LUKMAP and Startpos

[naut]

How are the locations for Castles, ports and unit origins found in the LUKMAP and then defined in the startpos?

[R'as al Ghul]

Good question.
Barocca has done all that for our mod. Iirc he's also the one who found out most things about it. I guess you've to search the Alchemist Lab to find info on it. Here's a start:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=12814

[macsen rufus]

Hi Rythmic, here's the trick:

You need to open either a LUKMAP or MapTex file in a graphics package that has axes/rulers. I use Photoshop for this, as the rulers to top and side of the image can be set to read in pixels.

Use this to locate where you want the castle / origin / port to be, read off the pixel coordinates to give an (x,y) pair. Once you have this in pixels multiply the figures by 16 (if you're using Lukmap or Maptex) or by 8 (if you're using Lukmap2 or Maptex2), and these will the the game coordinates you need to enter in SetCastle, SetOrigin and SetPort.

Just in case you have a different graphics package with different conventions, (0,0) is the top left corner. If you have a few to do, i find it helps to add a pair of guides, one vertical, one horizontal, which act as movable cross-hairs and "fix" a marker onto your axes for reading off. If you're anything like me you'll keep misreading it and end up with castles miles out to sea

Ports also need an orientation figure (1-8), which I have scribbled down at home not here, but are easily worked out by comparing a vanilla startpos and map.

Edit: whilst your at this end of things, if you haven't worked it out yet, in the SetNeighbours entries, land regions must be defined first, then sea regions, and the first sea region defined as a neighbour seems to be the one where ships are launched and troops depart from - so it's a good idea to match this entry with your port location to save confusion. I recall this was an issue in the last STW beta I tried, but has probably been sorted by now.

[naut]

Multiply by 16 and 8, genius! Useful link, bookmarked for reference!

Thanks R'as and macsen!

And before I forget are there any constrictions on the Maptex file, as in it must be a .TGA and are any aspects of it to be defined anywhere?

I have my own one for BD, and it crashes when I ported it over to an unmodded version of VI to test how it looked.

Edit: I've got the SetNeighbours entries set up, the only thing to do was the castle, origin and port locations, but I couldn't figure out how they got 12000x4000 reference etc in a 2000x4000 pixel map. First sea region is the one of embarkation? Thanks for that, very handy tip.

[macsen rufus]

The MapTex is probably the least troublesome part - all you have to do is make sure it's (they are....) the same size as your LukMap, and it's the same image format as the TGA battle flags, which is 24 bit depth, RGB mode (I think...), so if you've done those already you'll know what does and doesn't work

Debugging a new campmap is horrendous, as you have so few clues to go on.

Some random things I found which I now believe to be rules (sometimes did two things at once and got a breakthrough ):

* make your LukMap sea boundaries contiguous (ie all pixels join edge-to-edge, not corner to corner - the best way to test this (if you have Photoshop at least) is with the "magic wand" set to tolerance of 1. Once it is correct a single wand will highlight ALL of your connecting pink. Any corner-to-corner joins will break the selection.
* check your palette - then check it again - then go back and check it once more. You are now ready to start checking your palette .... (I hope you get the idea ) This applies to the BIF maps as well. Be very careful when/if you are converting between RGB and indexed mode.
* MTW and MTW-VI use DIFFERENT PALETTES
* A useful trick to testing palette/province numbering: with indexed images you can usually select a colour to be transparent - in Photoshop you do this via IMAGE>MODE>COLOUR TABLE - with the colour table open there will be an eyedropper beside the palette to select your transparency. Run through all the colours from index 2 onwards. The palette is structured so that it goes province1, province1 border, province2, province2 border, and the sea regions start at index 216, but do not have borders. If everything is well, you will see your provinces go transparent in order, each one followed by its border. This is great for seeing if the colours are out of order, or you have missed one side of a border where provinces meet etc
* I made a couple of "palette pics" for use with the Lukmap.bmp and Minilukup.bmp which means I can easily select indexed colour from the palette pic to use in the real image (saves a lot of time resetting RGB values, and guarantees you can only use the colours in the palette, and you can see their positions in the table). If they'd help I could send you a copy, along with Photoshop colour tables for the Lukmap and Miinilukmap. (Edit: this offer is open to all, btw - I can also supply LMM colourtable files for MTW-VI palettes).

[naut]

Thanks for the quick response.