Mapmaking help

[macsen rufus]

Hi Fenixx:

1) depends on your graphics package, but I find that the Photoshop "clone stamp" gives near-perfect results with practice - just copy some similar landscape over the letters. Use soft-edged brushes, look for similar landcsape features etc. On the map I did you'll find extra forests, mountains etc in places they didn't used to be

Another way is to add a layer, fill it with copied landscape, then use a layer mask to fade that from opaque to transaparent over the text, then remerge your layers - even better results than the clone stamp, but will take at least twice as long to do.

2) I haven't tried deviating from either - note that even the Viking map maintains the actual size of the main campaign map, and its effective playable area has been reduced by having an extensive "dead zone" along the eastern edge. It's one of those areas where "trying it out" entails far too much work to be worth the hassle when we already know that a given size and aspect ratio does work. It might work, but if it doesn't then you're a month down the road and starting from scratch again

If you have a map that doesn't fill the full area, then just give it a big pink border on LukUp and fill the same area on the MapTex with tiled "wood.tga" - or even make your own texture for the backdrop

[Fenixx]

Mac,
Thanx for advice on 1). Hadn't tried that yet, although I'll have to translate that to GIMP.
RE: 2). Obviously, you just used the VI map, straight up for 43AD, right? But for Punic, I assume you did a cut and/or crop and resized upward preserving same aspect ratio, correct? Just wondering.
One quick question: The only time , in mapmaking, I need worry about palettes, really, when using the LMM path (new maps) is when retouching the LUKUPs, right?

[macsen rufus]

The 43AD MapTex is slightly altered - I blotted out "Francland" (using the clone stamp) where the new continental provinces are, and I added an extra sea border where I split off the "Mar Germanicum", but left the majority of names in place.

The Punic map was done by cropping and rescaling the MapTex with constrained proportions, but the LukUp was redone using LMM. I have been using LMM2 (I couldn't get LMM3 to work, and haven't tried v4 yet). You need to have the correct palette for your LMM to output correctly, but that should be bundled with the LMM package - I had to make some changes to the palette that came with LMM2, but I think that was originally developed for MTW basic, not VI. You also get a second shot at sorting the palette if you convert to LBM by using Mithel ImageConvertor.

When retouching, make sure you do it in indexed mode, then you can only use colours from the palette, and won't introduce any "new" colours due to mixing or anti-aliasing etc. And it's better to work on the 2000x1500 version (approx) and double its size for the Lukup2 than the other way round