ANCIENT TW - MAPS

[dimitrios the samian]

A thread about Maps .
From day dot I have been a big Hellenic Total war fan & I continued on supporting Macsens work in releasing the Bronze Age & the others that followed .
After a very long hiatus , we have seen the Beta of Eastern Empires & how fantastic it is .
From the beginning I found that Alexandrian Map difficult on my eyes , distracting & disorientating especially if playing a Faction in the Hellenic sector .
I realize to others it is not a problem , but for me the Campaign map gives me headaches .

I quickly knocked up this typo to give my thoughts on how it should look .
All those interested , please comment & share your thoughts , nothing is in concrete as yet .
cheers

[macsen rufus]

That map has all the right areas on

I've tried a similar map to see if I could get it to line up with the LBM overlay, unfortunately it was too disimilar in terms of projection, and it would be a very complex re-alignment (not to mention that the modern coastlines won't all align even if the projection was fixed). The only way forward would be to redraw the overlay... and for this, as I said in another thread somewhere, is a BIG job. 'First, set aside three months...' - okay, this was for starting entirely from scratch, and allowing for necessary de-bugging, much of which shouldn't need to be repeated, but even so it would take quite a while.

So, probably do-able, but not quick

[Leith]

Wow! That looks great dimitrios! As I said earlier, it would be a huge loss to this community if you were to stop modding MTW. For the record, I didn't know you helped MAC in releasing the Bronze Age mod. You are full of surprises aren't you ?

[dimitrios the samian]

Breifly , its like this Leith ....

Mac did all the hard work on the Bronze Age Mod himself ...

It all started when we met , bcoz of our love of "Hellenic Total War" and the excitement surrounding their next project the "Bronze Age Mod"

I was full of ideas but very green , I actually got started by making simple Bif for the Brothel Review Panel Icon & macsen liked it , it was used in HTW & again in Bronze & we are still using it .
It went on from their & I continued supporting & encouraging him "to keep the modding mac rolling along" hehe .

Anyway , fast forward decade or so and I'm finally able to contribute ( despite my slow start) in a graphical way , with my newly discovered skill in creating & re-skinning troops .

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edit .....

Mac ,,, so sorry my friend
I had no idea , Maps take so long , I wish we could have did all this 10years ago and not now .

But Im patient and in these coming three months we will see many re-skinned and completely new troop types !

Just take your time , i understand your busy schedule .

The final result will be so very valuable were perhaps far into the distant future the Bronze Age/Biblical pieces can finally be put into their proper Scenario .

Psss ... mac , My history on Roman Britain has tripled from nothing to a little .
Leith ... no worries mate my modding is only in its infancy & I have no plans to go 3D .

[Stazi]

I like maps so if you provide me with TGA and province breakdown/outline I'll see what I can do. Making a map that works from the engine point of view (LBM overlay + startpos province list with all connections) it's not that hard or time consuming. I've made one from the scratch for Middle-Earth mod in about a week. Filling startpos file with all the details like terrain, income, goods, rebels factions, etc. for each province it's a different story. It needs historical knowledge which I don't have.

[dimitrios the samian]

Thanks Stazi ...
That would be fantastic !!

[macsen rufus]

I've made a quick new backdrop for those who suffer motion-sickness with the original



It still needs province names adding, and there are no topographical features except 'sea' and 'land'.

@Stazi - appreciate the offer, but if it comes to that there are more things I have in mind to do, so it's not going to be that straightforward

[Stazi]

@Stazi - appreciate the offer, but if it comes to that there are more things I have in mind to do, so it's not going to be that straightforward

I know what you mean. Map can change during the process and even after when new ideas pop up. It's not easy to describe someone what you have in mind. Anyway, let me know if you'll need any help with it.

[dimitrios the samian]

Fantastic !!
That is a very nice layout mac ....
It has a much much better size & perspective .
Will you be adding a few shades of yellows & browns to portray the desert & mountains ?
Even as is , for my eyes its a huge improvement .


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Stazi Oftopic .....

Some years ago I played an Italia Wars Mod & it also suffered again from very poor campaign map .
It was even set out upside down !!
If you could produce a map or just modify our existing map Italy to suit it , that would be brilliant .
This small project would be much easier as all the info is already in place .
& again thank you for your offer to help Stazi .
Any help we get here is a bonus .

cheers

cheers

[macsen rufus]

That is a very nice layout mac ....
It has a much much better size & perspective .
Will you be adding a few shades of yellows & browns to portray the desert & mountains ?
Even as is , for my eyes its a huge improvement .

It's only the background that has changed - the size and perspective are all exactly the same. It's probably the effect of losing all the text and other details that make it look like there's more space.

Anyway, it is a bit too bland so far, though it plays okay. I do intend to get some topography into it, though I'm not sure how yet. And I think the sea is a bit too blue, as well

It also needs the rivers putting back in - that's the easy bit, terrain will be a a touch harder, but it's an excuse to play with Photoshop for a while. I basically used the LBM overlay as the template because that all lined up correctly and it makes it easy to select areas to work on which can be carried through to new layers. Anyway, I have some ideas to try out for restoring a bit of variety...

[macsen rufus]

OK, I've spent the day playing with photoshop and have a new backdrop map. Here's the result:








I've ZIPped up the maps and posted them to my Google Drive, you can get them here.

To install them, go to Textures/campmap/ALEX and replace the existing files MapTex.tga and MapTex2.tga with these new ones

[western]

Love the new map backgrounds Macsen. They inspired me to get the latest download and here's a funny thing: I'm getting a crash on Successors campaign regardless of which faction I pick, When I end turn one it says thinking for a bit, then CTD before the faction symbols come up. But the really funny thing is it gives me a crash report each time as follows:

Medieval_TW.exe caused an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in module Medieval_TW.exe at 0023:004025FA
EAX=00000000 EBX=06FABBD8 ECX=4E1A0A90 EDX=0000005A ESI=00000057
EDI=4E1A0A90 EBP=0019C07C ESP=0019C018 EIP=004025FA FLG=00010246
CS=0023 DS=002B SS=002B ES=002B FS=0053 GS=002B
0023:004025FA (0x00000000 0x00000944 0x00000000 0x06FABBB0) Medieval_TW.exe
0023:00402972 (0x00000001 0x0000008C 0x000001A9 0x00000028) Medieval_TW.exe
0023:0062EEF0 (0x00000001 0x67154360 0x00000000 0x00000000) Medieval_TW.exe
0023:00646110 (0x000002E1 0x005FCAAC 0x74856760 0x7485F600) Medieval_TW.exe

I didn't remember MTW1 giving crash reports. Other campaigns working fine and I can't spot anything obviously missing. Any ideas??

[macsen rufus]

Hi Western,

Glad to hear you like the new map - after playing on it for a while, I think even I now prefer it

As for the crash, I don't have any definite ideas, and I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently techy to make any sense of the error report. Maybe a quick googling of "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" might shed some light...

But for now, let's see what we do know:

1. It's ONLY Successors campaign
2. It's at the end of turn one BEFORE any king portraits show up
3. It affects ALL factions (assuming you've checked all - this is probably the first thing to confirm)

Things I would check:

1. Custom battles - do these work for all factions in Successors era?
2. At campaign start, can you safely reveal the whole map (either with .matteosartori. or G if you play in the -ian mode)?
3. I doubt it's any different but have you tried it with both versions of the map (I have used the new map in my development copy, but not in my v0.91 install, so I can't rule it out as 'known to work' for me yet)?
4. Can you switch to rebels? (Again, assuming -ian mode, and based on it occurring before any faction starts 'thinking')
5. Could it be Steam-related (I assume you've fixed the resolution as per your issue with the Beta install)?

If you could check those, it should help us narrow down what's happening


Edit to add: it seems to relate to Java, from what I've found on a quick googling - I doubt very much that the fix will be in the Java end of things, though. It's probably something within the scenario that's throwing the exception. Did it leave an error report file on your desktop, and if so, what's its file name?

[western]

Macsen
Thanks for those suggestions. I was getting nowhere so did a reinstall, which fixed it. So I think it's a case of self-inflicted wound. I had previously tried to follow the install instructions about what to delete. This time I deleted nothing before install - and it worked. So I must previously have taken out something that was needed by the Successors scenario, but not the other two. No idea what that could be, but as long as it continues to work, I'm not going to worry!

[dimitrios the samian]

Nice map macsen
I been away for a few days at a rural retreat ..... able to keep up but unable to post as the key function on the old fone has crashed .
Anyway , this new map will make it so much easier on the eye for me .
& I'm glad westerns problem has been solved & not a serious one affecting all installs .

Just curious mac .....
Is it possible to bring the Hellenic overlay from the right side of the map over to the left ?
So it sits above/beside Greece , it would be the icing on the cake for me & help with this disorder I have re:orientation ....
cheers

[macsen rufus]

Good to hear it's cleared up, Western. I've now tried the new map in my 0.91 install without problems, so I'm just as mystified as before.

DtS:

Is it possible to bring the Hellenic overlay from the right side of the map over to the left ?

It is in principle, but would require the LBM overlay to be re-done, too. But there's no real reason to stick to the old layout if the original map is no longer being used - and it would also tie in with the other changes I'm considering as per the reply to Stazi above. So maybe for the v1.0 release there may be some more improvements...