Making a new campaign map.

[Red Spot]

oops ..

forgat the link to the .zip

my map;
http://members.home.nl/redspot/RSMapRTW.zip


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[Makanyane]

Hi Red Spot, you appear to have a problem with too much sea.
I just experimented with your campaign and painted the map_heights.tga all 'black' (RGB 1,1,1 or greyer - don't use 0,0,0) and it generated map.rwm then. It's a shame as I thought you might have narrow enough and complex enough shapes for it to work...
See here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=66332
for some discussion on the issue. Try narrowing the 'seas' at some points, you might get away with slight narrowing but may need to actually let points of adjoining land areas touch so you get 'land-bridge' effect (or completely physically dividing areas off). You only need to change the map_heights.tga to experiment to get to something workable as you don't have ports you can ignore map_regions.tga for now. If tweaking sea areas doesn't work you might just have to make it to a smaller scale.

btw I only tested it as far as getting the map.rwm; it gave KTM and error about NightBattle trait after that.

[Red Spot]

Thank you very much Makanyane ..;)

I'd never had come to that my map only has slightly more waterpixels than the vanilla but in precentage I guess its smaller ..

Thing is, I want to create a sort of part Iland-battle, part long stretches of land, cliffs, rocks, etc I dont need, but I do like to make crossing over more than just having to have been in a ship (why I tried to keep some deep_sea in the middle of the rivers

I'll check the link you gave me and see how much can be done about the problem without having to revert to really altering the map ..

EDIT 1: just added a few patches of land near the center of map and it worked ..

now I'm thinking about enlarging the map as its seems by dropping in a few "rocks along the coastline" I can not only make my map larger but also make it a bit nicer to the eye ...

EDIT 2: got the previous map to work (it still CTD'ed when I viewed a settlement not set up in descr_strat), so I decided to make a quick and dirty conversion of it to where the same map 50% bigger has the east and west oceans split, seems the aproach worked as I now have about the same water on a much larger map ..

didnt come without a problem ..
map.rwm was generated, the loadinbar appeared and when just 1/2 finished loading I still get a CTD
the descr_strat is only altered for the positions of the amies, the map.rwm file is generated so the tga's and water% are ok, and any other file was ok before and stayed unaltered

anyone have an idea what can cause this??
I've been through all files like 3 times now but cant seem to find a thing wrong with them ..


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[Makanyane]

If it was perhaps more than half way along the loading bar it might be to do with radar maps, did you resize them again to match map_regions? What first post in tutorial says on that is actually wrong, too large a radar_map will crash game at I thought about 2/3rds way along loading bar. You can just leave old ones in or for later patch versions delete them entirely.

You can't edit posts as you are currently a junior member, I will try and merge your posts later if I find right button... If you disappear into oblivion as a result of my attempt I apologise most sincerely!

EDIT: merge appears to have worked, yay, I knew I'd get the hang of this eventually....

[Red Spot]

Thanks for the edit and reply Makanyane ..

You mean the tutorial is wrong where is says that the radar2 map has to be 2* the size map_regions is??

As iirc that is exactly what I did, resize the original map to be 2* my maps size ..

I'll be tempering with it right now ..;)


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[Red Spot]

nope that wasnt it, I resized the map to be the size of my map_regions but it seems to make no difference, the crash comes at the same time ..


well I'll be widening the crack in my scull tomorrow ...


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[Makanyane]

it says:

radar_map1.tga
- This is the minimap for the campaign. It should be the same size as map_regions.tga

which is true if map is same-ish size as original but not if you have much larger map_regions.tga than original, which I think you do now!

If you are using RTW 1.5 or BI 1.6 you can safely just delete radar_maps (re-name them to something else), and see it it loads then...

if that is problem you can re-instate them later by just making radar_map1 a proportionate but lesser size than regions and making radar_map2 twice the size of the new smaller version of r_m1.

[Red Spot]

Than I dont think its the radarmap, as I'm on v1.5 (have BI so actually 1.6) and already deleted radar1 in order to get my entire map to show on the radarmap ..

could it possibly still be the amount of water??

I'm of to work but'll see if modding the amount of sea has any impact when I get home ..


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[Red Spot]

Dont recall having informed you about my middle name ...
its ... "Idiot!" .....


Almost went nuts as I could just take my map and, 1 2 3 I had quick and dirty working slighty smaller version, so I was 100% sure the files where fine, but no matter what the darn huge map didnt load ..
Ended up again thru a few tutorials including the one you linked me to, up to the point where there is mentioned that the size of a map would reach its limit at 1021*1021(map_heights), that made me hurt myself as my map_heights is 1201*735 ...


yet an other mystery solved ..:P


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[Gandalf the White]

whenever I load up RTW and try to play my mod it goes back to the previous screen! HELP!!

[Makanyane]

Gandalf the White, are you asking here because you have just tried making a new campaign map? Anyway you should refer to the modders guide to CTD's. (what you have is known as a KTM = Kick back To Menu)

Instead of making this tutorial thread of infinite length it would be better if questions not related to a specific point in the tutorial were posted as new threads in the Modding Questions forum.

For some general advice see here. Please note the bit about information to include when asking question:

What game are you modding? (RTW or BI) Which patch version? (eg 1.2 or 1.5)
Are you modding a released mod that you have downloaded? If so please state which.
Explain what you did last, eg. added region, removed faction, made complete new map etc.
Confirm that you have -show_err on your shortcut and state if it is giving a message or not.
If you are getting a message please quote it.

and welcome to the forums...

[Gandalf the White]

sorry now it is working. I redid the tutorial and it works fine is there one about deleting regions and making a whole new campaign map.

[Makanyane]

Don't think there is a tutorial for deleting regions but I did an answer for some-one else on it before:

Open map_regions.tga and in your image editor find the colour in RGB value of the province you want to remove, write that down, then paint over all that region with the colour of the province you want to take it over (making sure you cover city and port pixels too)

Use edit, find, to look up the RGB value you wrote down in descr_regions.txt, write down the region name of the province and delete it's entire entry from descr_regions.txt. Look up that region name in descr_strat and delete it's entire settlement entry - if there are watchtowers specified for it at the bottom of strat file, either delete them or re-assign them to the province that is taking it over, delete it's entry there if it has one. Search for the region name in following files in campaign folder: descr_mercenaries.txt, descr_events.txt, and descr_win_condititions.txt, if it exists in any of those delete it.

If game runs with background script (don't think MM does) search that for deleted region as well and delete / modify sections as appropriate.

You'll still have armies around that used to garrison cities, that won't cause immediate problem but you'll probably want to move them in the end - and your one big province will end up with all on-map resources for the deleted regions, so you might want to change that in the end.

Back up everything before fiddling.

If you are just deleting them to make map simpler before re-designing then there may be simpler ways of going about that.

As for making new campaign map that is largely what this tutorial is about. Various techniques have been described elsewhere, please refer to the index to the tutorials here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/local_links.php?catid=70
'using satellite imagery for map making' may interest you.

[ole-warhammer]

Plz help me !! I am a n00b,I know. But I want to make an Warhammer mod (it is an old mod, but it is dead. I will make a new one)

For people who play warhammer, they know that the warhammer world is very different than the real world (i am trying to make the old world) but how do you make it?? I don't understand any thing :P

[Makanyane]

welcome to the forum ole-warhammer, if you are interested in a war-hammer mod you should talk to Jubal Barca who was last person seen in charge of one. As far as creating new map is concerned, this tutorial should help, there is also a thread about creating new map heights here in scriptorium which would be useful for fantasy map, and there are some recent how to start map threads in Modding Questions. Read all the mapping tutorials and recent questions then post any specific question in Modding Questions and any recruitment / mod proposals in Mod Discussion.

[ole-warhammer]

Thanks :)

[Red Spot]

just wasted 3 hours on some fun stuff ...

when your game freezes (not CTD or KTM) its probably that you have to little fertile tiles in a region, just a single extra low fertile pixel in your map_groundtypes can make the diff. between freeze or not ....

Edit;
seems to be a bit more to it ...
the map I'm working on has a lot of low mountain wich has been ok up untill now
I'm working on say roughly the last 1/3 of my map wich has relativly little rocks, if I add 1/2 the rocks in the map_groundtype file everything is fine, add close to all and it does generate a map.rwm but freezes, add it all and all I get is a CTD ...

weird thing is these regions dont even have 1/2 the mountain as some others, wich really makes me think there is a sort of maximum to the amount of non-fertile tiles you can have on your map...
/edit

Edit2;
Funny AI ... I guess ...
the areas I was modding where 2 pretty big landmasses, seems the game doesnt like me confusing the AI as a big region with mountains in the distance(far from the settlement) causes CTDs ...

weird thing is, if I add some mountains to 1 corner of the region it works and does so for all corners, if I do 2 corners at at a time it works in some combinations and in some I get a CTD
/edit


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[Makanyane]

Red Spot, when you get the CTD you are probably finding a variation on the landmass problem;

See discussion on landmass problem here
and me attempting to summarise it here,

and yep that is a complete pain in the .... to work out, I had one map that worked if it was used one way but wouldn't if it was simply flipped over so left hand side went to right!

I really must try and write that up properly - but basically the impassable bits of land mountains and forests etc. can cause the same CTD problem as too large an area of sea. If your impassable land adjoins a sea area, the impassable land area and sea join together to form one large impassable area giving same problem as if both were sea! (did that make any sense?)

Your freeze with the addition of more fertile areas sounds like you might have found something new as well though... when you're experimenting use a beach ground_type or something that is passable but not fertile, to test if it is actually the fertility or the impassibility that is issue.

[Red Spot]

yep the freeze is about fertile land, tried it with light forrest and highland and both dont caused a freeze where making a few more pixels fertile land (doesnt matter if its low/medium/high) and it works just fine ..

not sure if what if this is a variation of the landmass problem, or at least it seems that its more or less an AI thingy, as when I divide the area in smaller area's it works fine (makes me think its sort of a pathfinding issue, same as not getting roads over very large distances)
than again I've been using mountains, should try with something else before I say its a pathfinding issue (yet I doubt I will as it took me way too much time figuring out what is going on)


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[Makanyane]

not sure if what if this is a variation of the landmass problem, or at least it seems that its more or less an AI thingy, as when I divide the area in smaller area's it works fine (makes me think its sort of a pathfinding issue, same as not getting roads over very large distances)

that is exactly what the landmass problem turned out to be (not sure how it relates to roads though) - its just everyone had been calling it 'landmass ratio' etc for so long, I still do..., if you look at example pics below you'll see same effect applies to the amount of sea you can have, lots of little seas work but one medium sized (and regular shaped) sea doesn't!

I always thought it was to do with pathfinding as well but didn't get a long way to understanding why! The separating areas so there is a clear path between them part seems quite understandable, but fact that apparently also changing the shape of areas so they are more complex and still linked, but linked by narrower areas of impassable terrain / sea makes less sense.

images from the other thread, reposted as it might help other people: for map heights / sea arrangement;
that didn't workthat did

I can't find the map_heights version for that but it was arrangement where sea areas were still joined together but had narrower areas not quite 'dividing' them. That fairly obviously worked - though it didn't when I flipped it over back to normal orientation!
EDIT: @Red Spot - I think your map is working on that sort of principal as far as water is concerned from what I remember of it. If you're adding impassible terrain that adjoins your water that could mess it up...

same sort of experiment with impassible forest in ground_types:
doesn't work butdoes.

[Red Spot]

thats just it, thats not the problem Makanyane ..
or at least not directly

thing is I can add extra mountains to the ones I made before but where causing CTDs, its just that the huge region had to be split up into smaller regions (wasnt to bright from me to call it "area" before ..)
thats also why it makes me believe its some sort of pathfinding issue as the settlement in this region was in the middle of the 1 of the 2 mountaines parts and removing the distant mountains solved the issue as well (but trees and stuff "seem" to trigger it just as well ...)

on a sidenote about land/water-mass
the way it "seems" to work I do get the impression its AI-pathfinding related
remember my previous map that you have/had, it gave me watermass problems untill I divided the sea's, the map I now have has fairly more sea and its all 1 sea and no landbridges
the only diff. between them is that in the previous map the sea was un-equal, what I mean is it had more big and small parts, where the new map has a sea thats "smoother" and better spread across the map (like each corner has ~1/4 the sea)


Edit:
from your examples about what map_height/groundtypes works, have you tried using a area of water as large as the one that doesnt work, but than as like a big ring or circle in the centre of the map??
/edit

Edit2:
What I feared seems to have become reality ... :(

I had a region that gave me issues as soon as I added some light forest to the groundtypes, so just to check it out I tried making some other regions have more low fertile groundtype intead of light forest/highland and did not tough the problem region, now I again could freely edit the problem region .... (relating the "freeze-problem")

meaning there is some sort of overflow, once you have a certain amount of non-fertile ground you can only use very little non-fertile ground in any other region, wich means you are tied to having a certain amount of fertile tiles in each region but also a sort of global minimum wich is achieved by not allowing any more non-fertile tiles ...

now I'll just have to see how much I can salvage from my current map_groundtypes ... :(
/edit

Edit3:
lol ... just removed like 2 times 3 pixels light forest from some mountain passes (tough they werent connecting the mountains) and later on added like 20 pixels deep forest to an other ..:P
seems my entire "too little fertile tiles" issue was related to 1 or 2 regions that where pretty hard to access (still as hard, just wont take you trough as mush forest as before) and for the game causing an issue as non-fertile tiles seem to be seen as inaccesable for pathfinding ... I guess
anyway, funny little issues this game has ...
/edit


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[Red Spot]

ok, there is a serious issue with non-fertile tiles in large numbers ...

when I clear some hard to reach areas the game again gives me some room to place new non-fertile tiles, just one to much and its back to a game that just freezes
dividing large regions helps a bit but not much

this is a real pain and something to be real carefull about when making large maps!!!
(I currently as work-around made my entire sea low-fertile in map_groundtypes, but I'm afraid it wont give me enough room to finish my map as I'd like ...)

Edit;
Seems you are right Makanyane, in that this freezing is a variant of the landmass-bug
I edited my map to have beaches, small beaches, just around rocky areas to divide the sea and rock ..
this worked as I could again kinda freely add new non-fertile tiles and the entire freezing issue was gone no matter how much non-fertile tiles I added
But .. as soon as I added a bit of light forest to the rocks wich again touched a piece of beach wich again touches sea it back to CTD-land cause of landmass issues

Anyway after a lot of frustration I now understand why the vanilla map has little rocks that touch the sea, as they seem to cause this variant to the landmass-bug (and like with the landmass-bug itself, adding or removing bits of rock doesnt have to give the expected results(removing bits can cause the problem as well as adding bits!))
/edit


Edit2;
perhaps something influencing things, but it seems to me that the max. number of settlements is 199
as soon as I add #200 my map crashes generating a new "corrected_regions" but no map.rwm
/edit


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[Red Spot]

did a bit of testing with cliffs, am glad I have absolutelly no need for them ...

let me show you why I say so
picture with cliffs;


and a much nicer one without cliffs;


the diff. between with or without cliffs is a small elevation the game creates towards sea, units can still move ontop of cliffs (where the trees in this case prevent them), am not really sure if it blocks entering/exiting fleets as I havent tested that after seeing how (imo) ugly the cliffs looked on my map ..


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[heisme]

Is it possible to re write this for M2TW as i am attempting to do this thnx

[Makanyane]

Welcome to the forums heisme,

I don't think this really needs re-writing for M2TW as the map tga's and text files are in principle the same. (though it could do with the hundreds of subsequent posts summarising if anyone ever gets time!)

M2TW is a bit more flexible in that it doesn't have the problem with too large a sea area any more - though there does seem to be a random CTD bug associated with very large maps that I don't think is fully resolved yet. Other than that and need to convert the data/text file from strings.bin there really isn't much difference.

Alpaca has made a stripped down map (& mod folder) for M2TW, see this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=81780
The map only download link is contained in the spoiler in the first post - that's quite a good base to start from if you are trying to make a map from scratch.

[Albert0345]

This guide is great, thanks a lot, but i still have a problem i made a new test region, but it won't work .
please me.

[Makanyane]

Welcome to the forums Albert0345, please excuse the standard answer but you need to give some more information before anyone can help please answer:

What game are you modding? (RTW or BI) Which patch version? (eg 1.2 or 1.5)
Are you modding a released mod that you have downloaded? If so please state which.
Confirm that you have -show_err on your shortcut and state if it is giving a message or not.
If you are getting a message please quote it.

Also explain in detail the nature of your crash / problem. For campaign map problems that can be;
KTM = Kick-Back to Menu, you try and load campaign but get sent back to previous menu instead.
CTD = Crash to Desktop, if that is what you get please state what screen / stage of loading bar you where in when it crashed.
Other = loads map but with distorted graphics, loads map but crashes on scrolling.

If you haven't got -show_err on shortcut yet see here

[Red Spot]

Dont really know how clear this actually is, according to the tutorial I at least got a bit wrong impression of things.
The way map_radar1 and map_radar2 "seem" to work is that radar1 needs to be 255*156pixels (size of the vanilla map_regions) and radar2 "should"(at least seems to)have to be twice that.
Radar1 is, as is wel known, for the radarmap, but radar2, unlike what I got the impression it does, is the magnified version of the radar (you know when you "zoom in" on the radarmap ingame)


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[Killy]

Does anyone know what this error means or what I should do:

Region of settlement not valid.No match in descr_regions.txt
Killfrica
at line 517

I tried to add in a new region called killfrica and my game crashes back to the provincial campaign menu when I try load it.

[Ramashan]

The most obvious reason seems like you did not document the region properly in the desc_regions.txt file. Remember, when creating a new region you must.

Create a new unique color value.

Create a new listing in desc_regions.txt (I generally just copy and paste an exitsing one and add my regions colors, region name, and settlement name.)

Add this region to a faction in desc_strat.text (again copy and paste helps)

Add the region name and settlement name to (your campaign)_names_and_settlement_lookup.txt file.

Also, your error message lists a line. Go to the desc_regions.txt file, hit Command+G and type in that line #. If it takes you to the bottom of the page, it means you do not have the region listed in the document.

Hope that helps.