Impassable terrain in Battlemap editor

**Jimmytwohand** · 06-29-2005, 14:03

Is this the best forum for queries of this type? Im slowly racking up a list such as how to rotate/delete terrain features once they are placed or whether there is an undo command like in the MTW editor (an absolute godsend that).........
I cant seem to find any resources for the editor except the v basic docs on the .com that someone directed me to.

**Epistolary Richard** · 06-29-2005, 16:11

Yep, this is the best forum for questions about modding the game. I've used the editor a little, as I imagine others have, but there hasn't been much research about it (one is here, another here).

As you learn your way around the battle editor, you may find it useful to write a few tutorials as to anything you learn to do that the editor documents don't cover (we in the modding community are reliant on each other teaching us what they learn so we don't all have to reinvent the wheel). If you write a tutorial or a guide then you can post it in the Scriptorium.

If you want to make the impassable hills a reality, then I would suggest sending a PM to dsyrow1 and ask if there's any easy way he can help you do it (maybe by making the basic model you need, which you can then place in the battle editor). He's very busy putting the Eternal City together, but he may have time to help and I know a Thermopylae map would be of great interest within the community.
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**Jimmytwohand** · 06-29-2005, 16:42

That first thread you gave looks great. I feel it will take a little time to get to grips with this thing. When i do, i may well ask for some help from the experienced modders here to get a good Thermo map going. Once more into the breach........

Thanks Richard.

**SigniferOne** · 06-29-2005, 20:40

I should note something here. The fact that I have created custom versions of hills, with custom versions of textures and all that, does not impact the "passability" of the hills in any way. Think back to vanilla, there are no impassible areas, except for buildings. That, then, is your solution, the only one that I have thought up: if you want area X to be impassible, put some walls around it so that the soldiers cannot go through, and then make the textures of the walls transparent. Bingo, instant impassible area.

Here's another, more subtle but more elegant approach: for something like Thermopylae, where there are no settlements, you can use the wall borders. Ok this is how it works: the border { } section in the settlement plan describes the wall circuit for that settlement plan (city, presumably), upon which the game will automatically insert walls. The actual walls are not specified, only that border circuit, which is how you can upgrade those walls and have different wall models but the same city plan.

Now: Thermopylae map will not have a city, but! You can STILL use those borders to define the boundaries. Here's the trick I've discovered: the Z (height) coordinate of a border segment is irrelevant, which means you can place border segment 1 at height 0, and another at height 100, and the game will still link them together. So in general, you could just put that border around the hills, to make them impassible, and then simply make the Z coordinate of all of the border joints to be -500, so that no walls will ever be visible!

Finally, you may be asking, "But if the walls are not on the ground, that area will be passible, will it not?" No! The way RTW works is, the border boundary is IMPASSIBLE, regardless of how high or how low the walls are in the game above or below the ground. So, there you go! Create a nice "X" (Or > < )shaped border circuit using Adherbal's wall editor (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=49292), then make the ground map in the Battle Editor that fits into the walls, then finally make the walls invisible by putting them underground, and you're DONE!

**Jimmytwohand** · 06-30-2005, 19:34

Wow! That is fantastic information!

Thank you. I decided to get around the problem by using the actual thermopylae area (136-138x, 61-64y) which includes a v wide plain between the mountains and coast. I hoped one of the developers might have had the same urge and already included a nice Thermopylae area as an Easter egg. I settled on 138x and 62y and added a new bay reaching inland to form a choke point and extended a spur of hill to border it on the other side. This spur reached down to just the unplayable side of the infamous "red line" meaning it formed the other impassable barrier. This is not very satisfactory as it does not allow the all important flanking attack and i would have had to simulate the retreat of the greeks guarding it by bringing them on to the map as reinforcements followed in short order by the persians. It did allow a nice plain on either side for deployment however. Now, new possibilities are opened up.

I see someone else has had the same idea about this historical battle and ill post a link to this thread there. This is v. valuable information. Thank you once again.