that would be kind of important ;)

yup bar, i got it..the .lbm editor. thanks :)

K.


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http://home.domaindlx.com/takiyama/kraellin/icons-1.gif

[Target]

OK. Had a quick look at the code and unfortunately, adding the tags for additional land regions will break quite a lot of the game. The most obvious ones will be any files your've saved (config files, savegames, etc) and we've tried very hard to make sure the changes we've made so far in the patch don't require you to trash your existing saves. So it looks like it won't happen. Sorry.

If this will help you calculate your new port, castle and origin positions, screen co-ordinates are 16x bigger than those of lukmap.lbm and 8x bigger than those of lukmap2.lbm.

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"i even suspect Target is coming here to hype things up."
MagyarKhans Cham

[Kraellin]

target,

by 'tags', i hope yer talking about those 8 extra provinces mentioned above, yes? that's ok, i'm fairly sure that if i do this i can live with 50 land regions, though i know at some point i'm going to have this kick-ass map that has 51 and it's going to drive me nuts :)

K.


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http://home.domaindlx.com/takiyama/kraellin/icons-1.gif

[Target]

Kraellin

Heh - sorry matey. by tags I mean the variables (enums, if you're a C/C++ programmer) that we use to reference the regions throughout the code.

You still have 100 land regions and 40 sea regions to play with, so there shouldn't be a problem with your 51 land region map - unless you're planning to do something particularly crazy.

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"i even suspect Target is coming here to hype things up."
MagyarKhans Cham

[dclare4]

All I can say is...

MORE REGIONS!!!! BIGGER MAP!!!!

Give me the Northern Marches, the Welsh Marches, East Anglia, Anjou and Maine, Poitou and Picardy and all those dinky city states in Italy and Flanders and Germany!!!

That would be something to squabble over!!!

Gilbert de Clare

[Kraellin]

cool beans. thanks targ-etc. :)

K.


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http://home.domaindlx.com/takiyama/kraellin/icons-1.gif

[Kraellin]

bump for giskard.

K.


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http://home.domaindlx.com/takiyama/kraellin/icons-1.gif

[Moorkh]

Thanks, target http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

This really opens up the way for our own campaigns. However, I don't quite understand the thing with that 100 regions limit - but then I don't understand much about C++ at all *sigh*.
Still, apparently it is possible to use 16bit .lbm files without causing the game to crash. Now is it such a problem allowing the corresponding variable to rise beyond 100 that it causes previous savegames to become unreadable?

[giskard]

Target:

Looks like most of the info you posted was as I had guessed it would but. The only thing you didnt mention that I noticed is colour zero.

I found in my tests that the sea/land border (that purple pink line) must use colour zero or the map doesnt work. Can you confirm this ? I also noticed that the actual colour doesnt matter which would seem to contradict the region rules you outlined above.

Can you clear this up for me please ?

Im currently half way through the setborder numbers on my own campaign having done exactly what you wrote above already. Is it save to simply paste in a lot of random numbers and know they will be ignored or even better leave them out entirely ?

As you know those numbers are a pain. I have 25 land regions and 15 sea regions. Each region has an average of 4 borders. Im sure everybody can work out how many entries that adds up to http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

I have been posting this in the following thread. It should outline what i have done so far.
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000674.html

BTW that thread contains a link posted by wellington to a windows based shareware program that actually saves of lbm files correctly. See the thread for info about its one failing and how to work around it.

Thanks for info, it means i can relax a bit http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

Though the hex charges had me going for a while until i realised it was just how MagyarKhans was doing his campaign hehe.

I have a pic up of the campaign map im working on in my pic of the day on my website. Trouble is, i cannot access my site from here today. Some comp between mine and my site is down and not responding so the routing fails.

Hhehe typical, my own isps dns servers seems to sux big time but my old isps works fine. So heres the pic of the campaign im working on. This one is setup to test thge process.
http://www.respawn.co.uk/modules.php?name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=37

Tip for campaign makers: The lbm file when pasted as a new layer into your terrain image that the players see makes an excellent mask for highlighting regions accurately http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

Giskard


[This message has been edited by giskard (edited 09-26-2002).]

[jeffreyLebowski]

okay...target...so what you're saying is that, using the correct tools, i should be able to take a map of middle earth perhaps (yes, i'm a lotr nerd) and as long as i use less than 100land regions and 50 sea regions, i'm good to?

[Kraellin]

40 sea regions. and then you have to modify all the other stats to make units and stuff work with your new map, but yes, jeffrey.

K.


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http://home.domaindlx.com/takiyama/kraellin/icons-1.gif

[USMCNJ]

two questions
1) how do i make two land masses contect?Like england and france, or spain and africa. I want to conect crete to greece

2) This is a stupid question, but.. Can i just do away with the borders, create one color for all the borders(like pink for the sea) and have room to make 99 more provinces?

[Moorkh]

in answer to one: this is done in the startpos .txt files. Within them, you'll find definitions as to which province borders on which. No need to fiddle with the .lbms for that.

[barocca]

Quote Originally posted by USMCNJ:
two questions
1) how do i make two land masses contect?Like england and france, or spain and africa. I want to conect crete to greece[/QUOTE]

Same Q from me, but for a different reason...
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

The land bridges (ie between Wessex and Flanders) these are "placed" automatically or defined?

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 10-09-2002).]

[barocca]

can't link crete and greece - 2 sea areas to cross, sorry,


[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 10-09-2002).]

[Warriorofmight]

i tryed to change the map i made freisland a bit bigger but then the game crashed!
why?? what have i forgotten i just changed the two lukmaps!