Putting features on the Campaign map (custom tiles)

[Myrddraal]

As I did the directory mapper, I worked through all the files in the world folder and came across the following files and folders in sons of mars:

custom_tiles_db.txt
and the folder custom_tiles
with a map.rmw in it.

After some playing around, success: This battle took place just inside gaulish territory to the north of Rome....


You can see the possiblities, with this, you can now make ports villages wonders and mines appear on the map...

How to do it:

1 Using the latest patch: use the battle editor to select the area of the map you want to edit. Edit the terrain and save it as temp. It doesn't matter if you don't place any armies, it will come up with an error but it will still save the map.

2 Go to data\world\maps\battle\custom\temp and copy the map.wfc file.

3 Go to data\world\maps\campaign\campaign
where campaign is the campaign you want to edit and make a new folder called cutom_tiles. Paste the map.wfc file in there.

4 Make a new text file called custom_tiles_db.txt in data\world\maps\campaign\campaign. Write the following text:

map.wfc	x	y	map.wfc

Where x and y are the co-ordinates on the map you want your new tile to be applied to.

Delete map.rmw and launch.

I haven't finished working out the syntax yet, I don't know if both bits there need to read map.wfc, but I think the first one definately does because I got an error when I changed it. I do know that the above format definately works.

I don't know about you guys but I'm very happy about this, its going to be a huge help for my Wheel of Time mod for making the isle of tar valon and shayol ghul.

But for realism mods, you can now make wonders appear on the tile below the wonder or something, and you can now make maps for ports and villages.

[Lord Adherbal]

excellent, this is very usefull :D

[eadingas]

So THAT's what it does! I've always thought it's the other way around (ie. it takes the data from campaign map and makes a battle based on that), so I never bothered to check if it can be changed...
Cool. That should stop the constant 'To Wonder or not to Wonder' debate at EB :)

[Myrddraal]

I'm surprised more people haven't picked up on this, I'm going to find it really useful, but then, I already said that.

[Simetrical]

Wow, this is great!

-Simetrical

[Myrddraal]

I realised that this had slipped to the abyiss of page 6 and it contains some usefull info.

[eadingas]

One thing noticed in testing: custom tiles override settlements. So if you put a custom tile where there is a settlement, it disappears (unless you put a settlement in the editor, but it will never change shape or grow)

[Myrddraal]

Hm, thats a pain, so if you place a custom tile on top of a settlement it dissapears of the campaign map as well? Even if you place a settlement on the map? Thats very odd, because the way I worked this out was in an out of date file for the prologue where they had a custom tile for a settlement...

[Epistolary Richard]

This looks dead good. One question, are the buildings (such as the Colossus of Rhodes in your example) solid or insubstantial?

[Myrddraal]

Well I haven't tested with the wonder models, but I'm guessing they are solid, from what I've seen of them, they have a battle and non battle version, from looks they appear the same, I guess one might be buggy, I haven't tested it though...

[eadingas]

No, it stays on campaign map. Just in battle map, it's whatever you put in custom tile, not the dynamic city...

[Myrddraal]

Hm, I would have though that placing a city on the map would avoid that...

[eadingas]

But you can only put a city of certain type and level in the editor, can't you? And I'm not sure if it'd be tied to anything that's done to the city in campaign (growth, buildings, etc.)

[Myrddraal]

I don't know, I haven't used the editor in quite a bit. Have you actually tested it? Like placing a village in the battle editor and a city on the campaign map?

[Badger1815]

That's indeed what's happend.

The campaing seems to keep the underlay from the custom tile & puts the dynamic city over it.

I've tried putting the Tarquinii tile from the sons of mars where Alexandria is located & I got an egytian style city with a Roman underlay.

Not putting a city on the custom tile seems to crash the game...

grtz
Badger

[Myrddraal]

Excellent, so you can make custom maps with cities on them in campaign... The historical cities mod people will be happy. Have you tried placing other models on the map at the same time? Like the wonders which are meant to be in cities??

[eadingas]

- Ariminum (don't mind the weird light, I'm playing with palette :)
It does seem possible after all...
The underlay is a bit of a problem. I see only solution is to make cities have the same plan through all their development, so they never grow (or shrink) in battlemap, or change plans as they change culture. This may not be a lot of drawback, but still can for some.
Also, I got an interesting bug: there is a "window into space" in the side of the hill, where roadjoiners are. I wonder what can be the cause of that? Through that window I can see the city from below (upskirt of pretty roman females etc.) - seems like there is a texture missing somewhere...
Oh, and the roads don't show unless you put them there in the editor.

[Badger1815]

That's probably a problem with the road-joiner item.
Don't know if these can be omitted from the settlement plan to solve this problem.

Giving a city a specific plan set is possible, zo the underlay can remain the same through an evolution. For historic cities, this should be acceptable.

[Myrddraal]

Hm, the roads are a bit of a problem, as this means that they won't appear when you build them. I guess the solution is to put the highest level roads in to start with, you can understand that there would be better roads around a city than in the countryside...

[eadingas]

This solution is anyway only good for cities which are well developed by the time the mod starts. Since the city plan can't change, it's no good for settlements that we'd like to have natural surroundings but start out as village and grow to huge... OTOH, this means we can have a decent net of roads coming out of a big, rich city, not just the four poor roads that we have to deal with in vanilla...

BTW, have you (or anyone) tried playing a battle in a tile _next to_ custom one? Do all the features remain as you look outside the battlefield?

[Myrddraal]

No I haven't, thats a good point.

I have another question though, has anyone had any wierd effects at the borders of maps. I know that the map only goes so far, it doesn't save whats in the distance, it only saves the battlefield, the rest is generated from the campaign map, so what I mean it, does the edge of the battlefield fit smootly with the rest of the world, or is it sudden... I think it does it smoothly, but I've only tested with fairly flat maps in flat areas.

[Simetrical]

The entire 2 km × 2 km area of the battle map is visually continuous.

By the way, what's up with the plan names listed in descr_strat? Could we use those?

-Simetrical

[PROMETHEUS]

I have folowed the tutorial on the letter but it didn't work I tried to place hte real piramids in the 181 13 and it wasn't there , was still always the strategical map piramid....

[Epistolary Richard]

EDIT: I've now got it to work so I've removed the pictures to make the page easier to view (though I've kept the one with the problem).

I've spent most of the day trying this and unfortunately I'm doing something wrong as well. Can anyone tell me what my mistake is?


Step 1) I picked a campaign tile as a base, welcome to 243, 53

snip

Step 2) I put a distinctive feature there
snip

Step 3) I saved it as "test", this created a new file called "test" which contained a map.wfc, which I put in my test_campaign folder (note the absence of a map.rwm



snip

Step 4) I added a custom_tiles_db.txt copied from the Sons of Mars campaign and altered for the new coordinates

snip

Step 5) To see if it had any effect I moved a convenient rebel, Captain Caspar, to 243, 53

snip

Step 6) I launched the game and went to the test campaign, Captain Caspar had moved. I sent an army to attack him, however on the battle map the 'distinctive feature' does not appear.

snip
snip

I don't think it's a problem with the campaign as Caspar has been moved. I could be placing it somewhere else, but AFAICT the co-ordinates match. It could be a problem with the map.wfc file, however I've tried it with the .wfc in the Sons of Mars campaign and the Teutonberg forest with no difference in results.

So I'm stumped...

[Myrddraal]

Wierd...

Try sending me the files I will try to work out what you did wrong... Or maybe what I did wrong from my description.

Send me a PM when you send them

[eadingas]

Do you have -show_err on? I noticed sometimes there's a problem with these custom tiles that doesn't show up any way unless you have -show_err and quit the game.

[Epistolary Richard]

Unfortunately, there's no error message.

[PROMETHEUS]

I had right the same problem , I tried to substituite the piramids with the correct ones but didn't work , may be there something else that we should delete or edit?

[Myrddraal]

Hm, maybe it would help if I uploaded a sort of demo, one which you know works and can base urs on....

[eadingas]

Hmm other than problems with formatting in custom_tiles_db.txt (tabs instead of spaces? unicode instead of ansi?) I can't think of anything wrong with this. I got perfect results without any problems.
Do you remember removing map.rwm from base and campaign folders?