Mapmaking help

[Fenixx]

OK. 'nuff said. Wasn't trying to be alarmist!

[macsen rufus]

Phew, and here was me worrying I'd let the Al Qaeda manual slip out somehow

[Fenixx]

Sometimes strange things happen when selecting files for uplaod in a hurry. :)

[Raz]

Heh... just completely contradict my post Macsen....

[macsen rufus]

well, I had to give the proof to when Fenixx said opinions are contradictory

And I didn't answer this one:

I read Photoshop has some problems changing the intended palette. If I use it
will I face same issue and need to adapt, or is that an old issue.

I had problems with UP doing this (hence me shouting at it a lot ), but with Photoshop you can edit colour tables directly (can be a bind if you need to do 256 colours, but you shouldn't need to...) and also you can save them to retrieve later. So I have colour tables lined up for Lukup maps, minimaps, various faction shields, reviewpanel images, info_pics etc. It's then a simple process, if you need to work in RGB mode at all, to reload the palette at the point where you convert back to indexed. The main reason I need to use RGB is for anything involving layers (which don't work with indexed images) or subtle colour changes, lighting effects etc etc.

You can also set up custom palettes with some colours "forced", so if you need to create a new palette, you can at least pick up a "template" which has certain values already set (eg background colour for BIFs, faction-colour fluorescents etc) then PS can fill the rest as it sees fit.

So you shouldn't have any indexing problems with PS as long as you're organised and lay the foundations as you go.

[Fenixx]

O.K.
Some of the trailblazers' posts (Y2002) left me with the impression that only 256-1 colors (the one being reserved for the purply-pink borders) total could be used, and in fact had to be to get the full 108+40 regions. Am I misunderstanding something??? (I know they were trying to decipher mechanics at the time. Its a nice history of modding MTW. They sure have left a legacy.)

[macsen rufus]

Ooops -- I did mean 107 not 108

Index 0 = pink, Index 1 = something else or possibly just unused, Index 2 = province 1, Index 3 = province 1 border, etc etc, with 216 to 255 being sea regions.

Note in the original MTW/VI palette the last four colours are the same, and need to be changed to make all 40 sea regions work - I've done this and it's fine - used the extra seas to divide the Black Sea into three and add a new zone along the Lebanese coast. It's the index position rather than the colour itself that defines the province association - some of the colours are actually repeated (how, I don't know...) so you may need to tweak the final map using the appropriate brush from the index - BMPs do know which index no something is despite being the same colour as another index number. (The actual colours are more for our convenience than the game's...)